Introduction

1 In 2008, I was contacted by a multinational company. The marketing manager had heard about my work on multilingualism in the workplace and wanted me to include her company in my research (without, however, having a very clear idea of what my research was about; if she had known, I am not sure she would have contacted me!). This company, she asserted, had long promoted multilingualism as part of its diversity management program (which was initially focused on gender and disability). She believed that her company was an example of good practices, explaining that full use of the linguistic skills of employees was being made, which allowed for even greater cost-effectiveness. She specified that the company in question had a high rate of recruitment among migrant populations. She thus concluded that it was important to create more synergy between research on multilingualism and business activities, and she pointed out that her company could give my work greater visibility while at the same time allowing her to benefit from increased visibility in scientific publications. Therefore, both parties would win.

2 In my view, this proposal, which I politely declined, [1] highlights a set of phenomena that touch upon the emergence of a discourse on the commodification and marketization of linguistic diversity within spaces of economic production. On the one hand, the relationship between economic productivity and multilingualism is, here, presented as a self-evident fact of work activities, linguistic diversity being a factor in profitability. On the other hand, the staging of linguistic diversity constitutes a marketing issue that makes it possible for the company to exhibit a certain social “mission” by creating an impression of greater equality in the workplace, which might then prove profitable for the company’s image. Lastly, this proposal reveals how research can be conceived of as a possible instrument for economic promotion (which is not new for science taken as a whole, but is more rare in our disciplines), and thereby of the promotion of research by the economy.

3 These phenomena, which are fully in line with what I would call the neoliberalism of multilingualism, lie at the heart of the problematic of this paper. Indeed, if multilingualism is insinuating itself into various present-day economic domains, it is crucial that we reflect upon how these discourses and ‘economicist’ language practices function and are operationalized in actual labor practices. Of course, it seems that, at present, linguistic diversity constitutes an added value under some conditions (leading some researchers, furthermore, to use this argument in favor of more multilingualism). What remains little explored, however, are the underlying mechanisms of this neoliberalism of linguistic diversity. By mechanisms, I mean the motives and the modes of economic regulation that result in certain forms of linguistic practice being given market value. Even more fundamental are the consequences of these mechanisms, which need to be examined by asking who generates these processes and who benefits—or not—from this added value. These are the questions that the present paper seeks to answer.

4 This questioning cannot take place without careful exploration of the processes of production and labor in entrepreneurial spaces, and without an analysis of the links between the structures of the neoliberal market, the practices of late capitalism, and the role of languages in economic spaces. This will be the subject of my first section. Such questioning, however, can neither be accomplished in abstracto. Rather, it should be anchored in a sited approach which enables a grasp not only of work practices but also of the institutional logics and ideologies that regulate, manage, and regiment linguistic practices. This paper thus draws on ethnographic research conducted over the course of one year in a passenger- and baggage-management company located in the international airport in Zürich, Switzerland. The second section will present the research context as well as the data from which I draw.

5 The third and fourth sections will highlight two fundamental processes implemented by the company I studied which are intended to manage multilingual needs in the workplace according to a logic of economic productivity. On the one hand, I will emphasize a managerial approach based on the recruitment process as the foremost means of managing predictable language needs. I will then show how the language skills of the least qualified and least privileged employees (migrant workers, in particular) are exploited without the producers of these resources (namely, the workers) deriving any benefits, whether in terms of salary or professional mobility. I will thus argue that multilingualism emerges as a central component not only of productivity but also of the flexibility of workspaces; that is, instead of being vilified, multilingualism is fundamentally recognized as providing added value for the company, but, crucially and above all, it benefits institutions of power when these see an economic interest in it. This analysis leads in the concluding section to a questioning of the role of sociolinguistic researchers in the face of such social transformations.

1. Language, Multilingualism, and Entrepreneurial Logics

6 With the massive emergence of a service economy which is gradually replacing the primary and secondary sectors, the presence of language in the workplace is no longer secondary, or even totally prohibited, as is the case in the manufacturing industries (Boutet 2001, 2008). Rather, language has become a central tool, indeed even the raw material, of this economy (Cameron 2000a, 2000b; Heller 2003; Duchêne 2009a). Linguistic practices, whether oral, written, or computer-mediated, are omnipresent in the new economy and lead companies to pay increasing attention to the articulation between linguistic production and economic productivity through the regulation of linguistic and labor practices. Though the raw material of labor has changed in these new spaces, these modes of regulation do not break with the processes of observable production in the manufacturing sector. Taylorist principles based on a “scientific” approach concerning the rationalization of labor activities (Boutet 2008) have been transferred to the service sector, and language has become the object of sustained monitoring (Gee, Hull, and Lankshear 1996; Boutet 2008; Heller 2011; Duchêne and Heller 2012).

