语言的经济学分析:一个综述

The Economics of Language:A Survey

本文对语言经济学这门新兴交叉学科的产生与兴起、研究现状及其学科定位等进行了总结和评述。语言经济学孕育于民族主义问题之中,发端于加拿大的官方语言问题,它的兴起成就于人力资本理论和教育经济学。语言经济学有广义与狭义之分。广义上,语言经济学采用经济学的理论、方法及工具,把语言和言语行为当作普遍存在的社会和经济现象来加以研究;狭义上,语言与劳动收入关系研究、语言政策与语言规划的经济学分析、语言动态发展的经济学分析以及博弈论在语言学中的应用等构成了当前语言经济学研究的主要内容。伴随着经济的全球化,语言经济学的重要性正在提升,一方面,语言经济学为语言学的相关研究提供了新的视角和思路,带来新的分析工具;另一方面,它也正在为经济学自身提供新的研究话题。

This paper reviews the emergence, current situation, and the scope of study of the economics of language. The economics of language came into being with Canadian official problems, and its development owed much to the human capital theory and educational economics. There are two kinds of economics of language, which can be differentiated from broad sense and narrow sense. In a broad sense, economics of language studies language and speech as common social and economic phenomenon by using economic theories, methods and tools; In a narrow sense,it can be divided into several study fields such as language and earnings, economic analysis of language planning,language dynamics, and game -theoretical approach to language issues, etc. With the globalization of economy, the situation of the economics of language is on the rise. For one thing, it provides linguistic studies new thinking and points of views, and new analytical tools as well; For another,it is also providing new study topics to economics itself.