Globalization, the new economy, and the commodification of language and identity

Abstract

The globalized new economy is bound up with transformations of language and identity in many dierent ways (cf., e.g. Bauman 1997;Castells 2000;Giddens 1990). These include emerging tensions between State-based and corporate identities and language practices, between local, national and supra-national identities and language practices, and between hybridity and uniformity. Ethnolinguistic minorities provide a particularly revealing window into these processes. In this paper, I explore ways in which the globalized new economy has resulted in the commodi®cation of language and identity, sometimes separately, sometimes together. The paper is based on recent ethnographic, sociolinguistic research in francophone areas of Canada.

Russian Language in Northern Norway: Historical, Economic and Cultural Ties

“…Владение востребованным языком помогает привлекать покупателей и расширять границы бизнеса (Duchêne & Heller 2012). Другими словами, в современном мире язык -это товар (Heller 2003;Castells 2000;De Swaan 2001;Duchêne 2009). Владение тем или иным языком стало новым двигателем торговли, коммерческой стратегией, так как обращение к кли-енту на его родном языке способствует приобретению дополнительного капитала.…”

“…По мнению исследователей, среднестатистический покупатель предпочитает сервис, предложенный на родном языке (Heller 2003;Castells 2000;De Swaan 2001). Т.е.…”

Shaping Participation in Vocational Training Interactions: The Case of Schisming

“…Such a reinforcement of social requirements related to literacy skills has sometimes been referred to as a "linguistic turn" by sociolinguists (Boutet 2008;Heller 2003;Holmes and Stubbe 2003), who have stressed and described the growing importance of semiotic means in contemporary workplaces. From there, becoming a skilled worker requires not only the mastery of speci c knowledge and skills but also an ability to perform speech acts in a certain way, to respond to humor adequately, to engage in small talk in a suitable manner, and to use speci c contextualization cues in a way that is relevant to speci c professions.…”

English-Medium Instruction in European Higher Education

“…The quotation marks in "logic", "natural" and "obviously" indicate the critical stance taken by the authors in relation to these terms, and I believe it is the duty of LPP research to contribute to this critical view as suggested by . Central in this debate is the notion of the commodification of language and identity in the 'new economy' (Heller 2003, Heller andDuchêne 2012). In 'late-modern' societies, language has become a key element in the economic production, increasingly becoming both the means (how) and ends (what) to "generating new forms of surplus value" (Duchêne and Heller 2012: 326).…”