7 Following this logic, it is no longer an issue of calculating labor productivity in terms of items manufactured or their rate of production, but rather in terms of the number of answered telephone calls (Amiech 2005), the number of emails processed, or better yet, the number of words translated in a given period of time. These employees are therefore subject to a series of institutional constraints linked in particular to productivity and flexibility (Sennet 2000), whether we consider, for example, irregular work hours, the precarity of employment, or the various regulations imposed on employees. The ideological continuity between the labor management practices of the manufacturing sector and those of the tertiary sector, as well as the shift from manual labor to labor activity predicated above all on language, led me to propose the term parole-d’œuvre (speech-force) [2] (Duchêne 2009a, 2009b). The transition from main-d’œuvre (work-force) to parole-d’œuvre (speech-force) is, in my view, one of the central transformations characterizing labor in the era of hypermodernity.

8 Furthermore, companies in the new economy situate themselves within transnational networks (Castells 2000) and seek to reach clients located in different parts of the world, who necessarily speak diverse languages. Thus the question of multilingualism is posed equally in terms of efficiency and economic profitability. A female worker capable of interacting on the telephone in three languages necessarily proves to be more “profitable” given that her multilingual skills make possible both more efficient and less costly management of work activity (Roy 2003; Dubois, LeBlanc, and Beaudin 2006; Duchêne 2009a). The importance of multilingualism in these specific situations is therefore fundamentally linked to the idea of regulating the labor process.

9 This observation—the increasingly significant presence of language as the raw material of labor and its Taylorist principles of organization—leads to a second, namely the strategic choice of languages in companies. Language is increasingly becoming a commodity (Heller 2007) which gives access to markets and enables processes of localization. The choice of language is never insignificant. Rather, it is often in connection with strategic and symbolic choices linked to the economic expansion of companies (Kelly-Holmes 2006; Piller 2001; Duchêne and Piller 2011). As a result, some languages acquire importance, sometimes in a relatively stable way, and other times quite temporarily. This conception of language as having practical market value results in various kinds of multilingual practices within companies where the main goal is geographical expansion. Here, we are situated precisely within what Bourdieu (2001) defined at the time as a linguistic market that “creates the conditions for an objective competition in and through which the legitimate competence can function as linguistic capital, producing a profit of distinction on the occasion of each social exchange” (p. 84). Multilingualism as an economic value, therefore, appears as part of a market logic that often proves volatile and subject to numerous fluctuations. If multilingualism exists, it is often dependent upon economic interests that measure the value of languages and speakers as a function of existing power relations within a neoliberal capitalist logic, thus inviting us to consider these transformations with a political-economic understanding of specific languages, and of language in general (Gal 1989).

10 The two dimensions that I propose here—namely, language as the raw material of labor and language as a commodity or market value—constitute, in my view, two major issues in research concerning the links between multilingualism and labor. These studies fundamentally revolve around the need, on the one hand, to understand the materialization of multilingual practices within the labor logics that give these practices meaning and, on the other, to consider language as an instrument of inclusion (or exclusion) linked to institutional systems, and to social and economic transformations.

2. Context and Data

11 The analyses I propose in this paper are the result of ethnographic research [3] I conducted over one year with a company that manages baggage and passengers (Airport Logistics Company, [4] [hereafter ALC]) at the Zürich international airport. I chose this space as a research site for several reasons:

