Globalization, the new economy, and the commodification of language and identity

The globalized new economy is bound up with transformations of language and identity in many different ways (cf., e.g. Bauman 1997; Castells 2000; Giddens 1990). These include emerging tensions between State‐based and corporate identities and language practices, between local, national and supra‐national identities and language practices, and between hybridity and uniformity. Ethnolinguistic minorities provide a particularly revealing window...