CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 363Chaos, Complexity, and EducationLanguage Development and DisordersComplex Systems and Decision Making

Research methodology on language development from a complex systems perspective

Open access
FREEMAN, DIANE LARSEN, CAMERON, LYNNE·2008·The Modern Language Journal
DOI 10.1111/j.1540-4781.2008.00714.x
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

Changes to research methodology motivated by the adoption of a complexity theory perspective on language development are considered. The dynamic, nonlinear, and open nature of complex systems, together with their tendency toward self‐organization and interaction across levels and timescales, requires changes in traditional views of the functions and roles of theory, hypothesis, data, and analysis. Traditional views of causality are shifted to focus on co‐adaptation and emergence. Context is not seen as a backdrop, but rather as a complex system itself, connected to other complex systems, and variability in system behavior takes on increased importance. A set of general methodological principles is offered, and an overview of specific methods is given, with particular attention to validity in simulation modeling.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1111/j.1540-4781.2008.00714.x

Cites

2 of 2 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 38

  1. Agar, M. (2004). We have met the other and we're all nonlinear: Ethnography as a nonlinear dynamic system. Complexity, 10(2), 16-24.
  2. Atkinson, D. (2002). Toward a sociocognitive approach to second language acquisition. Modern Language Journal, 86, 525-545.
  3. Bak, P. (1997). How nature works: The science of self- organized criticality. New York: Oxford University Press.
  4. Barab, S. (2006). Design-based research: A methodolog- ical toolkit for the learning scientist. In R. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of the learning sci- ences (pp. 153-169). Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press.
  5. Cameron, L., & Stelma, J. (2004). Metaphor clusters in discourse. Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1, 7-36.
  6. Clark, A. (1997). Being there. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  7. Davis, K., & Lazaraton, A. (Eds.). (1995). Qualitative re- search in ESOL (Special Issue). TESOL Quarterly, 29 (3).
  8. Elman, J. (1995). Language as a dynamical system. In R. Port & T. van Gelder (Eds.), Mind as motion: Explorations in the dynamics of cognition (pp. 195- 223). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  9. Fischer, K. W., & Bidell, T. (1998). Dynamic develop- ment of psychological structures in action and thought. In R. M. Lerner & W. Damon (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 1. Theoretical mod- els of human development (pp. 467-651). New York: Wiley.
  10. Gaddis, J. L. (2002). The landscape of history. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  11. Gilbert, N., & Troitzsch, K. (2005). Simulation for the social scientist (2nd ed.). Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press.
  12. Jacob, E. (1992). Culture, context, and cognition. In M. D. Lecompte, W. L. Millroy, & J. Preissle (Eds.), The handbook of qualitative research in education (pp. 292-335). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
  13. Kelly Hall, J. (2004). Language learning as an interac- tional achievement. Modern Language Journal, 88, 607-612.
  14. Kemmis, S. (2001). Exploring the relevance of critical theory for action research: Emancipatory action research in the footsteps of Jurgen Habermas. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds.), Handbook of action research: Participative inquiry and practice (pp. 91- 102). London: Sage.
  15. Kramsch, C. (Ed.). 2002. Language acquisition and lan- guage socialization. Ecological perspectives. London: Continuum.
  16. Lantolf, J. (Ed.). (1994). Sociocultural theory and sec- ond language learning (Special issue). Modern Language Journal, 78(4).
  17. Larsen-Freeman, D. (2004). CA for SLA? It all depends. Modern Language Journal, 88, 603-607.
  18. Larsen-Freeman, D. (2006b). Functional grammar: On the value and limitations of dependability, in- ference, and generalizability. In M. Chalhoub- Deville, C. Chapelle, & P. Duff (Eds.), Inference and generalizability in applied linguistics (pp. 115-133). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  19. Larsen-Freeman, D., & Cameron, L. (2008). Complex sys- tems and applied linguistics. Oxford: Oxford Uni- versity Press.
  20. Leather, J., & van Dam, J. (Eds.). (2003). Ecology of language acquisition. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
