Abstract

Past research has shown that national language policies can attract foreign direct investment (FDI), and that potential FDI-host countries coordinate their domestic language policies in anticipation of this. While the increased FDI-inflows arising from such language policies may benefit some members of society, these shifts in policy can adversely affect those whose spoken languages are not perceived as beneficial for attracting FDI inflows – primarily indigenous language speakers. This paper develops a theoretical framework to accordingly suggest that FDI inflows have contributed to declines in the usage and protection of indigenous languages in recent decades. This hypothesis is tested on a country-year sample of Latin American countries for the period 1988–2018. In evaluating this hypothesis with the aid of a newly constructed and comprehensive measure of time varying indigenous language usage spanning 20 Latin American countries and 30 years, FDI is determined to be a statistically significant contributor to the decline of indigenous language usage in contemporary Latin America.

摘要

过去的研究表明，国家语言政策可以吸引外国直接投资 (FDI)，并且潜在的 FDI 东道国会根据这一预期协调其国内语言政策。虽然此类语言政策带来的外国直接投资流入增加可能会使一些社会成员受益，但这些政策转变可能会对那些口语被认为不利于吸引外国直接投资流入的人产生不利影响——主要是讲土著语言的人。本文开发了一个理论框架，相应地表明 FDI 流入导致近几十年来土著语言的使用和保护下降。该假设在 1988 年至 2018 年期间拉丁美洲国家的国家年样本上进行了检验。