Researchers from several countries discuss language policies and their social and economic consequences

The rector of the University of Barcelona, Joan Guàrdia, and the Catalan minister for Language Policy, Francesc Xavier Vila, opened an international meeting on the economics of language, a discipline that analyses issues such as the social and economic effects of language use and language policies. The event will take place at the Faculty of Economics and Business.

Experts from all over the world will discuss topics such as the choice of language in multinational companies, the replacement of local languages by English in schools in sub-Saharan Africa and the relationship between bilingual education and the sense of identity in Catalonia.

The programme includes presentations by Rajesh Ramachandran, from Monash University (Malaysia), who will present his study on the replacement of the indigenous language, Kinyarwanda, by English in Rwandan schools. Ramachandran will explain how this substitution has negatively affected the school population that has experienced the change, so that the proportion of pupils entering secondary education has fallen.

On the same day, Andrew John, from Melbourne Business School, will present his study on language in multinational companies: what role language barriers play and how the choice of language is made to communicate between the different companies.

UB professor Antonio Di Paolo will present a study that concludes that the introduction of Catalan at school did not affect the sense of belonging of people who spoke the language as children or whose parents were both born in Catalonia, but that exposure to Catalan at school — following the implementation of the Language Normalization Law of 1983 — led to a decrease in Catalan identity sentiment among people from non-Catalan-speaking backgrounds.

During the meeting, research studies grouped under themes such as language and family, language and place of residence or socio-economic impacts of bilingualism will be presented. Tomohisa Miyamoto (Aflatoun International) will, for example, present the study on how knowledge of English makes it easier for women in India to find husbands through matchmaking websites. Alfonso Miranda will focus on another case: the effects of teaching Spanish in indigenous communities in Mexico with their minority languages. Studies on other topics, such as politically charged messages from scientists on social media or inclusive language, will also be presented.

The meeting, organized by the UB School of Economics and the research group AQR, has the support of the Government of Catalonia’s Institute of Studies of Self-Government, within the framework of the call for research project grants.

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