Buying into English; Language and Investment in the New Capitalist World

Many developing countries have little choice but to “buy into English” as a path to ideological and material betterment. Based on extensive fieldwork in Slovakia, the author assembles a rich ethnographic study that records the thoughts, aspirations, and concerns of Slovak nationals, language instructors, journalists, and textbook authors who contend with the increasing importance of English to their rapidly evolving world. She reveals how the use of English in everyday life has becomes suffused with the terms of the knowledge and information economy, where language is manipulated for power and profit. Buying into English presents 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.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The First Language of Capitalism

1. Lingua Non Grata: English during Communism

2. Other Worlds in Other Words

3. “We Live and Learn”

4. Real Life in English

5. The Golden Cage

Appendix. English: A Kind of Sport

Notes

Bibliography

Index