Language commodification in late capitalism: diversities and mobilities

Abstract

In the so-called "new globalized economy", in concomitance with the expansion of capital, massive technological advances have produced, on the one hand, unprecedented possibilities for the circulation of information and resources, as well as displacements of populations that can assume post- or transnational identities (DE FINA & PERRENNO, 2013). On the other hand, the logic of globalization and the fractionation of production chains have meant in many contexts a deepening of social differences, and language has become an even more relevant part in this stratification process, often mediating categorization processes that organize and legitimize inequality (HELLER, 2011). Such phenomena have brought new challenges for language studies interested in understanding what is happening in scenarios of great sociolinguistic diversity, more evident in some scenarios than in others, in general as observed by the centers or peripheries of capitalism. The Covid-19 pandemic made it even more complex to understand the contradictions of capitalism and its relations with language in these scenarios by causing sudden changes in interactional dynamics and in people's flows. This dossier brings together works that examine concepts that have entered the core of the discussion in Applied Linguistics and Sociolinguistics in the last 15 years, such as post-nationalism, language mercantilization and linguistic repertoires, among others, based on studies located in localized scenarios.