The Economics of Bilingualism

Abstract

The economics of bilingualism belongs to the range of topics investigated in language economics. Language economics is a marginal a field of specialization that has developed on the edges of the discipline of economics. It has progressively been gaining recognition since the first contributions of economists to the study of language issues in the 1960s. What used to be, at the outset, a relatively disconnected collection of papers, each with a specific focus, has matured into a more integrated perspective on the mutual influences between economic and linguistic processes, with a total number of contributions that can now be estimated at around 500. Language economics makes specific contributions to the public debate on the management of linguistic and cultural diversity. Its main areas of application, in language policy and planning, include minority language protection, language in education (as a subject and as a medium of instruction), with an emphasis on foreign language teaching, immigrants’ integration in their host societies, and language use in multilingual private and public-sector organizations. For economic analysis to be truly helpful in its treatment of such issues, however, it must display interdisciplinary openness in order to accommodate the necessary factual knowledge supplied by other disciplines.

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