LINGUIST List 29.924
Tue Feb 27 2018
Review: Anthro Ling; General Ling; Socioling: Hogan-Brun (2017)
Editor for this issue: Clare Harshey <clarelinguistlist.org>
Date: 15-Jun-2017
From: Sofia Rüdiger <sofia.ruediger
uni-bayreuth.de>
Subject: Linguanomics
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AUTHOR: Gabrielle Susanne Hogan-Brun
TITLE: Linguanomics
SUBTITLE: What
is the Market Potential of Multilingualism?
PUBLISHER: Bloomsbury Publishing
(formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group)
YEAR: 2017
REVIEWER: Sofia Rüdiger, Universität Bayreuth
REVIEWS EDITOR: Helen
Aristar-Dry
SUMMARY
“Linguanomics” by Gabrielle Hogan-Brun is a
monograph on the economic aspects of multilingualism. As such it is not only
connected to the field of multilingualism but also language policies. The book is
relatively short (168 pages) and consists of a preface, five chapters, an afterword,
a glossary, the references and an index section.
Linguanomics starts out with
a preface titled “Setting the Scene”: Considering cases such as the London
Metropolitan Police seeking to employ multilingual recruits and the US military
offering additional pay to multilingual officers, Hogan-Brun emphasizes the market
potential of knowing more than one language but also refers to the difficulties
corporations face when making language choices. This short introduction urges the
reader “to make up their own minds about the interconnections of multilingualism and
economics today” (xiii) with the ultimate goal of the book being to provide the
reader with the information necessary to be able to do so.
The first chapter
“Trading across cultures: Then and now” outlines the necessity of multilingualism
for economic purposes by tracing the historical development of trade. From the
ancient Egyptians to present day trade organizations such as the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or the Southeast Asian Nations Free Trade Area (AFTA),
successful communication rested and continues to rest on bilingual (or multilingual)
individuals. Hogan-Brun concentrates in this chapter first on the Middle East and
famous trade routes (e.g. the Silk Route) before moving on to explicate the
connection between trade and power and the influences of mobility (i.e. travel). The
second part of the chapter is devoted to (European) colonialism and the influences
this had on trade and language use. Throughout the chapter, the notion of lingua
francas is explored in detail.
Chapter Two, “Economic aspects of languages
today”, shifts the focus to the present-day situation and considers the economic
factors in official choices of language policies. Canada is a recurring subject to
illustrate the monetary aspects of official language policy (e.g. how much did the
Francization policy in Quebec cost the society and what were the economic gains
attained through this). Hogan-Brun also introduces several perspectives to evaluate
the economic realities of multilingualism within societies (e.g. Grin and
Vaillancourt 1997). Apart from national contexts, language policies of international
organizations (e.g. The United Nations) are also examined and evaluated.
The
third chapter titled “Managing multilingualism” starts with a number of drastic
examples where communication problems in aviation and shipping led to fatal
accidents. This illustrates the costs and risks of miscommunication in multilingual
settings. Hogan-Brun succinctly summarizes the challenges and opportunities of mono-
and multilingualism in societal and business settings before tackling the topic of
language policies adopted in schools and universities. Lastly, she discusses the
relationship between language repertoires and questions of workforce supply and
demand.
Chapter Four shifts to a more individual level by asking “Is
learning another language worth it?” The important factor which comes into play here
is market incentives. Hogan-Brun explains how market forces lead to some languages
being in higher demand than others, which, for example, makes them more valuable in
gaining employment for the individual. Despite the economic and personal gains from
learning another language, language beliefs sometimes block people from doing so.
Hogan-Brun labels these as myths and provides counter-arguments for each of them.
The myths relate to personal dispositions towards language learning (“I am no good
at learning other languages”, p. 92), age-related doubts (“I am too old to learn
another language”, p. 92), fears of language attrition (“I don’t want to lose my own
language”, p. 93) and lack of necessity to learn a new language (“I can get instant
translations anywhere when I need it”, p. 94; “Why bother, since everyone speaks
English anyway”, p. 95). Hogan-Brun dispenses with these myths one-by-one and
follows up with a list of other payoffs connected to language learning (e.g.
cognitive improvements). Furthermore, language learning types and language
proficiency levels are explicated before detailing the influence of knowing another
language on employment prospects.
Chapter 5, “Languages in the marketplace”,
spotlights language management within the workplace before moving on to discuss the
areas of language interpretation services, the language teaching industry and
heritage (language) tourism. The chapter concludes with a look at programming
languages and recent technological advances which influence the market potentials of
languages. The monograph ends with a short afterword in which Hogan-Brun summarizes
the main points of the book.