12

1. As an economic space developed for and by the national and international economy intended to promote exchanges between people and consumer goods, the airport(and, in particular, companies such as ALC in charge of the management of passengers and baggage) provides the conditions of possibility for neoliberalism while being the product of it. As a result, this space leaves little room for chance; on the contrary, it is fundamentally dependent upon the economic constraints imposed by its very function, with the question of language falling within these constraints. The increased use of languages as commodities in connection with globalized economic interests thus delimits the linguistic strategies of the company managing the airport and makes a particular type of multilingualism possible.
2. As a globalized space located in a given country, and as an autonomous zone within national borders, the airport is located at the intersection between the global and the local. It highlights a constant articulation between considerations of the local (domestic passengers) and the global (international passengers) thus creating the need for both the inter- and intranational management of these spaces. This dynamic between the local and the global is inscribed in observable language practices, such as the use of local language varieties alongside varieties considered international. What emerges through the linguistic management of an airport is a set of processes that highlight current tensions, observable within a globalized economy.
3. As a workspace in which the structuring and organization of labor are oriented toward a constant search for efficiency, airports highlight the importance of communication and languages in processes of managing diversity, information, and people. In this sense, the examination of language practices within airports provides an entry point onto new challenges related to language in the service industry and to the role of multilingualism as a labor tool.

13 This research is based on an ethnographic approach, which assumes that fieldwork is essential to comprehending the complexity of observable phenomena. Observed language practices are thus part of a process of constructing meaning, allowing for a continuous articulation between the conditions of the production of language and actual social practices. In this sense, I echo Cicourel (1981), who invited us to grasp the complexity of social phenomena as actualized in language and with regard to the complex organizations in which these phenomena are inscribed. Furthermore, I will also consider linguistic ideologies, understood, as Irvine (1989) emphasized, as “the cultural system of ideas about social and linguistic relationships, together with their loading of moral and political interests” (p. 255) ; see also Woolard and Schiefflin 1994 and Duchêne 2008), thus making it possible to grasp the way in which linguistic choices are informed by a certain conception of language itself.

14 My data consist of observations made in a variety of workspaces specific to the company’s activities (human resources, training, customer service, baggage handling), numerous discussions with employees and managers (formally in the form of interviews or more informally during coffee breaks, for example), the analysis of institutional documents (job advertisements, regulations, training documents, etc.), and recordings of linguistic interactions in the workplace. I will thus attempt to bring to light both language practices and the entrepreneurial logics that underlie them in order to understand how, why, under what conditions, and with what consequences multilingualism occupies a particular place in the management of labor processes within the new globalized economy.

3. Managing the Predictable: Linguistic Skills, Recruitment, and Social Stratification

15 At every level of entrepreneurial functioning, the question of the links between costs and productivity receives particular attention. Infrastructural and personnel needs are analyzed in terms of market research, statistical trends, and future development. Costs are evaluated and rationalized, and needs are rethought and renegotiated, leading to decision making that has a direct impact on human resources management (such as the number of employees and who these employees should be). Within this logic, the issue of languages thus emerges as one dimension which elicits particular attention among ALC managers. The very nature of the work, which is primarily linguistic across an entire range of activities, results in the need to evaluate which languages are necessary, at which level of skill they should be mastered, and by whom.

16 The definition of linguistic needs and their implementation thus constitute a particularly interesting context for grasping institutional interests in the area of languages and the way in which these interests are regulated.

17 As we will see, at ALC, it is above all through recruitment that the management of predictable language needs is operationalized. This is why, in what follows, I will seek to explain the way in which ALC conceives of the role of languages in its workplace activities by drawing on the specifications for hiring criteria for three job categories that are emblematic of its activities. Specifically, the three job descriptions below will be analyzed in light of the economic and symbolic stakes which lie at the heart of ALC’s language ideologies and labor processes:

4. Managing the Unpredictable: Exploiting the Linguistic Skills of Migrants

36 If our attention up to now has focused on the management of predictable language needs, I would now like to look at how ALC copes with language needs which are less predictable, and more unanticipated. Indeed, in a space of mobility such as an airport, many passengers do not speak any of the three languages that are required when hiring (i.e., German, English, and French). In fact, it is not rare for problems to arise which necessitate mutual understanding between employees and passengers. Whether the problem is one of ticketing, baggage, or visas, the daily life of an airport is punctuated by situations that do not fall within the standard co-ordination of labor processes, and which often necessitate the use of a common language.

37 It is at this point that the language resources of a certain category of employees enter onto the scene. As we saw earlier, many employees (across the three domains of activitiy) are migrants, speaking many languages other than those considered indispensable and officially recognized as productive. In fact, the workspaces where the highest number of migrants are found, and consequently the highest number of “non-dominant” languages, are in the Special Assistance and baggage handling sectors.

