Buying into English : language and investment in the new capitalist world / Catherine Prendergast.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Prendergast, Catherine, 1968-

Series:

Pittsburgh series in composition, literacy, and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English language--Slovakia.

English language.

English language--Economic aspects--Slovakia.

Intercultural communication--Slovakia.

Intercultural communication.

English language--Globalization.

Language and culture--Slovakia.

Language and culture.

Slovakia.

Physical Description:

ix, 180 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Pittsburgh : University of Pittsburgh Press, [2008]

Summary:

English has become the language of choice for global economic, political, and cultural exchange. Many developing countries (and, notably, many former Soviet bloc countries) have little choice but to "buy into English" as a path to ideological and material "betterment." As Catherine Prendergast reveals, however, investing in English has not always been easy and has often disappointed expectations.

Based on extensive fieldwork in Slovakia, Prendergast records the thoughts, aspirations, and concerns of Slovak nationals, language instructors, journalists, and textbook authors who contend with the increasing importance of English in their rapidly evolving world. Through personal histories, she offers a rare glance at how the communist regime was forced to reckon with English's growing global stature. Prendergast contrasts these accounts with chronicles of adept multitaskers learning English during Slovakia's exhausting fast-track incorporation into the European Union and Western capitalism. She reveals how the use of English in everyday life has become suffused with the terms of the knowledge and information economy, in which language is manipulated for power and profit.

Buying into English presents a fascinating study of how language lives in the imagination as much as in the world, an astute analysis of the factors that have made English so prominent and yet so elusive, and a deconstruction of the myth of guaranteed viability for new states and economies through English.

Contents:

Introduction : the first language of capitalism

Lingua non grata : English during communism

Other worlds in other words

"We live and learn"

Real life in English

The golden cage.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780822943464

0822943468

9780822960010

082296001X

OCLC:

182735992

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description