Principles of Information Systems

Principles of Information SystemsSession 03Language and Communication

Language and Communication

Chapter 2

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OverviewLearning objectives

1. Introduction

2. Types of language

3. How does language begin?

4. The symbolic aspects of language

5. Language and communication

6. Language and cultures

7. Language and thought

8. Summary

Learning objectives • Explain how language shapes our description of the

world, and how different cultures use language to view the world differently

• Distinguish between natural and artificial languages

• Explain how language acts as a mediator between symbols and understandings

• Define semiotics, and describe the four semiotic levels in informatics

• Define linguistics, and explain why it is significant for informatics

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Introduction

• The activities of naming and symbolising we met in the last chapter lead to the formation of different types of language, that is, ways of talking about things

• Different cultures name and shape their views of the world differently, and organise and express their knowledge in specific language forms

• The concepts of language, culture and communication are essential to an understanding of informatics.

1. Introduction2. Types of language3. How does language begin?4. The symbolic aspects of

language5. Language and communication 6. Language and cultures7. Language and thought8. Summary

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Types of language• As well as everyday natural language :

-Musical languages -Scientific languages -Computer languages -Sign languages, -Pictorial languages -Specialised jargon-Codes of many different sorts -Artificial languages such as Esperanto-Private languages between people who are very close -Languages used by apes or other animals-Abstract representations in the minds of babies before they learn their community’s language

…



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Types of language

• Some languages are better for expressing certain types of ideas than others, and each language has its own community of users who understand what the references and meanings are.

• Informatics also has its own ways of describing things

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Why so many?

• Some possible answers:-No language by itself is fully adequate for every purpose

-Different languages serve different purposes

-Languages are specialised for particular functions

-Languages allow groups to identify and differentiate from others

-Languages admit ways of describing the world that others don’t

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Natural language

• Natural language is the type spoken or written in everyday life by a community.

-Mandarin, Hindi, Urdu, Spanish, English…

• Nations and regions may have their own languages, or their own dialect versions of a major language

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Natural language• Natural language gives a basis for more specialised

subsets:

-Dialects, where a community adopts specific words or different accents and pronunciation of the base language

- Idiolects, where a person has an individual pattern or usage of words. When immediate associates learn an idiolect and use it, it becomes an ecolect, and may catch on more widely.

-Jargon, where a community practicing in a shared area of interest, such as mathematics, develop specialised words or meanings for common words.

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Foos yer doos?

point Percy at the

porcelain

Aye pickin!

He birdied the sixteenth which made up for his

bogie on the second and

finished two over par

What are these?

(if you aren’t familiar with the examples – research them!)

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Artificial languages• Informatics often deals with artificial languages• These are developed for particular purposes, in

specialised communities-Maths, music, information technology -In informatics there are “languages” for communicating the results of a business analysis, for instructing computers or web browsers to do something, for describing data resources and many other specialised applications.

• Like natural languages, artificial languages require their users to share an understanding of the conventional signs and what they mean in some specific world

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There are many types of languages, both natural and

artificial. Each language has its own community of users who

understand the references and meanings

Recap

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How does language begin?• There is an ongoing debate on the origins of language. Here

is one common sense story. • We are born into a community who already speak a common

language. Through imitation, trial and error we learn its vocabulary, rules and application, and we learn the associations between sounds and its written form. This is natural language, and gives a background basis in community understanding.

• In this story language is learned by individuals, but essentially it was in place socially before any individual learned it. We have been thrown into a world, and its language is “found in nature”.



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How does language begin?• Another common sense story is like the process of

introducing any new idea into a community where it did not exist before.

• At a very simple level an individual may assign a word or sign to name or signify a perceived object or a conceived idea.

• That word may be defined or consistently used by the individual, and by others in time becoming accepted by the immediate community, forming part of its language.

• And the culture of that community will give it meaning in relation to the other words and ideas of that culture. In time the word may disappear through disuse, or change or extend its meaning.

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How does language begin?

