Background: Local Challenges to Globalisation

Several independent studies show that language by its impact on perception and conception determines the way in which we communicate with each other and how we look upon the world we live in.

For instance, eyetrack studies show how Americans vs. Chinese look at the same picture in completely different ways, and experiments of association demonstrate that, for example, the American conception of time is radically different from the Russian one.

Various ad-hoc explanations may be given to account for each of these surprising observations, but only one factor can explain them all : Language. Through its mother tongue each child is taught to look upon a picture in a certain way, as either a past, present or future situation. Should the child fail to reproduce this view linguistically, it will be met with disapproval from the grown-ups in its linguistic community.

This innovative conception of the function of language is vital for improving our understanding of the challenges that globalisation imposes on Danish society and business; all the more so, because the ever-spreading use of information technology has long ago made a cultural phenomenon of what started out as a solely economic manifestation.

People used to think that cultural globalisation would lead to greater cultural homogenisation, and in a sense this does appear to be the case: Many things in different cultures (such as buildings, advertisements, products) seem to be international, but you only need to scrape the surface to discover their indisputably local characteristics. Especially in all fields concerned with interpretation and creation of meaning, as for instance communication between products and consumers.

There seems to be a definite need globally and locally – in casu within Denmark – to generate detailed and operational knowledge of the concrete and specific interaction of language, cognition and national mentality within a comprehensive theoretical framework. The main purpose of the LaCoMe-Centre is to provide interesting and useful contributions to both levels of investigation.