EVALUATION
Due to its highly accessible
style “Linguanomics” by Gabrielle Hogan-Brun should appeal to a heterogeneous
audience: lay people, policy makers, students and academics are sure to find food
for thought within the pages of the monograph. The author succinctly points out the
various perspectives one can take on the economics of multilingualism and her
descriptions are rich in illustrative examples taken from a diverse range of online
and offline sources. The scope of the book is ambitious and as such it provides a
much needed introduction to the economic issues of multilingualism.
As a
publication not primarily research-focussed, the monograph does not introduce
original research by the author but synthesizes insights from linguistics and
economics in order to survey the relationship between language(s) and economic
aspects (particularly in view of developments such as transnationalism and
globalization). Many of the concepts and arguments introduced in the course of the
book should therefore not come as a surprise to most linguists, especially those
with a previous interest in multilingualism and/or language policy. The strength of
Hogan-Brun’s writing clearly lies in the succinct and non-technical writing style
and the explicit combination of linguistic and economic aspects in her
argumentation.
The overview character of the book as well as the selection of
sources (biased towards the virtual spectrum) makes the book less suitable as a
stand-alone text for linguistic courses. It will, however, be an excellent resource
for additional reading (e.g. in courses on multilingualism, language policies,
language planning, etc.), providing great starting points for classroom discussion
and activities (though the monograph is not written as a textbook and does not
include discussion questions or activities). Due to its shortness and the above
mentioned accessible writing style, the monograph will surely be appreciated by
students and lecturers alike and could also be used in non-linguistic courses (e.g.
in business studies) with only a minimum or even no introduction to linguistic
concepts as such. The few concepts or terms which could be problematic for
non-linguists, such as ‘pidgin’, ‘creole’ or ‘literacy’ are explained in the
included glossary which also contains some definitions of economic concepts for
those readers less familiar with basic business-related terminology (e.g. ‘return on
investment’, ‘supply and demand’ or ‘human capital’).
A drawback of the
monograph is its referencing format. All references are given as endnotes which
makes following up on particular references rather tedious. Furthermore, the heavy
reliance on internet sources (which is also one of the strong points of the
monograph as they provide rich illustrative examples) means that many of the sources
are harder to trace (a link which promises to lead to a list of the referenced
online sources on the publisher’s website is unfortunately already out of date).
Additionally, no dates of access are provided for the websites used.
The
reference selection also seems to be skewed towards the online side and from a
linguistic point of view more references to established linguistic work would have
been very welcome. Some adequate additions to the book, for example, would have been
Jenkins (2014) on the role of English as a lingua franca in the international
university, literature on English (or other languages) used as a lingua franca in
general, studies from the field of cross- and intercultural communication, previous
writing on the connection between language and economics (e.g. Bruthiaux 2003,
2008), etc. It is also somewhat surprising to find no reference to the classical
notion of the linguistic marketplace (see Sankoff and Laberge 1978). This is of
course partly necessitated by the overview character of the book which packs an
applaudable amount of information into very limited space.
Even though the
targeted audience appears to be of a rather general and lay nature, more references
to documented and peer-reviewed scientific research would have strengthened the
argumentation provided in the book considerably. In the above mentioned dispensation
of language learning myths in Chapter 4, for example, Hogan-Brun’s (generally
well-founded) rebuttal of age-related doubts or fears of native language attrition
remains completely unsupported by scientific evidence, leaving the established
fields of first (L1) and second language (L2) acquisition studies as well as
psycholinguistic insights into L1 and L2 acquisition and use unmentioned.
Altogether,
“Linguanomics” is a valuable addition to the literature on multilingualism,
illuminating an aspect of the field which needs to be addressed further in
linguistic research. The non-technical writing style as well as the selection of
content and references which contribute to the overview character of the work make
the monograph particularly well suited for lay audiences who want to come to terms
with the role of multilingualism in times of global mobilities. For the academic
audience, both in the field of linguistics and economics, the monograph will
contribute both interesting case studies and thought-provoking impulses.
REFERENCES
Bruthiaux,
Paul. 2008. “Language Education, Economic Development and Participation in the
Greater Mekong Subregion.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and
Bilingualism 11(2): 134-148.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Sofia Rüdiger
is a research assistant at the English Linguistics department of the University of
Bayreuth in Germany where she recently completed a PhD thesis on the use of
morpho-syntactic patterns by Korean speakers of English. She holds an M.A. in
Intercultural Anglophone Studies and her main research interests are World
Englishes, ELF, corpus linguistics and computer-mediated communication.
Page Updated: 27-Feb-2018