• Three main processes apply:-Symbolisation (the explicit representation of perceptions)

-Communication (the social sharing of information via language)

-Culture (the worldviews and belief systems that sustain meaning)

• Each of these areas has been researched mainly within psychology, sociology, linguistics, cultural studies and in specialized areas of informatics.

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There is debate on the origins of language.

An individual may ‘name’ a new item or concept, which is then adopted more

widely and given meaning by the community

Recap

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The symbolic aspects of language

• All languages are systems of signs and symbols, used to represent and communicate the idea of something:

• Language mediates between symbolisation and culturally understood meanings



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Signs and symbols

• This fundamental concept underpins any system of expressed meaning, whether in words, numbers, computer “primitives”, pictures or other symbolisations.

• The study of language’s fundamental elements, or signs, is known as semiotics.

• Semiotics provides a powerful set of theoretical concepts applicable in informatics

-de Saussure, Pierce, Dewey

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Hey look, a squirrel!

The sign combines the signifier and the signified

Concept or signified

Word or signifier

step

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Sign, signifier, signified

Signifier – a component of a sign, meaning the word that is used to refer

to a concept.

Sign – fundamental element of language, combining the signifier

(or word) and the signified (or concept)

Signified – component of a sign, meaning the concept that is

referred to

squirrel

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water eau

wasservoda

airThese words are all arbitrary symbolic associations, which their communities somehow agreed and standardised upon

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Semiotic levels in informatics• Syntactic

-Concerns the form of symbols

• Semantic-concerns the meaning of symbols

• Pragmatic-concerns the usage of symbols

• Social-concerns the understanding of the meaning of symbols

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Syntactic‘John kissed Mary’ =‘Mary was kissed by John’

Semantic‘John kissed Mary’ ≠‘Mary kissed John’

PragmaticJohn kissed Mary…to stop her crying

SocialJohn kissed Mary…because she needed to know he loved her

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Semiotics and informatics• These four levels span from the basic forms at the

most primitive level, to the understanding at the highest social level

• This is relevant for informatics practice:• At the primitive (form) end are hard skills

-Formulation and specification; mathematical or formal in nature.

• At the understanding end are soft skills - Interpretation, felt meaning, political diplomacy in the face of ambiguity, and people skills generally in ensuring intended meanings are understood.

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All languages are systems of signs and symbols, used to represent and

communicate the idea of something.The study of language’s fundamental

elements, or signs, is known as semiotics.

Recap

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Linguistics

• Language is not just the words or symbols themselves:

- the way they are put together structurally affects how they are interpreted.

• Syntax and rules of grammar are important in handling messages in language, and in shaping the interpretation of meaning.

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Australia exports sheep to Iraq…Only Australia exports sheep to Iraq.

Australia only exports sheep to Iraq.

Australia exports only sheep to Iraq.

Australia exports sheep only to Iraq.

- No other countries do

- It doesn’t import them

- It doesn’t export anything else

- It doesn’t export sheep anywhere else

view

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Linguistics

• Linguistics is the field concerned with various formal aspects of language and its use

• Computational linguistics, where computers process language, is an important field within informatics.

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Syntax and semantics• Syntax and rules of grammar are important in handling

messages in language, and in shaping the interpretation of meaning

• However a word for word equivalence is not enough: some classic machine translations are:

- ‘out of sight, out of mind’ = ‘blind idiot’- ‘hydraulic ram’ = ‘water goat’

• Extra, linguistic knowledge is needed - semantic knowledge about the meaning of the words and their use in context.

-This semantic knowledge is often grounded in a social understanding, common to a culture or a community.

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Interpreting a message

• But it is not just the literal words themselves, the ways they are used, the ways they are arranged and the grammar structures used all implicitly form the content of a message.

• The rules of interpretation, as much as the words themselves, shape the meaning of a sentence or other message.

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“The baby cried. The mommy picked it up.”

• Whose mommy?

• Why did she pick the baby up?

• What makes you think this?

