First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

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

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 world is being reshaped by fundamental changes deriving from globalisation and the shift from modernity to late modernity. At the heart of these changes is the knowledge economy. Work in the knowledge economy operates quite differently than in the industrial economy in that it is highly dependent on communication and language. This book considers how language and culture are relevant to the practices of the knowledge economy while also considering how the broader changes obliges us to reconsider the nature of language.

This book analyzes the different topics which highlight the relevance of communication within markets. In using and reformulating concepts of Arrow, Commons, Williamson, North, Becker and others, the author shows the hidden implications of these authors for a new approach in economics: communication matters. Markets are systems of allocation, which are governed by communication networks. In Economics, so far, communication processes play a minor role. During the last century, there was a tendency of using ‘communication’ as a tool for reintroducing the diversity of rational actions. Yet, communication is a governance-structure of its own, which cannot be used as a tool, since communication is disturbing the expectations of the economics actors and changing the actor’s preferences as well as their belief-systems. By using examples such as Kenneth Arrow’s economics actor theory and Douglas North’s emphasis on communication being a process of building ‘shared mental models’, this book argues that if communication matters, we have to reinterpret the basics of economic methodology and integrate network-processing and discourse theories.

This book addresses the importance of language in matters of sustainability and incorporating such concerns in implementing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Sustainable language policy must aim to include all groups, including language minorities and marginalized populations, such as refugees and aid recipients, in conditions that allow for their inclusion in making and implementing policy. The book brings together nine studies covering such topics as language and digital resources, sustainable and inclusive multilingual education, national language policy, and language in peacekeeping operations. A final chapter addresses the crucial intersection between sociolinguistics and economics, and the implications of this for development and the SDGs.

This book offers a critical engagement with languages that describe, perpetuate, respond to, and resist economic crises. Unlike many volumes on economic crises that offer economistic explanations of their causes or policy suggestions for their resolution, this collection explores the different types of language used to deal with complex economic phenomena. The chapters in this volume examine a range of connections between language and crises: from the metaphors used historically to describe economic crises, to the languages deployed within periods of crises and economic struggle, to the popular responses thereto (including political manifestations and worker-organized enterprises). Also considered are the implications for democratic participation and gender relations, and the lack of language to express economic experience amongst certain groups. With essays from seven contributors representing five different countries, this collection has global relevance in a time marked by economic volatility and upheaval, and will serve as a valuable resource for those interested in the politics of language, economic discourse and the epistemological complexities of economic crises. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Cultural Economy.

Bernard Maris was killed in Paris on January 7, 2015, during the terrorist attack against the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. He remains one of the most original intellectuals of contemporary France, but despite being a uniquely original heterodox thinker, his international reputation has been compromised by the fact that his writings are inaccessible to non-French speakers. This book remedies that. By providing an overview of Bernard Maris’ life and intellectual trajectory as well as an English translation of an anthology of his most relevant writings, this volume provides the international audience – for the first time ever – the chance to know and understand the contribution of this major heterodox economist. An outstanding and atypical figure in economic thought and a virulent critic of mainstream dominant economics, he was also an all-round actor and thinker of his time. Through rigorous reasoning, he questioned the notion of well-being, which, he argued, is too often conflated with having more. Enslavement by work, or the endless destructive accumulation of natural wealth, is also inherent to the capitalist system. Probably his most original contribution is his epistemological reflection on the very nature of economics and his appraisal of this discipline as a form of rhetoric. This book will be of great interest to readers in heterodox economics, economic methodology, epistemology, and French literature and culture more broadly.

Since the 1970s there has been a broad and vital reinterpretation of the nature of literary texts, a move away from formalism to a sense of literature as an aspect of social, economic, political, and cultural history. While the earliest New Historicist work was criticized for a narrow and anecdotal view of history, it also served as an important stimulus for post-structuralist, feminist, Marxist, and psychoanalytical work, which in turn has increasingly informed and redirected it. Recent writing on the nature of representation, the historical construction of gender and of the concept of identity itself, on theatre as a political and economic phenomenon, and on the ideologies of art generally, reveals the breadth of the field. Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture is designed to offer historically oriented studies of Renaissance literature and theatre which make use of the insights afforded by theoretical perspectives. The view of history envisioned is above all a view of our history, a reading of the Renaissance for and from our own time. Book jacket.