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The Economics of Multilingualism: Overview and Analytical Framework

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 October 2009

François Grin  and
François Vaillancourt
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Extract

The purpose of this paper is to introduce noneconomists to the economics of multilingualism. This area of research is relatively little known among economists, and until recent years, few of its methods and results had been published in the journals usually read by language specialists, although sociolinguists and applied linguists had for many years been pointing out the importance of economic dimensions in their research field. It is therefore useful to begin with a brief review of the literature which, owing to limitations of space, does not report specific results, but lists the major issues that have been examined to date. More extensive surveys are available in Vaillancourt (1985a) and Grin (1994c; 1996e).

Type
Foundations of Multilingualism
Information
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics , Volume 17 , March 1997 , pp. 43 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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