Linguistic capital is a sociolinguistic term coined by French sociologist and philosopher Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu describes linguistic capital as a form of cultural capital, and specifically as the accumulation of a single person's linguistic skills that predetermines their position in society as delegated by powerful institutions. Cultural capital, on the other hand, is a conglomeration of knowledge, skills, and other cultural acquisitions, which is enhanced by educational or technical qualifications. As a form of communication, language mediates human interactions and is a form of an action itself. According to Joseph Sung-Yul Park, "language is understood as a form of capital that is mediated through social power relations." These power relations are reflected through language when one's language is decided to be legitimate, allowing access to economic and social opportunities such as jobs, services, and connections. Linguistic capital has been used to describe the different language resources available to a single person and the values associated with each resource. Today, this term is used to look at the way in which these resources play a role in power dynamics at all levels, from individual, familial, institutional, governmental, and international roles. Bourdieu's theories on capital are effective in showcasing how various skills and resources gathered over an individual or group's lifetime will have different values and connotations depending on the situation and demographics. When and where those resources are recognized and valued, often for the benefit or enhancement of the lives of the dominant social group, they can be converted into capital.
Linguistic marketplace The notion of the market value of a language refers to the ability of the language to bring social and economic benefits to its speaker. Languages have a market value and a non-market value. A language has market value if said language can be used for monetary gain, or if the language can be assigned a price. For example, if someone speaks language X, they have easier access to the economic and social well-being in the X-speaking communities, which in turn may lead to their financial gain. Jan Blommaert (2009) provides a clear example of how the high market value of the American English accent creates jobs for those who speak and know how to teach this accent while also allowing some to consume this skill in the form of learning. In other situations, an employee earns more money simply because they speak language X. In these circumstances language X has a high market value. The market value of a language is based on the symbolic power associated with the language as well as the language ideologies about the language and its speakers. The non-market value in this theoretical perspective relies more on the language ideologies. One of the ways of explaining the non-market value of the language is by considering the connection between the language and the culture. For example, a speaker of X has access to the culture associated with the language X and the whole speech community of X. Because this sort of value brings intangible benefits to the speaker, it cannot be measured in terms of market prices. The non-market value of languages is what is generally used to explain the need for the linguistic diversity: high linguistic variation and multilingualism is generally valued as a part of a healthy language ecology, which is why some countries strive to promote multilingualism. Both market and non-market values can affect whether an individual decides to learn a language. According to Bourdieu, people's utterances can be seen as their linguistic products, and they can anticipate the value of their products in the marketplace through different contexts. Different speakers have different quantities of linguistic capital, that is, different speakers have different capacities to produce expressions that are valuable for a specific market. This explains why individuals vary their linguistic expressions, such as register, to be appropriate to their current market, such as in a workplace, with family, or in education. Like other forms of capital, the linguistic capital that an individual possesses is a metaphorical expression that may reflect the individual's position in social space.
Power Language Index In a study conducted by the European Institute of Business Administration, Kai Chan created a Power Language Index (PLI) that ranked languages based on five opportunities provided by language comprehension: the ability to travel widely, the ability to earn a livelihood, the ability to communicate with others, the ability to acquire knowledge and consume media, and the ability to engage in diplomacy. Within these five sections, Chan used 20 indicators such as the GDP associated with countries that speak a certain language, the amount of land area where a language is spoken, and amount of internet/media content associated with a language to rank them. From his research Chan concluded that English is not only the most powerful language overall, but also the most powerful language across the five categories. The second most powerful language, Mandarin, was deemed to be only half as powerful as English because, although it is the language spoken by the most people in the world, it is not spoken widely outside of Mandarin nations. Other languages in the top ten may be strong in one or two categories (such as French for diplomacy or Hindi in the knowledge and media category), but none have the equivalent across-the-board dominance of English.
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