Experimental Economics Meets Language Choice

Ilaski Barañano Mentxaka, Jaromír Kovářík and José Ramón Uriarte Ayo

IKERLANAK from Universidad del País Vasco - Departamento de Fundamentos del Análisis Económico I

Abstract: Roughly one half of World's languages are in danger of extinction. The endangered languages, spoken by minorities, typically compete with powerful languages such as En- glish or Spanish. Consequently, the speakers of minority languages have to consider that not everybody can speak their language, converting the language choice into strategic,coordination-like situation. We show experimentally that the displacement of minority languages may be partially explained by the imperfect information about the linguistic type of the partner, leading to frequent failure to coordinate on the minority language even between two speakers who can and prefer to use it. The extent of miscoordination correlates with how minoritarian a language is and with the real-life linguistic condition of subjects: the more endangered a language the harder it is to coordinate on its use, and people on whom the language survival relies the most acquire behavioral strategies that lower its use. Our game-theoretical treatment of the issue provides a new perspective for linguistic policies.

Keywords: bilingualism; coordination; experiments; game theory; imperfect information; language choice; minority languages (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-10-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-exp
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