29.924, Review: Anthro Ling; General Ling; Socioling: Hogan-Brun (2017)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-29-924. Tue Feb 27 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.924, Review: Anthro Ling; General Ling; Socioling: Hogan-Brun (2017)

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Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2018 14:13:25
From: Sofia Rüdiger [sofia.ruediger at uni-bayreuth.de]
Subject: Linguanomics

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/28/28-987.html

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.





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