| The economics is a subject that studies the choice behaviors of human being. As the choice behaviors have been involved, they can't be separated with the interaction between human beings. And the intermediary of interaction is the language, like we use currency to carry out market exchange. However, the economists have few studies on languages. In other words they are too familiar with languages to ignore them. The thesis mainly analyzes languages and verbal behaviours through methods and tools of economical science. Using methods of economical science to study languages is Economics of Language, which is quite unknown with short history and little literature. Nevertheless, the study on this is very important. As Weisen said in 2001, that language is one main dimension that makes a man. So if you don't understand a language and get to know its role in the formation of human society and market operation, you will not have a good understanding of the interior order and its changes of the human economic world. Although as the leading edge of the theoretical economics analysis, Economics of Language has developed, the economics academy, especially the language economists still have little knowledge of its research programs. In other words, it is not unified and the research on the theme is not profound. As a result, it's necessary to figure out its theoretical frame and elaborate its research meaning and practical value, which can make the development and spread of the language economics more energetic to be a really important branch subject of economics.The thesis starts from the definition of the Economics of Language, explaining its concept and the ideas of early economics. Then it bases on different research purposes to analyze the reasons to study languages and several research themes of language economics. We think that language economics is a branch subject of economics that studies how languages form and evolve, how their development affects human behaviors and what's the relation among languages, human language behaviors, language policies and human capital, jobs, the wage and income distribution. The statement aims to elaborate the definition of languages subject. Home and abroad there are some researches on subject definition like Grin(2003) and Weiguo Zhang (2008); the thesis is an expansion based on the predecessors'research. The thesis believes that Economics of Language at least includes two aspects. On the one hand, the impact that languages has on the economic activities like a person's language ability will influence his/her job hunting and the language negotiation skills influence the success of a trade; on the other hand, the impact the economic activities has on languages like the disciplines between economic development and language evolution, such as the relationship between the economic development and the rules of the language evolution The first aspect can be called as the economic analysis of language behaviors while the second one focuses on the research of the language itself. The research on both sides is economic and analytical.According to this subject definition, we organize the Economics of Language documents systematically and make comments on them. We believe that it's more mature to do research that how languages affect economic activities using the human capital theory and education economics theory. And lots of documents have testified the human capital characteristic of languages. The thesis mainly focuses on the research on the second aspect of language economics, the relations between economic activities and languages, which belongs to the basic theoretical research. We sum up three topics:(1) Study its origin from hapening theory, languages and words should be separated. Languages are evolving while words are built. (2) There is a demarcation between the information carries and spreading tools and culture symbol function. Languages as the information carrier and culture symbol have different evolution ways:as the first one, they are turning to be similar and simple, while as the second one, they shows diversity or try hard to be diversified. (3) The safety of languages is determined by the powerfulness and safety of the relevant countries and nations but not the safety of native languages. Proposing the three topics makes great point to expanding Economics of Language theory. In the thesis, the main topic is testified and researched by cases and further enriches Economics of Language theory.So the languages are turning to be similar and simple, should they be protected? The thesis also focuses on the economic analysis of language protection. This thesis divides language protection into two parts:the first one is how to make one's mother tongue to be a strong language; the second one is to protect the endangered languages. We quoted and expanded the theory of language Q value, which means the social intercourse potential of languages (equals the centre multiplies the attractiveness, higher Q value meaning higher social intercourse potential) using the Q value theory to do case research reaches to the below conclusions:(1) The language Q value determines one's language choice. The language with higher Q value is more popular when one chooses from two languages. (2)Choosing official language should be based on its Q value. When a country wants to carry out a language policy, it usually chooses a language with higher Q value as its official language. In addition, if you want to develop an official language of a country, the Q value of this language should be improved, which, to some extent, protect the national language. (3) Languages are turning to the same and simple, but some nearly distinct languages should be protected. We quoted the language Q value model into the Grin model to form an ideal model, considering that protecting the language is possible and that if you change the language attitude of the nearly distinct languages, you can protect them.The economic analysis to language protection is also one of the important parts in economic language theory, which can explain the phenomena and of great practicability and social benefits.The economic methods we use are as follows:(1) the methodology of induction and deduction (2) data description, statistical analysis and methodology of econometrics (3) analytical methods of Cost and Benefit (4) case researches.The concepts we use are as follows:(1) language economics (2) language evolution (3) language attitude (4) the language social intercourse value that is the Q value of languages. As language economics is a new branch subject of economics, some concepts are still not very mature. To ensure the preciseness of this essay, we borrowed some linguistic concepts or definition.The creation of this essay is as follows:(1) creation in research field:Economics of Language is a field being worth researching. It has about three to four decades' history abroad and seldom people at home country has involved. The thesis tries to build the frame of language economics which dedicates to the development of language economics. (2) It defines the subject of language economics and summarizes the development of existing language economics theory. (3) Three topics have been proposed towards languages and testified to enrich the language economics. (4) The thesis using the Q value analyzes economically the language plan and provides analytical frame for personal language choice, national linguistic regulations and protection of nearly extinct languages. All these are of great practical values. A certain extent, we build the language economics' frame by economic analysis of languages and language behaviors and provide good thoughts and methods tools for the future scholars.To complete the above tasks, the thesis is divided to seven chapters.The first chapter introduction, describing the theory and aplication values, research purpose and economic methods used in the thesis, creation and deficiency.The second chapter defines the subject of Economics of Language. In this chapter, we propose the definition of Economics of Language and explain why economists want to do researches on it based on research purposes and how to do research on languages. The definition is developed according to the definition about language economics of Weiguo ZhangThe third chapter sorts out some relevant documents. In this section, the thesis focuses on the economic thinking of language itself and the economic analysis of language behaviors. By reading lots of documents, it carries out the transition from the economic thinking of language to the relation between languages and economic activities. The early economists mainly considered the language itself and speculated reasonably its origin and evolution disciplines. But later, as the introduction of measurement game theory, the economists testified the relations between languages and economic activities. At last, Weiguo Zhang summed up that languages are a topic that includes human capital\ public products and regulations.By commenting on the previous research, the theory using the economic activities as the research materials to state the role of the language is relatively mature. However, the theory using the languages activities states how the economic development influence the language evolution is immature.The fourth chapter summarizes several topics from languages themselves and combines linguistics and econometrics to testify the topics. The early economists usually speculated the thinking about languages, so it still is worth researching. In this chapter, we propose three topics about language origin, evolution and extinction, which enrich the language economics and expand the language economic theory.The fifth chapter analyzes the Q value and the promotion of the mother tongue. So the languages are turning to be similar and simple, should they be protected? We think the protection is divided into the protection of the mother tongue and the endangered language. Using the Q value as measuring the result of the protection of the languages. We also make use of the Q value to study the case about the languages of the EU.The sixth chapter states the language Q value and the protection of endangered languages:Economics of Language model.We put Q value model into the Grin model to do the research of the protection of the endangered languages.This paper mainly explains the following questions (1) Reviewing, comparing the theory of language convergence and language protection for endangered languages provides the theory basis for our protection model (2) The bigger the language Q value is, the stronger the vitality is. We invest more time into this language.The seventh chapter discusses the prospect of language economics. This chapter sums up the whole essay and describes the deficiency and possible research room. Economics of Language as interdisciplinary subject should pay attention to discipline fusion; case studies and questionnaire. In this chapter, we also discuss China's current economic popular topic:English booming and the reforming of the English education.
|
PDF Full Text Request