Language As Commodity: Global Structures, Local Marketplaces

Description

Throughout human history, languages have been in competition with each other. As the world becomes more globalized, this trend increases. It affects the decision-making of those in positions of power and determines macro language policies and planning. Often decisions about language (or dialects or language variety) are related to usefulness - defined in terms of their pragmatic and commercial currency or their value as symbols of socio-cultural identity. Languages can be modes of entry into coveted social hierarchies or strongholds of religious, historical, technological and political power bases. Languages are seen now as commodities that carry different values in an era of globalization. This volume engages with language policies and positions in relation to the roles and functions these languages adopt. It examines the 'value' of languages, defined in terms of the power they have in the global marketplace as much as within the complex matrices of the local socio-politics. These valuations strongly underpin the various motivations that influence policy-making decisions, and in turn, these motivations create the tensions that characterize many language-related issues; tensions that arise when languages become commodified.

Rani Rubdy is an independent researcher. Peter Tan is at the Department of English Language and Literature at the National University of Singapore, Singapore.

Mention -Book News, February 2009 The link between discourse, globalization and language policies and practices is one that this book introduces us to in a comprehensive way, and it is hoped that more volumes on this area of research will be seen in the future. * .Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2009 * ...every chapter challenges and informs our thinking and understanding of language planning and policy, language commodification, globalisation and neoliberalism and, inevitably, the imposition of English around the world. * New Zealand Studies in Applied Linguistics * An excellent source for case studies... and as a reference work for students and instructors in the social sciences. We will use it in our classes. * Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development * In the eyes of this reviewer, [Language as Commodity] certainly can be recommended to researchers and students interested in the linguistic dimensions of globalization both for the ample data it provides and the complementary fashion in which it deals with it. * Journal of Multicultural Discourses *