Book contents
- Bridging Linguistics and Economics
- Bridging Linguistics and Economics
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Do Linguists Need Economics and Economists Linguistics?
- 2 Economists Do Need Linguists
- 3 The Invisibility of Linguistic Diversity Online
- 4 Evaluating Language Policy and Planning
- 5 The Economics of Language Diversity and Language Resilience in the Balkans
- 6 Determinants of Bilingualism among Children
- 7 Economy and Language in Africa
- 8 The Unequal Exchange of Texts in the World Language System
- 9 Language Economics and Language Rights
- Author Index
- Subject Index
- References
8 - The Unequal Exchange of Texts in the World Language System
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 March 2020
Book contents
- Bridging Linguistics and Economics
- Bridging Linguistics and Economics
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Do Linguists Need Economics and Economists Linguistics?
- 2 Economists Do Need Linguists
- 3 The Invisibility of Linguistic Diversity Online
- 4 Evaluating Language Policy and Planning
- 5 The Economics of Language Diversity and Language Resilience in the Balkans
- 6 Determinants of Bilingualism among Children
- 7 Economy and Language in Africa
- 8 The Unequal Exchange of Texts in the World Language System
- 9 Language Economics and Language Rights
- Author Index
- Subject Index
- References
Summary
What kind of economic goods are languages? They are “hypercollective” goods: the more people use them, the greater their use value to all users. People prefer to learn languages with more speakers and will abandon languages which are losing speakers. Culture, defined as the sum total of all texts recorded in a given language, becomes inaccessible if that language goes extinct. The conservation of language and culture thus raises dilemmas of collective action. The world’s thousands of language groups are linked by multilingual speakers. These links constitute a global language system. Exchange of texts between the major and minor language groups in this system proceeds on highly unequal terms.
Keywords
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- Information
- Bridging Linguistics and Economics , pp. 203 - 223Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020
References
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