A Bourdieusian analysis of the multilingualism in a poverty-stricken ethnic minority area: can linguistic capital be transferred to economic capital?

Abstract

ABSTRACT Indigenous languages in poverty-stricken areas are often threatened by competition from the majority languages driving economic progress. Within the framework of the economics of linguistic exchanges, this paper discusses the possibility of transferring linguistic capital into economic capital, and the revaluation of minority languages to promote multilingualism in underdeveloped regions. A mixed-method approach (questionnaires, focused interviews, ethnographic observations) was adopted to investigate the linguistic use of and attitudes towards Hani, Mandarin and English among 142 Hani participants in Yuanyang County, China, and the dispositions of 1,395 participants outside Yuanyang towards four types of objectified linguistic products used in two submarkets. The qualitative and quantitative data from Yuanyang show that with a conservative monolingual attitude, young Hani are shifting from Hani to the national lingua franca, Mandarin, for socioeconomic reasons. However, outsiders favour the utilisation of multilingual resources in the submarkets of local tourism and sales of regionally specific products. The findings demonstrate that there is room for the revaluation of indigenous language in these submarkets, implying that minority and majority languages may coexist and develop in harmony if the local Hani and poverty alleviation workers can begin to transfer multilingual resources into economic capital in the submarkets.