Linguistic Diversity in India’s Polity and Economy

This chapter examines the linguistic dimension of the tension between India’s democratic politics and its liberalized economy. I argue that there is a divergence between languages used in the polity and languages used in the economy. In the polity, characterized by a semblance of empowerment through the electoral participation of the weaker sections of society, vernacular languages predominate. In contrast, the language of the economy in India, particularly since economic liberalization in 1991, tends to be English. It is in the economy that India’s class and caste chasm manifests itself linguistically: between the English-speaking elite and the vernacular-speaking masses. While the noted Indian economist, Deepak Nayyar, warns of an impending clash between the democratically empowered masses and the economically privileged elite, I suggest that in terms of language use India’s robust democracy may well trump market forces. And while linguists have warned that English as the language of the globalized marketplace can have dire consequences for linguistic diversity, I argue that India’s linguistic diversity, at least in terms of its major regional languages, remains impressive. In the case of India, I conclude, the spread of the language of globalization, English, as the language of the economy, is mediated by the languages used in India’s vibrant democracy.

Languages and National Identity in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Multilevel Approach

This chapter contributes to the recent strand of the empirical political and economic literature that attempts to reveal the determinants of national identification in Sub-Saharan Africa. Although previous survey-based studies provide evidence that the socio-economic characteristics of individuals, the properties of ethnic groups they belong to, and certain country-level variables influence the probability of having positive attitudes toward the ethnic group or the nation, the role of languages has not been studied in this context yet. Inspired by findings of psycholinguistics and related disciplines, we utilize the fourth round of the Afrobarometer Project (surveyed in 2008 and 2009) to conduct analysis on the possible positive relationship between language knowledge and identification in national versus ethnic terms. We introduce two language-related explanatory variables. First, the Index of Communication Potential (ICP) reflects the probability that an individual can communicate with another randomly selected person within the society relying on commonly spoken languages. Second, we take into account the number of spoken languages in one’s repertoire. The multilevel models show that although speaking more than two languages increases the chance of identifying in national compared to ethnic terms, the ICP is not significant in this sense on the whole sample. But, when we consider the nationality of the former colonizers, the ICP exhibits positive relationship with national identification on the sub-sample of the former French colonies.

Fifty Years of Economics in Language Policy: Critical Assessment and Priorities

This chapter offers a broad-based overview of language economics. Rather than assuming that the field can be characterized derivatively from the observation of “what economists do” when they talk about language, it proposes an analytical definition of language economics, in order to arrive at a theory-based typology of research. This results in a mental map of language economics, highlighting its connections with language policy. Since the first goal of this chapter is to provide orientation in language economics, it aims to be exhaustive in its identification of research directions but it does not discuss the contents of the latter in detail. I then focus on the application of language economics to the selection, design and evaluation of language policy and planning (LPP), emphasizing the need for economic analysis to embody sociolinguistic knowledge as a condition for practical relevance. This chapter also shows that reciprocally, sociolinguistic research, particularly when it is concerned with policy questions, significantly benefits from taking economic dimensions into account, since most LPP issues raise matters of efficiency and fairness that economics is comparatively well-equipped to address. In the closing section, four major research directions are identified as priorities for the future development of language economics.

Economic Theory and Minority Language

We seek to understand the strategic use bilinguals make of a minority language. We argue that bilinguals have linguistic preferences and face both linguistic coordination and communication optimization tasks. Further, we take into account that anonymous interactions are fairly frequent in present modern multilingual societies, making the linguistic type (bilingual or monolingual) private knowledge. To reach fast language coordination smoothness and communication effectiveness, bilinguals build linguistic conventions. The emergence of those conventions are shaped by the economizing laws and principles of least effort in human communication, politeness strategies, and other elements, all combined in a context of language contact. We show how the strategy hide your linguistic type may become popular among the bilinguals, and thus reduce the use of the minority language.

Economic Value of Reciprocal Bilingualism

Some bilingual societies exhibit a distribution of language skills that cannot be explained by economic theories that portray languages as pure communication devices. Such distribution of skills are typically the result of public policies that promote bilingualism among members of both speech communities (reciprocal bilingualism). In this paper I argue that these policies are likely to increase social welfare by diminishing economic and social segmentation between the two communities. However, these gains tend to be unequally distributed over the two communities. As a result, in a large range of circumstances these policies might not draw sufficient support. The model is built upon the communicative value of languages, but also emphasizes the role of linguistic preferences in the behavior of bilingual individuals.

Cultural Integration and Export Variety Overlap across Countries

This chapter assesses the role of a larger degree of common language use between the populations of two countries on the so-called extensive product margin of trade. We focus on the overlap of products exported or imported between any pair of countries. The results suggest that the effect of varying aspects of sharing a common language on the variety overlap is both positive and important. The effect of sharing a common spoken language exceeds the one of common native language, implying that a larger overlap in language proficiency is quantitatively more important than a higher cultural proximity.

