Linguapax
Economics and languages: how language management influences economic performance.
In the current global economy there is an ever increasing need to deal with different contexts in different languages. Multilingualism is therefore a basic skill which contributes to value creation, thus improving economic performance.
The study Are Catalan businesses multilingual enough? shows how language management is associated with successful export performance though four aspects: having a language strategy, appointing native speakers, recruiting staff with language skills and using translators and interpreters.
The study, made by a team involving civil, political and economic organizations, is also available online here.
The new book The Economics of the Multilingual Workplace is a path-breaking study of the economics of multilingualism at work, proposing a systematic approach to the identification and measurement of the ways in which language skills and economic performance are related.
Authors: François Grin, University of Geneva, Switzerland, Claudio Sfreddo, University of Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland, and François Vaillancourt, University of Montreal, Canada.
More information
More information about The Economics of the Multilingual Workplace
Using the instruments of economic investigation, but also explicitly relating the analysis to the approaches to multilingualism at work developed in the language sciences, this interdisciplinary book proposes a systematic, step-by-step exploration of the issue. Starting from a general identification of the linkages between multilingualism and processes of value creation, it reviews the contributions of linguistics and economics before developing a new economic model of production in which language is taken into account. Testing of the model using data from two countries provides quantitative estimations of the influence of mul-tilingualism on economic processes, showing that foreign language skills can make a considerable contribution to a country's GDP. These findings have significant implications for language policy and suggest strategies helping language planners to harness market forces for increased effectiveness