Creolizing the Web

TL;DR

This paper introduces a rigorous sociological model for language evolution, combining theoretical guarantees and empirical analysis to understand community communication dynamics and the formation of echo chambers.

Contribution

It presents a minimalistic, mathematically grounded model for language evolution and applies it to real-world data to identify community structures and communication obstructions.

Findings

The model guarantees stability and fast convergence of language representations.

Empirical analysis reveals community structures and echo chambers in opinion datasets.

Obstructions to reliable communication are identified among different communities.

Abstract

The evolution of language has been a hotly debated subject with contradicting hypotheses and unreliable claims. Drawing from signalling games, dynamic population mechanics, machine learning and algebraic topology, we present a method for detecting evolutionary patterns in a sociological model of language evolution. We develop a minimalistic model that provides a rigorous base for any generalized evolutionary model for language based on communication between individuals. We also discuss theoretical guarantees of this model, ranging from stability of language representations to fast convergence of language by temporal communication and language drift in an interactive setting. Further we present empirical results and their interpretations on a real world dataset from \rdt to identify communities and echo chambers for opinions, thus placing obstructions to reliable communication among communities.