Table 2. Continuities and discontinuities of the process of linguistic replacement

Source: Own elaboration.

The discontinuous lines show us the changes that can be produced (the discontinuities naturally) meanwhile the continuous line indicates us the evolution without any kind of changes.

The parallelism that we can establish between the catastrophe theory and the process of linguistic replacement is so big, that we get to describe these processes with the characteristics of a type of discontinuities (the "butterfly catastrophe") and we don’t have to add or remove anything; this is why we can affirm that the relation established is of isomorphism (6). This fact allows us to decide which have to be the facts that take part of the processes because they will be the same as in the "butterfly catastrophe".

Before starting to comment this isomorphism we have to define the concepts that are going to be candidates to the same control facts (the same forces) that take part in the catastrophe theory, leaving at one side the concept of social representation that we have already shaped before.

We will start with the reference group, Merton and Kitt (1950) that characterise it as follows:

"It points out to systemise the determinants and the consequences from the evolution processes and self – evaluation, in which the individuals have to assume the values and rules of other individuals and groups as a reference frame".

Secondly, we will say that the social net is the group of people that share one of their languages and have linguistic interactions between them.

Let us see the column on the left in the following table, which represent the facts that take part in the "butterfly catastrophe".

Table 3. Proposal of isomorphism of the controlling facts from the "butterfly catastrophe" and from the process of linguistic substitution

Source: Own elaboration.