English on the Rise: Access and Resources in Internationalization

The data presented in this chapter highlight the Indonesian state’s influence on citizens’ access to education as it implements policies that simultaneously aim to secure a national identity through enforcing Indonesian as medium of instruction in public schools and categorizing English as a Foreign Language. The state is in a double bind, and its policies are ineffective: in globalization, English cannot be avoided, but the state lacks the resources needed to meet internationalized standards with language and curriculum content appropriate to the needs of Indonesia’s student populations and the skills of its teachers. Because of these dynamics, the English language is accessed mostly by those who already have access to mobility, wealth, and “international standard” educations. The national categorization of English as a Foreign Language combined with a contradictory rush to get citizens English alone by increasing its distribution throughout educational curricula, promises nothing more than to reinforce levels of English fluency as indicators of individuals’ access to or marginalization from wealth and state-distributed educations. Beliefs that English alone will earn the Indonesian state and its citizens prosperous positions in national and global society act to conflate the English language with the other important material factors alongside which this symbol of wealth “hitchhikes” (Mendoza-Denton, 2011), and this has led to rushed and ineffective policy implementation on many levels.

Linguistic Diversity, Standardization, and Disenfranchisement: Measurement and Consequences

In this chapter we examine the notion of linguistic and other types of societal diversity that have become an important factor in evaluating economic, political and societal progress. While most of the existing research on the measurement of diversity has been focused either on the number and size of different groups, this approach fails to take into account the degree of their distinctiveness. Thus, it is important to incorporate the notion of distances or dissimilarity between groups which should help resolving the difficult group identification problem. We discuss various ways of measuring similarity between groups, the wide range of fractionalization and polarization indices and their impact (positive or negative) on various economic and political outcomes. To mitigate the negative impact of linguistic fractionalization, societies has often chosen to standardize by reducing the number of official languages. The numerous examples of such standardization policies (in the Russian Empire, India, Sri Lanka, among many others, including the European Union) lead to the feeling of disenfranchisement experienced by some population groups, and often end up failing. The search for a compromise between efficiency and the sentiment of being disenfranchised represents a serious challenge for any multi-lingual country or union; we examine this problem in the context of the European Union for which good data are available.

Globalization, Language(s), and Mobility

This paper explores the arguments offered in support of a new form of linguistic cosmopolitanism, within which English as the current world language inevitably plays a central/pivotal role. These arguments are illustrated via discussion of the work of three prominent political theorists, Abram de Swaan, Philippe Van Parijs and Daniele Archibugi, all of whom advocate this broad position. The conclusions drawn from their work are demonstrably apparent. In our increasingly globalized world, nation-states must incorporate English as the language of wider international connectedness and trade in a privileged diglossic relation to local languages. For individuals, English must either be a replacing language or, at the least, a key language in any individual’s bi/multilingual repertoire. At both the collective (state) and individual levels, the almost de rigueur assumption is that English is crucial for wider social and economic mobility. This paper problematizes this increasingly widespread and influential position by highlighting the following key limitations therein: the failure to address issues of power and inequality; the monolithic construction of English; the over-elaboration of the links between language and mobility; the deleterious implications for education; and the wider negative juxtaposition of supposedly local and global linguistic identities upon which these arguments are invariably based.

English as the Lingua franca and the Economic Value of Other Languages: The Case of the Language of Work in the Montreal Labor Market

An important feature of Canada is that it has two official languages, English and French, and that one of them, English, is also the international lingua franca. This situation may have particular policy implications. Within Canada, the Montreal metropolitan area presents an interesting case in point: it has a majority of native French speakers, an important minority of native English speakers, and many immigrants from various linguistic backgrounds who try to make their way into the labor market. Using confidential micro-data from the 2006 Canadian Census, this chapter investigates the determinants and the economic values of the use of different languages at work in Montreal. Workers are divided into three groups: French, English and Other mother tongues, and indices are defined for the use of French, English, and Other languages at work. It is found that the use of English at work by non-English native speakers is positively related to the education level of the workers, while there is no such relationship for the use of French by native English speakers. The returns to using at work a language that is different from one’s mother tongue are analyzed with ordinary least squares and instrumental variables regressions. For the English mother tongue group, using French at work has little or no reward, while using English at work pays a lot for the French mother tongue group. For the Other mother tongues group, there is a high payoff to using an official language at work, especially English. This situation is not due to the inferior economic status of the native French speakers; it is due to the fact that English is the international lingua franca. The policy implications of the above results are discussed.