The common theme of the research group ‘language, cognition and mentality’ is the possibilties and barriers of local and global creation of meaning. The group has stated three projects, each with their own focus within a communication situation. Combined, they will result in an image of communication in an intercultural context.

Projects:

The ‘Sugar-Text Project’ focuses on how language relates to reality. The project takes it point of departure in a larger corpus of text, which consists of diverse parallel texts in Danish, French, German, Spanish, Italian, English and Russian. The texts all describe the process of sugar production – from the sugar beets’ arrival at the factory to the sugar cubes' departure. Despite the fact that all the texts deal with the same reality, the process and individual components are described quite differently in the before-mentioned languages.

The ‘Sign, Sensation and Making Sense – the SENS-project’ considers the sender’s cultural tinting of the message. The project studies how television commercials for the same product, e.g. detergent, differentiate depending on the country they are aired in. It is the aim of the SENS-project to assess what parametres that make commercials from one country, e.g. Denmark, notably different from another country, e.g. Japan or Germany.

The ‘Fair Speak Project’ focuses on the recipient’s interpretation of food at the moment of buying. What makes us buy a product from one brand instead of the competing brand? A product contains different information – e.g. the packaging on its own gives the consumer an experience: The packaging carries a name that makes it different from other similar products; it has an informative label, and often a label claim e.g. “Low in fat!” etc. All these factors combined send a multi-faceted message to the consumer. The project aims to assess how the consumer evaluates the different factors at the moment of buying. Additionally, the legislation on the food area is an important feature of the project.

The research group coincides with the center LaCoMe. Visit the center website: LaCoMe .