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Social and cultural context in interpretation

• We probably assumed it was the baby’s mother, and she picked up the baby to soothe it

-However, there is nothing in the data that says this. • Socially understood categories, norms and rules are

built into the way people hear things that are said. -“The words that we hear enter our minds already conditioned by our social and cultural environment.” (Devlin)

• Speakers who understand the social categories and rules that hearers understand and apply, can communicate their intentions more effectively by designing messages to be so interpreted.

Example from Sacks, discussed by Devlin33

Linguistics and informatics• There are many applications in informatics where ideas

have to be recorded so they can be communicated over distance and time, and still be understood.

• Linguistics is also highly relevant in the formal areas of informatics such as designing for communication with machines and other intelligent agents.

-All computer languages have to have a syntax and semantics, allowing them to recognise instructions and produce understandable output.

• Active research fields such as computational linguistics, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence extend the “fundamental concepts of communication, knowledge, data, interaction and information”.

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Phonetics

• The phonetic aspects of a language may also reflect unique cultural properties, or adaptations to an environment.

• The sound of a language, as well as its vocabulary, conveys information, and thus possible clues to environmental context.

-Different speaking styles of humans in city and country regions – slow versus rapid

• This information may be lost in simple translations, or in changing media from spoken to written.

coin coin!

quack

quack!

Háp Háp!

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Linguistics is the field concerned with various formal aspects of language and its

use. Syntax, semantics, social and cultural

environment are all relevant in interpreting the meaning of a message

Recap

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Inclusion and exclusion through language• A fundamental property of language and community is that they

work together to define inclusion and exclusion.

• Anyone who learns the language (which includes norms, standards, practices) can participate in a community, but without that they are alien, excommunicated, other.

• A boundary between those who are allowed to communicate or not is the purpose of many languages, particularly “secret” codes and languages, e.g.

- Polari, a form of gay slang used mainly within the British theatre community.

- Nushu, a secret writing of Chinese women

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Codes and ciphers

• Codes and ciphers are similar in that both try to keep a message secret by representing it in an obscure form.

-Codes use correspondences at the language or meaning level, whilst ciphers work at the lower levels of symbolisation.

• Codes and ciphers can be combined, and can be extremely sophisticated

• Codes are very widespread in informatics, and are particularly relevant in information security.

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Codes• Codes are artificial languages, often encoding a natural

language message that is usually intended for translation or decoding back into the message intended by the sender

• Codes are designed to be understood by those in the know, and to exclude others from understanding their message.

- In a circus tent the phrase “Hey Rube” might have been predefined as a code for the message that “a fire has broken out”. This alerts the circus workers, without causing the general public alarm.

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Ciphers

• A cipher maps the elements of a message to other elements, e.g.

abc def ghi jkl mno pqr stu vwx yzpqr stu vwx yza bcd efg hij klm no

• The bottom row (pqr…) is the key• Given an enciphered string and the key, it is straightforward to

reconstruct the original message. • It can be made more complicated, e.g. stringing words together by

dropping the spaces avoids clues due to word length

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pqr stu vwx yza bcd efg hij klm no

abc def ghi jkl mno pqr stu vwx yz

iwt rpi

the cat

step

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ibm wnt

hal vms

Try this one yourself – what is the key?

?

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abc def ghi jkl mno pqr stu vwx yz

zab cde fgh ijk lmn opq rst uvw xy

ibm wnt

hal vms

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Codes, ciphers and secret languages are designed to be understood by those in the know, and

exclude others. Ciphers are correspondences between sets of

language symbols at the level of individual elements.

Codes involve correspondence between sets of language symbols at the level of meaning

Recap

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Language and communication

• Communication is “a symbolic process in which people create shared meanings”

• We have already seen some of the symbolic aspects of communication, which have properties of their own but also usually represent some intended meaning.

• The process aspects of communication refer to how these symbols are packaged, transferred, distorted, socialised, and related to systems of meaning or belief.

• Language plays a central role in human communication.

1. Introduction2. Types of language3. How does language begin?4. The symbolic aspects of language5. Language and communication 6. Language and cultures7. Language and thought8. Summary

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Communication – human and electronic• In many areas of informatics, communication is both in

electronic form and in various human forms, so a working knowledge of each type is useful.

