Complexity Applications in Language and Communication Sciences

Àngels Massip-Bonet is full professor in the Department of Catalan Philology and General Linguistics at the University of Barcelona. She has promoted together with Dr. Bastardas-Boada the creation of a transdisciplinary research group  (Sociocomplexitat) at the University of Barcelona, currently part of the University of Barcelona Institute of Complex Systems (UBICS). She has published several books and articles dealing with topics related to linguistic variation, history of language, dialectology and sociolinguistics, in the frame of complexity. She is researcher in Catalan Dialectology (main researcher of the project –promoted together with Dr. Veny- "Diatopia and linguistic change. Scripta and dialectal variation" FFI2016-80482-P of the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (Scripta).

• Introduction; Àngels Massip, Gemma Bel-Enguix, Albert Bastardas-Boada.- Part I: Interdisciplinary approaches for linguistics and biology.- Science as a Self-organizing Cognitive System. Coherence and Flexibility of Scientific Explanatory Patterns; Robert Hristovski, Natàlia Balagué, Pablo Vázquez.- The Paradigm of Complexity in Sociology: Epistemological and Methodological Implications; Alvaro Malaina.- How and why to Model the Complexity of Thought Systems; Leonardo Rodríguez Zoya.- Part II: Language change.- Linguistic Variation and Change: Approach from the Perspective of Complex Adaptive Systems; Àngels Massip-Bonet.- Some Theoretical Prerequisites for the Integrated Study of Linguistic “Macrochange”; Enrique Bernárdez.- The Impact of Social Reputation in Language Evolution; Gemma Bel-Enguix.- Part III: Sociolinguistics.- Restricted’ and ‘general’ complexity perspectives on social bilingualisation and language shift processes; Albert Bastardas-Boada.- Patterns of linguistic diffusion in space and time: the case of Mazatec; Léo Léonard, Marco Patriarca, Els Heinsalu, Kiran Sharma, Anirban Chakraborti.- Common knowledge in conversation of bilinguals and the ecology of pressures. The complex processes of using language and learning to coordinate actions with other speakers; Roland Terborg, Virna Velázquez.- Part IV: Discourse analysis.- Discourse Analysis: Constructivist Perspective and Transdisciplinarity; Esperanza Morales López.- A complex approach to prosodic discourse variation; Raquel García Riverón and Fidel Alejandro Marrero Montero.- Amazing Grace: An Analysis of Barack Obama’s Raciolinguistic Performances; Sami Alim.- Part V: Syntax, Semantics and Cognition.- How to convert a very complex process into something amazingly simple? The case of lexical access; Michael Zock.- The emergence of hubs in complex syntactic networks and the DP Hypothesis: the relevance of a linguistic analysis; Lluís Barceló-Coblijn, Maia Duguine, Aritz Irurtzun.- The World Color Survey: data analysis and simulations; Peter Lewinski, Michal Lukasik, Konrad Kurdej, Filip Leonarski, Natalia Bielczyk, Franciszek Rakowski, Joanna Rączaszek-Leonardi, Dariusz Plewczynski.- Cognitive Meaning: Review of the Concepts of Imagination, Image Schema and Mental Image and Consequences on the Conceptualization of Emotions; Maria Antònia Font.