  21. Lemke, J. (2002). Language development and identity: Multiple timescales in the social ecology of learn- ing. In C. Kramsch (Ed.), Language acquisition and language socialization (pp. 68-87). London: Con- tinuum.
  22. MacWhinney, B., Bird, S., Cieri, C., & Martell, C. (2004). TalkBank: Building on open unified multimodal database of communicative interaction. In Proceed- ings of the Languages Resources and Evaluation Con- ference, 2004 (pp. 525-528). Lisbon, Portugal: Lan- guage Resources and Evaluation Conference.
  23. Markee, N., & Kasper, G. (Eds.). (2004). Classroom talks [Special issue]. Modern Language Journal, 88(4).
  24. Marocco, D., Cangelosi, A., & Nolfi, S. (2003). The emer- gence of communication in evolutionary robots. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of Lon- don A, 361, 2397-2421.
  25. Mondada, L., & Pekarek Doehler, S. (2004). Second lan- guage acquisition as situated practice: Task accom- plishment in the French second language class- room. Modern Language Journal, 88, 501-518.
  26. Ortega, L., & Iberri-Shea, G. (2005). Longitudinal re- search in second language acquisition: Recent trends and future directions. Annual Review of Ap- plied Linguistics, 25, 26-46.
  27. Ramanathan, V., & Atkinson, D. (1999). Ethnographic approaches and methods in L2 writing research: A critical guide and review. Applied Linguistics, 20, 44-70.
  28. Reder, S., Harris, K., & Setzler, K. (2003). A multimedia adult learner corpus. TESOL Quarterly, 37, 546- 557.
  29. Rumelhart, D., & McClelland, J. (1986). On learning the past tenses of English verbs. In J. McClelland, D. Rumelhart, & the PDP Research Group (Eds.), Parallel distributed processing: Explorations in the mi- crostructure of cognition: Vol. 2. Psychological and bio- logical models (pp. 216-271). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  30. Salthe, S. (1993). Development and evolution. Cambridge: MIT Press.
  31. Sattersfield, T. (2001). Toward a sociogenetic solution: Examining language formation processes through SWARM modeling. Social Science Computer Review, 19, 281-295.
  32. Steels, L. (1996). A self-organizing spatial vocabulary. Artificial Life Journal, 2/3, 319-332.
  33. Thelen, E., & Corbetta, D. (2002). Microdevelopment and dynamic systems: Applications to infant motor development. In N. Granott & J. Parziale (Eds.), Microdevelopment: Transition processes in develop- ment and learning (pp. 59-79). Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press.
  34. Thelen, E., & Smith, L. (1994). A dynamic systems ap- proach to the development of cognition and action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  35. Turner, F. (1997). Foreward. In R. Eve, S. Horsfall, & M. Lee (Eds.), Chaos, complexity, and sociology: Myths, models, and theories (pp. xi-xxviii). Thou- sand Oaks, CA: Sage.
  36. van Geert. (2008). The dynamic systems approach in the study of L1 and L2 acquisition: An introduction. Modern Language Journal , 92, 179-199.
  37. van Geert, P., & Steenbeek, H. (in press). A complexity and dynamic systems approach to development as- sessment, modeling and research. In K. W. Fischer, A. Battro, & P. Lena (Eds.), The educated brain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  38. Willett, J. B. (1994). Measuring change more effectively by modeling individual growth over time. Interna- tional encyclopedia of education (2nd ed., pp. 671- 678). Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
FREEMAN, D. L., & CAMERON, L.
Affiliations
The Open University (GB)
Corresponding author
CAMERON, LYNNE
Venue
The Modern Language Journal
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2008-05-08
Volume
92
Issue
2
Pages
200-213
ISSN
  • 0026-7902 (ISSN-L)
  • 1540-4781
DOI
10.1111/j.1540-4781.2008.00714.x
OpenAlex
W2135969267
Cited by
363
References
2
Citations by year
2026: 21 · 2025: 19 · 2024: 18 · 2023: 24 · 2022: 53 · 2021: 26 · 2020: 25 · 2019: 18 · 2018: 23 · 2017: 20 · 2016: 33 · 2015: 14 · 2014: 11 · 2013: 24 · 2012: 9
FWCI
10.98
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/termsAndConditions#vor (vor)
Locations
  • Modern Language Journal (publishedVersion)
  • Deep Blue (University of Michigan) (submittedVersion)
  • Open Research Online - ORO (The Open University) (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computational Theory and Mathematics › Chaos, Complexity, and Education
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
  • Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Complex Systems and Decision Making
Keywords
language development, complexity theory, complex systems, research methodology, self-organization, emergence, co-adaptation, nonlinear dynamics, computer simulation, validity

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review