• Human communication is more concerned with the intention, getting the meaning across.

• Electronic communication is more concerned with the accuracy, and getting the information across. It is not directly concerned with the meaning.

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Shannon and Weaver’s information theory

• Shannon and Weaver’s model of communication was one of the earliest works on information theory

• It is concerned that the information that is received is the same as that which is sent

• The model of treats data messages as meaningless: the content is irrelevant

• Shannon and Weaver’s model underpins many technical applications, but as a model of human communication it is limited

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Shannon and Weaver’s information theory

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Levels of human communication

• Communication in informatics is generally concerned with human and organisational communications.

-As an instrument of human communication, electronic communication takes place in human activity contexts.

• The major levels of human communication are -interpersonal-cultural-intercultural

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Levels of human communication• The forms of human communication may be

-Spoken or non-verbal-Written-Pictorial and diagrammatic

• And formal or informal in tone, depending on the audience, and what message is being intended.

• So being able to disentangle the information from the form is crucial, and not always easy

-Humans do this automatically in everyday language-But a computer can’t – so we must be conscious of it when modelling information

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Two aspects of communication are the information aspect and the meaning aspect. Human communication is more concerned

with intention and meaning. Electronic communication is more concerned

with accuracy, and getting the information across.

Recap

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Language and cultures

• Cultures are the custodians of languages. They sustain and transform languages through usage, and in relation to their commonly understood systems of meaning.

• Culture can be thought of as “the way we understand things around here”

-Any community that identifies itself as such

• Language is one of the ways cultures identify themselves as different from others

-And often one of the reasons cultures misunderstand one another



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Cultures within cultures• Cultures often exist within other cultures:

-an ethnic or other socially identified group living within a dominant culture (such as Australians of Scottish descent)

- lifestyle-based or professional subgroup (nightclub ravers, gangsters, computer hackers)

• Such subgroups often identify themselves through specialised language or argot, whose use can signal membership in a group.

-“she’s laying a heavy trip on us, man” • The use of argot can restrict communication, but also capture

nuances of specific meaning that are very precise for a subgroup.

• Subgroups can initiate, revive and use language in non-mainstream ways, helping it to change.

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Cultures within cultures• Professional groups develop meanings and usages for

words that are specific to their interests, and which also serve to mark them out as a group.

-Scientific languages, the specialised jargons of medicine, law, computing, art or wine tasting all develop to allow efficient, communally understood and nuanced communication among practitioners, with richer meanings that those available to the general public.

• Skilled trades may have words to describe specific distinctions; other distinctions may be made, but are felt rather than described.

-For example a mechanic knows how tight to turn a wheel nut; a bricklayer can snap a brick in half by striking it

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Subcultures and informatics

• In informatics it is common to describe the language and knowledge used in a specialised community and to model what is understood by those terms.

• Terms used by specialised communities may be unfamiliar or, worse, assumed to have familiar meanings.

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Distinctions, language and culture• Communities, whether ethnically or professionally

based, will develop concepts and words relevant to the observations they make and distinctions they need.

• A key motivation in the identification of language terms is their power as useful distinctions for that community

• It also implies a higher sensitivity to categories that those from other cultures may not notice, or be able to describe in an easily communicable form.

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Untranslatable words

mamihlapinatapai

“looking at each other hoping that either will offer to do something

which both parties desire but are unwilling to do”

Used in Tierra del Fuego, this has been cited as the most succinct word, i.e. the hardest to translate elegantly into English. It means something like:

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Untranslatable words

• “Untranslatable” words can provide insights into cultures and their specific outlooks on life.

-Jassa is the word used by the Saami in Lapland for bodies of meltwater that their reindeer herds drink

• Some words originate in other cultures, but because the concept they refer to is useful, they become adopted without translation.

-e.g. the German word Schadenfreude, meaning the joy taken in another’s misfortune.

• Other words remain culture-bound and untranslated-Not useful? Or a lack of sensitivity to the concept it represents?

