Evolutionary games and communication

The question of human communication is a central one for Social Sciences : the problems raised by the notion of communication in general are interesting and important by themselves, but there maybe something more when the communication process takes place between entities of high cognitive level, which is typically the case when human communicates. Then, epistemological questions abound ; to mention a few : By definition, communication is a collective process. Is methodological individualism a sufficient paradigm for explaining the communication mechanism? How fundamental is the difference between human communication and machine communication ? Should one consider that language is based on an a priori common knowledge of the individuals, or should one try to explain how exchanged signs get loaded with meaning ? The objective of this chapter is to describe what Evolutionary Game Theory has brought to the study of the communication phenomena. To do so, I will take two examples that show how communication is modeled in Game Theory and I will show how the ideas of Evolutionary Game Theory apply to these specific communication games. By definition, a game is a situation in which several players act and where the consequences of her action, for a player and