The Palgrave Handbook of Economics and Language


Book Description

Do the languages people speak influence their economic decisions and social behavior in multilingual societies? This Handbook brings together scholars from various disciplines to examine the links and tensions between economics and language to find the delicate balance between monetary benefits and psychological costs of linguistic dynamics.




The Economics and Language


Book Description

Arising out of the author's lifetime fascination with the links between the formal language of mathematical models and natural language, this short book comprises five essays investigating both the economics of language and the language of economics. Ariel Rubinstein touches on the structure imposed on binary relations in daily language, the evolutionary development of the meaning of words, game-theoretical considerations of pragmatics, the language of economic agents and the rhetoric of game theory. These short essays are full of challenging ideas for social scientists that should help to encourage a fundamental rethinking of many of the underlying assumptions in economic theory and game theory.




Bridging Linguistics and Economics


Book Description

By bridging the gap between linguistics and economics, this book sheds light on a range of mutually valuable topics.




The Economics of Language Policy


Book Description

Insights from the application of economic theories and research methods to the management of linguistic diversity in an era of globalization. In an era of globalization, issues of language diversity have economic and political implications. Transnational labor mobility, trade, social inclusion of migrants, democracy in multilingual countries, and companies' international competitiveness all have a linguistic dimension; yet economists in general do not include language as a variable in their research. This volume demonstrates that the application of rigorous economic theories and research methods to issues of language policy yields valuable insights. The contributors offer both theoretical and empirical analyses of such topics as the impact of language diversity on economic outcomes, the distributive effects of policy regarding official languages, the individual welfare consequences of bilingualism, and the link between language and national identity. Their research is based on data from countries including Canada, India, Kazakhstan, and Indonesia and from the regions of Central America, Europe, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Theoretical models are explained intuitively for the nonspecialist. The relationships among linguistic variables, inequality, and the economy are approached from different perspectives, including economics, sociolinguistics, and political science. For this reason, the book offers a substantive contribution to interdisciplinary work on languages in society and language policy, proposing a common framework for a shared research area. Contributors Alisher Aldashev, Katalin Buzási, Ramon Caminal, Alexander M. Danzer, Maxime Leblanc Desgagné, Peter H. Egger, Ainhoa Aparicio Fenoll, Michele Gazzola, Victor Ginsburgh, Gilles Grenier, François Grin, Zoe Kuehn, Andrea Lassmann, Stephen May, Serge Nadeau, Suzanne Romaine, Selma K. Sonntag, Stefan Sperlich, José-Ramón Uriarte, François Vaillancourt, Shlomo Weber, Bengt-Arne Wickström, Lauren Zentz




The Economics of Language


Book Description

Written by two internationally renowned experts in the field, this book explores the determinants of dominant language proficiency among immigrants and other linguistic minorities and the consequences of this proficiency for the labour market.Using empirical material from a range of countries, including the USA, Canada, Australia and Bolivia, the a




The Economics of the Multilingual Workplace


Book Description

This book proposes a path-breaking study of the economics of multilingualism at work, proposing a systematic approach to the identification and measurement of the ways in which language skills and economic performance are related. Using the instruments of economic investigation, but also explicitly relating the analysis to the approaches to multilingualism at work developed in the language sciences, this interdisciplinary book proposes a systematic, step-by-step exploration of the issue. Starting from a general identification of the linkages between multilingualism and processes of value creation, it reviews the contributions of linguistics and economics before developing a new economic model of production in which language is taken into account. Testing of the model using data from two countries provides quantitative estimations of the influence of multilingualism on economic processes, showing that foreign language skills can make a considerable contribution to a country’s GDP. These findings have significant implications for language policy and suggest strategies helping language planners to harness market forces for increased effectiveness. A technical appendix shows how the novel technical and statistical procedures developed in this study can be generalized, and applied wherever researchers or decision makers need to identify and measure the value of multilingualism.




Linguistics and Economics


Book Description




The Economy of the Word


Book Description

It was only in the sixteenth century that texts began to refer to the significance of "economic activity" -- of sustaining life. This was not because the ordinary business of life was thought unimportant, but because the principles governing economic conduct were thought to be obvious or uncontroversial. The subsequent development of economic writing thus parallels the development of capitalism in Western Europe. From the seventeenth to the twenty-first century there has been a constant shift in content, audience, and form of argument as the literature of economic argument developed. The Economy of the Word proposes that to understand the various forms that economic literature has taken, we need to adopt a more literary approach in economics specifically, to adopt the instruments and techniques of philology. This way we can conceive the history of economic thought to be an on-going work in progress, rather than the story of the emergence of modern economic thinking. This approach demands that we pay attention to the construction of particular texts, showing the work of economic argument in different contexts. In sum, we need to pay attention to the "economy of the word". The Economy of the Word is divided into three parts. The first explains what the term "economy" has meant from Antiquity to Modernity, coupling this conceptual history with an examination of how the idea of national income was turned into a number during the first half of the twentieth century. The second part is devoted to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, considering first the manner in which Smith deals with international trade, and then the way in which the book was read in the course of the nineteenth century. Part III examines the sources used by Karl Marx and Léon Walras in developing their economic analysis, drawing attention to their shared intellectual context in French political economy.




The Economics of Education


Book Description

The Economics of Education: A Comprehensive Overview, Second Edition, offers a comprehensive and current overview of the field of that is broadly accessible economists, researchers and students. This new edition revises the original 50 authoritative articles and adds Developed (US and European) and Developing Country perspectives, reflecting the differences in institutional structures that help to shape teacher labor markets and the effect of competition on student outcomes.




Language Policy and Economics: The Language Question in Africa


Book Description

This book addresses the perennial question of how to promote Africa’s indigenous languages as medium of instruction in educational systems. Breaking with the traditional approach to the continent’s language question by focusing on the often overlooked issue of the link between African languages and economic development, Language Policy and Economics argues that African languages are an integral part of a nation’s socio-political and economic development. Therefore, the book argues that any language policy designed to promote these languages in such higher domains as the educational system in particular must have economic advantages if the intent is to succeed, and proposes Prestige Planning as the way to address this issue. The proposition is a welcome break away from language policies which pay lip-service to the empowerment of African languages while, by default, strengthening the stranglehold of imported European languages.