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Language death and knowledge• Language death is currently a global phenomenon

-A language dies out every two weeks across the world

-In 2000, there were roughly 6000 languages in use worldwide but for 51 of them, only a lone speaker remained, whose death loses the living link to that language, effectively making it extinct.

• Many languages are not written down, or their sounds not recorded

• Once a language dies, knowledge expressed in that language is effectively lost.

-e.g. medicinal plants, music or craft processes

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Constructed languages• Constructed languages are artificially designed or

planned rather than emerging naturally from a community. -This allows them to be consistent, easy to learn, with simple rules of composition and avoiding ambiguity.

• Esperanto was designed by L.L. Zamenhof over 100 years ago.

-The idealistic hope for the language was that by having a language that everyone could speak and understand, international understanding and peace would follow.

-Not intended to replace original ethnic languages: people would speak their own language and also Esperanto.

-Despite some criticism Esperanto is still going strong worldwide

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Cultural traditions• There are many examples of misunderstandings when

cultures interact. -Specific gestures can be inappropriate or misunderstood. -Different usages of familiar terms

• Words can translate into something funny or taboo in another language.

-Finding catchy, culturally inoffensive names and slogans for globalised industries becomes a challenge.

• Assumptions made within one cultural tradition may not translate into the practice of another tradition.

-White dress for weddings here, but for funerals there. -Socialise first and then do business; or the opposite?-Read from right to left; from left to right, from top to bottom of the page? (see next slide)

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Culture and technology

• Technologies and information or media products that embody a particular convention may not be appreciated in another culture.

-The technologies of the Internet are sometimes assumed to be culturally neutral, but have been found not to be so

• In informatics, knowledge workers dealing with another person’s language, culture or socially shaped expectations need enough acculturation and understanding to ensure products and system designs are culturally appropriate.

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Language is one of the ways cultures identify themselves.

Cultures sustain and transform languages through usage, and in

relation to their commonly understood systems of meaning.

Recap

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Language, culture and time

• Time, as well as space, is a major way in which we organize our experience:

-Annual reports or journal archives may be organized chronologically.

-Salaries are paid (weekly) on (hourly) scales, and computer processes operate using clocks and dates.

-Categories change over time: baby, child, youth, adult, middle-aged, senior

-Words like “dig” and “groovy” were once “hip and happening” but became “retro and dated”

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• The language used in these examples is related to the timeframes involved, and the specificity of detail goes from a general set of possible options to quite precise data as time becomes more critical.

We’ll aim to enter the South

American market in about 5 years

Maybe we could, like,

go out sometime

Two full breakfasts with

large cappuccinos to table 4 now!”

• Plans are made in relation to time: long-term strategies, medium-term tactical goals, short-term operations.

66

Chronemics• Different cultures, and even individuals within cultures,

understand time differently. • Chronemics studies the ways time is variously

experienced.• Time is often understood as linear, and inevitability

“there” as an objective fact. -We are somehow thrown into a world that had a history before we appeared and will continue after we die.

• There are other understandings, and these dimensions give different ways of organising experience, information and events.

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Chronemics

• Some cultures and subcultures do not emphasise linear clock or calendar time, but rather the natural cycles of affairs.

-Planting and harvesting, summer and winter, wet season dry season, sunlight and darkness, the influence of the moon, and perhaps the influence of other planetary cycles and rhythms.

• There are also cycles in economics, fashion, social attitudes and in many other areas that are often modelled for decision making.

• The language, and the organisation of information, emphasises that understanding.

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Time and informatics – states• In informatics, the conception of time depends on

whether it is modelled as a continuous passage, or a series of discrete events.

• A narrative of a football game might record scores and the minutes when a goal was scored as:

0-0, 1-0 (2), 1-1(38), 2-1(56), 2-2 (79). Full time 2-2. • But this does not imply that “nothing happened” after

the 79th minute, nor that the last 11 or so minutes played may not have seemed longer than they were for many involved.

• The representation of the game is reduced to a few states, and the relative times when there was a change of state – a state-transition.

