Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 International Trade—The Initial Model of EconomicDiscourse Revisited
Early empirical tests are showcased.With respect to national languages andforeign trade,the dilemma or dividend is to be determined.
Since Tinbergen(1962),Linnemann(1966)and other scholars applied thegravity model to the econometric study of trade flows between countries,whichfactors determine bilateral trade flows has become an hot topic in the study ofinternational trade issues.After decades of research development,the trade gravitymodel has also become more and more mature,and numerous factors such aseconomic,geographical,cultural and institutional factors have been incorporated intothe influencing factors of trade flows(Zhang and Chen,2014).And in recent years,the globalization of trade has highlighted the role of language in internationalactivities.As the manifestation of transaction costs in foreign trade,the impact oflanguage on international trade flows has also received increasing attention fromscholars,and a body of empirical literature on the study of the relationship betweenlanguage and trade has emerged,arguing that in addition to factors such as theeconomic size,geographical distance and trade agreements of two countries,languagefactors belong also to one key factors affecting trade flows.The survey of relationshipbetween discourse and macroeconomics takes discourse as one of the many variables.
Research related to language and international trade is at the forefront of bothinternational trade theory research and the subject of research in language economics.In the previous research literature,studies of international trade have taken languageinto consideration,gradually moving from qualitative studies(setting dummyvariables)to quantitative studies that examine the impact of language on bilateraltrade flows.Rose(2004)uses language as a dummy variable to examine the role ofcommon languages in international trade.Whereas higher language distance scoresindicate greater differences between the two languages,more difficult to learn,andmore time and effort spent on learning them,Isphording&Otten(2013)imply theimpact of language distance on international trade,using the common languageinstead of the mother tongue to examine the impact of language on international trade,and find that the size of language distance has a significant impact on trade flows,ranging from a small language distance(e.g.,English vs.German)to a greaterlinguistic distance(e.g.,English vs.Japanese),(in turn,i.e.,a 25%increase to 75%similarity),may only reduce the trade flows associated with it by about 4%.
2.2 Language Industry Represented by Human Capital andLanguage Policies for Poverty Alleviation
Wang(2019)argues that the impact of language on the economy and itsmechanism of action have their own laws,and that language poverty alleviation needsto understand and follow the laws of language economy.In order to help the poor,it isnecessary to understand the economic role of language in an objective andcomprehensive way.Language ability is a form of human capital,which is the mostimportant attribute of language and an important reason why people are human.Thetheoretical logic of language as human capital for poverty alleviation lies in two majorareas.Firstly,according to the theory of endogenous economic growth,human capital is the source of economic growth.Language proficiency is a form of human capitaland is a natural contributor to economic growth.Language proficiency in this contextshould refer to the language ability of the population,a macro indicator that can bequantified in terms of the prevalence and proficiency of a common language,the levelof English proficiency of the population,etc.Secondly,bilingualism and evenmultilingualism,or an increase in proficiency
