Moribund: exploring the relationship between foreign direct investment and indigenous language erosion in Latin America

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.