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Time and informatics – time sampling

• Like the granularity (detail) issue for maps, time sampling is an important decision in describing and modelling information

-Credit card records show spending patterns, perhaps peaking at Christmas

• When to sample, what information to sequence, what to aggregate, and what to leave out are all decisions that impact on what is recorded, and what patterns can be seen.

70

Time management• Multitasking is becoming more important to

productivity in situations of informational abundance and potential overload.

- In computing architectures, where time-sharing and parallel processing activities are common

-Project management, where tasks are organised in parallel.

• The idea of time-management is familiar from domestic situations

-The vegetables cook while the table is being set and the glassware is drying

• The management of time is thus crucial to efficiency, but efficiency itself is a cultural value.

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Characteristics of Monochronic and Polychronic people (after Hall & Hall)

Monochronic People Polychronic PeopleDo one thing at a time,

concentrate on the jobDo many things at once, are

highly distractible and subject to changes

Take time commitments seriously

Consider time commitments an objective to be achieved if possible

Are committed to the job Are committed to people and human relationships

Adhere religiously to plans Change plans often and easily

Are accustomed to short term relationships

have strong tendencies to build life long relationships

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Monochronic & polychronic societies• Hall & Hall described how such characteristics apply

generally at cultural levels• Polychronic societies are those where social

relationships are seen as more important than task achievement timetables.

• Techno-capitalist societies tend to be monochronic, differentiating them from many traditional societies.

-This can have impacts, for example, on knowledge sharing practices.

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Time and informatics• A final aspect of time in informatics concerns whether

information needs to be:• Real time

-Mapped against time passing in the ‘real world’-e.g. air traffic control

• Synchronous-At the same time

• Asynchronous-Co-ordinated, but not at the same ‘real’ time

• Different types of information systems are required depending on these aspects.

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9am London 5pm Perth

5pm London

9am Perth

9am London

Synchronous and asynchronous

5pm Perth

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Different cultures understand time differently, and organise their experience in different

ways.Different ways of modelling time are relevant

in informatics, e.g. as discrete events or continuous

Recap

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• This sentence is written using language to express thoughts.

• Think about this.

• Now think about what you thought about this.

• Did you think in language – were there words “in your head”?

• So can you even think without language?

• If language includes pictures and images, is it any different?

step

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Language and thought• Language organises our experience, makes

sense of observations and gives us categories to deal with each new event

• How far can these ideas be taken?• Could it be that we cannot actually think without language? • Might language actually determine our thoughts? • If we don’t have a word for something, we might actually miss

out on perceiving it: -The Japanese might see seven types of beauty in a garden where others might only see one or less.

-Native American tribes might have advanced concepts relevant to quantum physics that other cultures cannot conceive of since they don’t have those words.


language5. Language and

communication 6. Language and cultures7. Language and thought8. Summary

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Whorf-Sapir hypothesis• Traditionally, meaning and grammar were

considered to be universal: • “A basic maxim in linguistics is that anything can

be expressed in any language” (Lenneberg)- It follows therefore that anything can be translated from one language to another.

• Against this, Benjamin Lee Whorf, who researched the Hopi people of New Mexico, their language and worldview, argued that:

- thoughts and ideas are influenced strongly by language, especially as this will be largely based on what has been said before in that language, forming part of an ongoing discourse.

• This is the ‘weaker’ form of the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis, and is accepted by most people.

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Whorf-Sapir hypothesis

• More strongly, Sapir stated:

“It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection … No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality.”

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Whorf-Sapir hypothesis

• The ‘strong’ Whorf-Sapir hypothesis can be divided into two different claims:

1. That language shapes thought (this is known as linguistic determinism)

2. That languages are to some extent mutually incomprehensible (linguistic relativism)

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Criticisms of Whorf-Sapir hypothesis

• Linguistic determinism (that language shapes thought)-But thought occurs in children before speech, and animals have thought as well.

-Field experiments show that people can acquire ideas for which their native language did not have the capability.

• Linguistic relativism (that languages are to some extent mutually incomprehensible)

-Criticisms tend to focus on showing how the examples that prompted the hypothesis were misunderstood.

