Bernard Ancori
«Complexity and Creativity: Emergence, Stability, and Collective Dynamic» (p. 11-39)
Abstract: Relying on a formal model of the structure and evolution of a complex socio-cognitive network of individual actors, this article analyzes the conditions for the emer¬gence, stabilization, and disappearance of collectives, meaning organized groups with stable individual actors, which behave like subjects with intentionality, like plural subjects.
As the cognitive basis of each subject is formed by the shared representations of all the members, the emergence of such collectives implies the appearance of such shared representations. This appearance represents a first creative phenomenon, collective from the start and linked to an extensive dimension of individual learning during social communication. The progressive stabilization of such collectives results thus from the intensive dimension of this learning, realized simultaneously with the extensive dimension, leading to the appearance of cognitive routines. The latter may disappear from the conscious level of individual subjects, and, once perfectly rooted in the individual, they become invisible for the relevant thought collectives, which now attain full stabilization.
Each state of the network contains a constellation of such collectives of various sizes and vocations, some of which may pursue the same aim. They thus enter in competition as they are focused on a common object which each collective wishes to handle alone after eliminating another or the other collectives. The analysis of competitive dynamics specifies the conditions of the supremacy of one of the collectives over another or the other collectives. At the (provisional) end of a dynamic process, the landscape of all collectives has undergone a modification, leading to a second creative phenomenon, located this time on the global level of the network.
Key-words: emergence, communication, learning, stabilization, competition
Monique Dalud-Vincent
«A Way to Model Social Networks. Applications to the Study of Co-Publications» (p. 41-68)
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to show why and how the pre-topology (domain of the mathematics which recovers the graph theory and the topology) can bring a mathematical modelling and an analysis more flexible and better adapted for social networks.
Key-words: pretopology, graph theory, social networks, connectivity
Max Béligné
«Some Spaces in Detecting Metaphors» (p. 69-99)
Abstract: This paper proposes an inventory of methods for auto¬matic and manual metaphor detection in order to give a better understanding of a social science, namely Geography. At first, we aim at obtaining a synthetic and organized view of the different theories and methodologies (each forming a different possible “detection space”). This view might foster the design of future lines of research to address this difficult issue. Then, we explore each space to get its potentialities, limits and articulations with the other spaces. The multifaceted nature of metaphors leads us to carry out an important synthetic and detailed work. We claim that the combination of those specialized spaces enables the researcher to improve the detection of meta¬phor for this stylistic figure can be defined in multiple ways. Finally, we reconstruct an integrating framework for thinking simultaneously manual and automatic detec¬tion. It turns out that these two viewpoints are often discussed independently, although they deal with a common problem.
Key-words: metaphor, automatic and manual detection, space, method, theory
Julie Boissonneault et Simon Laflamme
«Cultural Dropout or Transfering from Franco-Ontarian School to English-Language School» (p. 101-161)
Abstract: In French Canada outside Quebec, between the begin¬ning of primary education and the end of high school, a significant proportion of students leave French-language schools to register in English-language schools. The purpose of this research is to explain the phenomenon. A survey was conducted among students, their friends, their parents and their teachers. It showed differences according to regions, it highlighted the impact of the way students perceive themselves from a linguistic point of view, it also identified a linguistic ideology and the way the information hubs.
Key-words: cultural dropout, school dropout, French-language minority, Canada, education, French Ontario, ideology, linguistic representation.