The Commodification of Language
- 21 October 2010
- journal article
- Published by Annual Reviews in Annual Review of Anthropology
- Vol. 39 (1), 101-114
- https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.012809.104951
Abstract
Although language can always be analyzed as a commodity, its salience as a resource with exchange value has increased with the growing importance of language in the globalized new economy under the political economic conditions of late capitalism. This review summarizes how and in which ways those conditions have a commodifying effect on language and focuses on contemporary tensions between ideologies and practices of language in the shift from modernity to late modernity. It describes some of these tensions in key sites: tourism, marketing, language teaching, translation, communications (especially call centers), and performance art.Keywords
This publication has 66 references indexed in Scilit:
- The Political Economy of Texts: A Case Study in the Structuration of TourismSociolinguistic Studies, 2010
- Language ideology, identity and the commodification of language in the call centers of PakistanLanguage in Society, 2009
- Bilingual literacy in and for working lives on the land: case studies of young Welsh speakers in North WalesInternational Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2009
- Sharing culture or selling out? Developing the commodified persona in the heritage industryAmerican Ethnologist, 2008
- Internationalising Japan: Nihonjinron and the Intercultural in Japanese Language-in-education PolicyJournal of Multicultural Discourses, 2007
- Code switching and the globalisation of popular music: The case of North African rai and rapmult, 2006
- Neoliberalism and Minority-Language Planning in the Highlands and Islands of ScotlandInternational Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2005
- Sociolinguistic authenticitiesJournal of Sociolinguistics, 2003
- Language and Political EconomyAnnual Review of Anthropology, 1989
- when talk isn't cheap: language and political economyAmerican Ethnologist, 1989