BOOK REVIEW

Francois Grin, Claudio Sfreddo and FrancoisVaillancourt: The Economics of the MultilingualWorkplace

Routledge, New York, London, 2010, xiv + 228 pp, Hb $128,ISBN 978-0-415-80018-1

Bjorn Jernudd

Received: 10 January 2012 / Accepted: 12 January 2012 / Published online: 24 January 2012

� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

This book decisively marks the coming into its own of a discipline of language

economics. It presents a logical and intuitive argument ‘‘using plain English’’ (p. 4),

pedagogically explaining economics concepts and relegating technical material to

an appendix. The authors ground their exploration in the variables of the economic

theory of production, that is, of cost, price and profit in the relationship between

input and output, and link ‘‘indicators of multilingualism’’ to the ‘‘economic

performance’’ of firms. Presenting a model that relates the linguistic attributes of the

workforce, suppliers and markets on the one hand to production, internal

communication and external communication on the other, they show how language

choices at various points of the production process form part of a combination of

factors that can maximize profit for firms.

Following an introductory chapter that sets the scene, the book reviews literature

that appears to deal with the economics of the firm but concludes that these studies

do not address the creation of value, specifically not ‘‘the economic effects arising

from given patterns of foreign language use’’ (p. 45); they are, however, useful in

providing a reality check on the authors’ assumptions.

An interesting discussion of the wage premium resulting from workers’

knowledge and presumed use of foreign languages introduces chapter 4. Some

readers may be somewhat skeptical about the extent to which workers’ earnings

reflect their share of value creation in firms. It is argued, however, that economists

must see it that way in order to retain faith in marginal value as the ultimate

equalizer. Models assume that firms will hire more workers until it will cost the firm

more to hire an additional worker than what the firm will earn from this addition.

The assumption is of course that the employees’ contribution to creating value for

the firm is primarily mirrored by their wages, to the balancing point of equal value

being added—which is the marginal productivity of labor. The authors make their

B. Jernudd (&)

Washington, DC, USA

e-mail: bjorn@jernudd.com

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Lang Policy (2012) 11:287–289

DOI 10.1007/s10993-012-9231-1

case by using data from Quebec and Switzerland, taking into account the effect of

varying degrees (levels) of foreign language skills on earnings (pp. 60–68). They

show that competence-related data may not be as good a measure as data concerning

actual language use. A quantitative study of earnings differentials amongst Turkish

immigrants to Switzerland, which showed no significant wage reward, is compared

with a qualitative study of recorded adjustments in favor of the use of Turkish,

which highlighted the benefits for employees and the firm (p. 71).

Throughout the book, the authors discuss how to obtain useful data and how to

input such data into the model advocated (see especially chapter 6 on ‘‘econometric

estimation’’). In short, data concerning an individual worker’s level of competence

in another language is added to the ‘‘stock’’ of ‘‘linguistically-marked, labor-related

input’’ (p. 96). But would not measurement of the ‘‘flow’’ of language use, ‘‘whether

passive or active, written or oral’’, provide a better means of capturing the

contribution to value creation associated with the use of a particular language in the

production process? The authors declare that ‘‘this is probably true’’ (p. 97), but

faced with the near practical impossibility of obtaining such data, one is forced to

rely on data bases that offer ‘‘stock’’ data.

Reflecting on future research, the authors favor linguistic audits to generate data

on the contribution of language use in production processes. They believe in well-

designed and well-administered questionnaires. They also rightly emphasize the

need to ask respondents ‘‘whether their language skills are adequate or not’’

(p. 133). Employees are sentient beings who manage their language resources and

their discourses. The reviewer agrees that it is worth exploring how data can be

generated from asking respondents in interviews and questionnaires about their

observations concerning deviations in discourse, evaluating these as adequate or

not, and adjusting the inadequacies in discourse and in anticipation of future

discourse (Nekvapil and Nekula 2006; Nekvapil and Sherman 2009).

The language economics disciplinary heart of the book is the section titled ‘‘The

production model revisited’’ (pp. 86–90). The model assumes profit maximization,

ceteris paribus and perfect competition. The ‘‘producer’s problem’’, and also the

researcher’s computational problem, is maximization of the profit function. The

profit function is ‘‘defined as the value of sales, minus total cost, and sales […] are

the product of output by its price’’ (p. 89). A producer can choose quantity of output

and number of production factors. The model specifies monolingual and bilingual

production factors, and output is a function of these factors and of capital.

Chapter 7 presents empirical results. The finding that language use adds value is

not surprising. The authors’ accomplishment lies in measuring the relative

contributions of language use to production. Their model allows them to generate

elasticities by (stock of) language skills and by economic sector that show how

much output changes as a function of varying language skills. Using the Swiss data,

they demonstrate how withdrawing language skills from the production process

causes a major drop in GNP (p. 113).

The remaining chapters raise particular issues, some with policy implications,

and future prospects. One issue is whether employers know to recruit labor with

language skills that optimize company performance. The authors point to Swiss data

that could suggest that employers take foreign language skills for granted, or

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undervalue them. Although possible in individual cases, the authors dismiss these

suggestions and demonstrate by economic simulation that optimal recruitment does

not rely on hiring the best performing linguist, but rather on weighing together the

costs of recruiting and salary award, the future use of alternative language

management routines (e.g., the hiring of translators) as well as ‘‘potential loss from

inadequate F[oreign]-language skills’’ (p. 129).

An issue of policy is whether foreign languages should be taught in general. The

authors aver that the state has a role to play here: if bilinguals earn more than

monolinguals, and since the state is largely responsible for the school system, it

seems prima facie to be good public policy to teach foreign languages, because

every new bilingual contributes more to the economy until earnings equalize. Policy

must not be static because intervention has effects, demand varies and environments

change (pp. 143–144). Policy has meaning as a process that dynamically responds to

changing circumstances.

A theme which motivates the book and language economics is made explicit in

the final chapter. Taking an economics perspective enables ‘‘language planners [to]

harness market forces’’ (p. 155) when they explore possible paths of action and

when they make the choices that manage resources in the desired policy directions.

Readers in language disciplines will benefit from the clear presentation of

fundamental concepts of economics and of model-building. The authors’ explora-

tion of actual data and the models they build to exploit these data provide a firm

foundation for the continued development of a discipline of language economics.

References

Nekvapil, J., & Nekula, M. (2006). On language management in multinational companies in the Czech

Republic. Current Issues in Language Planning, 7, 307–327. (Reprinted in Baldauf, R. B., &

Liddicoat, A. (Eds.). (2008). Language planning in local contexts (pp. 268–287). Clevedon:

Multilingual Matters.).

Nekvapil, J., & Sherman, T. (2009). Pre-interaction management in multinational companies in Central

Europe. Current Issues in Language Planning, 10, 181–198.

Author Biography

Bjorn Jernudd lives in Washington, DC. His current interests include language management theory, the

language situations in Sudan and South Sudan, and the description of the languages of Darfur.

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