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Natural semantics metalanguage• Anna Wierzbicka and Cliff Goddard proposed a

natural semantics metalanguage • They suggest that all complex utterances, across all

languages and cultures, can be reduced to a common linguistic subset.

• Underneath what is said will be the primitive terms: a subset of concepts we all share.

• In addition, each language will have a cultural script – -a set of naturalistic reductions to the metalanguage that provides its own ways of saying things, reflecting its culturally understood values

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Modelling information with natural language• Much of the representation of information is in language

and numbers. • We have seen that one of the desirable characteristics for

information is to be reliable-But this can conflict with some of the functions of language.

• Some issues include:-multiple meanings

-disputed descriptions

- imagined interactions

84

Although once it was considered that languages are inter-translatable, it is

now accepted that thoughts and ideas are influenced strongly by language. There is still debate on the extent to

which language shapes thought.

Recap

85

86

Modelling info w/ natural language: multiple meanings• Language is inherently flexible - it must be, if it is to be

competent to express any given situation that arises-One word may be used for many meanings-The same situation may be described in many ways

• Moreover, the truth of the account is relative to the observer/narrator, and to what meanings are entailed for the language user

• Polysemy means a word or image can have many meanings, and is an issue for modelling information using language.

• Context often helps to disambiguate what is signified, but there is often a related issue of how much context to model or describe:

-Trade-off between giving a very precise meaning, and retaining enough flexibility to apply in the general case.

Modelling info w/ natural language – disputed descriptions and imagined interactions

• Can any situation be described objectively?-For physical measurement and associated description – yes (perhaps)

• However the sorts of social situation met in organisational informatics mean that a description and the associated data can be, and probably is, unreliable

• Although any given account may be self-consistent, it can be shown as being subject to bias when seen within a wider view.

-This wider view is not necessarily more ‘objective’ but does tend to be located within the accepted systems of authority that a community respects.

87

Modelling info w/ natural language – disputed descriptions• One view has to prevail for the accepted order to be

maintained – but which?• It may seem that there is no independent account possible for

any given situation and that only versions of a story are in principle possible.

• In such cases practical things to do are to - find the original source -check the provenance and evidence-discover what the accepted authority structure is- find anything that is inconsistent, or falsified by inquiry.

• By reference to the founding myths of a culture, including (in the limiting case) science, a particular account may become privileged, and accepted for some time as the ‘true story’.

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Disputed descriptions & intelligent interaction• The idea of intelligent interaction in informatics is that the

assumptions behind beliefs can be examined, and one party can understand ‘where the other is coming from’. This can allow some misunderstandings to be cleared up.

• If we had a perfect model of the language and meaning attributions of another, we could express an account in terms of the recipient’s understanding.

-This is possible if we have a ‘bigger’, comprehending, intelligence, which fully scopes the complexity of the recipient.

• Theories of this include conversational systems and agent belief modelling systems.

- In practice, this has been done for artificial systems, with a rudimentary intelligence and an ability to interact with humans (that is, a greater intelligence).

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The great flexibility of natural language is often at odds with the

precision required for description in informatics.

Some issues include polysemy and disputed descriptions.

Recap

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Summary• There are many different languages, both natural and

artificial-Natural language is spoken or written in everyday life by a community.

-Artificial languages are developed for particular purposes, in specialised communities.

• All languages require their users to share an understanding of the conventional signs and what they mean in some specific world

• Semiotics is concerned with the construction of language as signs, consisting of the signifier and the signified

• Linguistics is concerned with formal aspects of language and its use

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Summary• Communication can be in electronic form (concerned with

accuracy and information), or human form (concerned with meaning)

• Codes, ciphers and secret languages are used to include and exclude

• Cultures sustain and transform languages through usage, and in relation to their commonly understood systems of meaning

• Thoughts and ideas are influenced strongly by language• There can be problems in using natural language to model

information

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Principles of Information Systems

Documents

communication language

specific language

communication1 language

language acts

major language

concepts of language

language shapes

everyday natural language