38 As the following excerpt illustrates, these language skills are fully incorporated into the company’s work activities. In this excerpt, WT, a (Swiss) team leader in Special Assistance services, explains that in order to respond to the needs of passengers with difficulties who speak neither English nor French, she has a whole set of employees at her disposal who speak “exotic” (sic) languages. With a wave of the hand, she then points to the employees surrounding her and undertakes the following enumeration: [6]

39

WT [7]  und etz hemmer zum Bispiel bi Japanisch hemmer dJasko,
AD  ja?
WT  und was hemmer denn da no? de Ibiza redt sicher öppis anders, oder,
AD  uhmhu, uhmhu,
WT  wüsst etz nid grad was, döt de Claudio het vorher, was het er gredt? erm Portugiesisch oder?
AD  uhmhu,
WT  und denn hemmer do dElena wo öppis anders redt, Elena was redsch du? was redsch du für ä Sprach?
WE  ich rede zu viel zu viel!
AD  @@zu viel?@@
WE [8]  ich rede viel zu viel, das weisst du.
WT  was redsch für ä Fremdsprach du? Ich weiss es nid.
WE  erm meine Muttersprache isch Russisch. Russisch, und Ukrainisch, weil ich in Ukraine aufgewachsen bin, dann red ich Polnisch ein bischen, immer noch nicht vergessen, Englisch. Deutsch.
WT  etz wenni öpper ha wo nöd drus chunt und ich has Gfüehl es wär öpper, denn frag ich sie öb sies cha,

40 Translation

41

WT  and then for Japanese for example there’s Jasko
AD   yes?
WT   and then what else do we have? Ibiza surely speaks some other languages, or
AD   uhmhu, uhmhu,
WT   I don’t know what just there, over there, Claudio what did he speak before? euh Portuguese or?
AD   uhmhu,
WT  and then there’s Elena who speaks something else, Elena what do you speak? What languages do you speak?
WE  I talk too much too much!
AD  @@too much?@@
WE  I talk too much, you know that.
WT  what foreign languages do you speak? I don’t know.
WE  uhm my mother tongue is Russian. Russian and Ukrainian, because I grew up in Ukraine, then I speak a bit of Polish, haven’t forgotten yet, English. German.
WT  if I have someone who doesn’t understand and I think that this would be somebody (who could help me), I ask her if she can manage it,

42 WT does not seem to have a detailed knowledge of the languages spoken by her colleagues. She has fully taken into account, however, that they have skills that may be useful for work activities under certain circumstances. Indeed, the way WT speaks about the issue of languages is not insignificant. In fact, her expressions tend to objectify her colleagues (“und was hemmer denn da no?”/“What do we have?” and not “Who do we have?”), and the lack of specific knowledge about the languages they speak tends to trivialize these skills. WT’s approach thus contributes to constructing these employees as linguistic resources who are available on demand—an approach to their linguistic repertoire with purely utilitarian ends, inscribed in a logic of labor in which these skills are entirely naturalized. In response to my questions concerning the importance of multilingualism for smooth workplace functioning, the supervisor emphasized the considerable daily utility of these skills, while adding immediately afterwards that it would in no case be justified to compensate the workers considering that “they can’t do anything about it” (“sie chönnt nüt dafür”).

43 Although the use of non-dominant language skills takes place somewhat informally, as in this situation, the company has nonetheless put in place a more systematic way of coping with situations of non-comprehension between passengers and employees.

44 When they are hired, all ALC personnel fill out a form in which they list the languages they speak. Once this is done, the information is then entered into a computer database listing the names of the employees, their sector of activity, their professional telephone number, and in certain cases, their private telephone number. This list, entitled Übersetzer für seltene Sprachen (“Translators for Rare Languages”), constitutes ALC’s official institutional response for managing unpredictable language needs. The use of the term “translator” is eloquent given the vast discrepancy between it and the actual positions of the people on this list. In fact, the vast majority of those listed are migrants, and given their position in the company, most of them occupy the invisible and semi-visible positions.

45 In order to better grasp the institutional implications of this list, in what follows, I would like to propose an illustration of this “management of the unpredictable” in action. The objective here is to show how this list, in its own right, constitutes a very valuable tool in the management of linguistic diversity in a given place, such as an airport. Understanding its use and implications also entails understanding how the skills provided by the people on this list contribute to the company’s smooth functioning on a daily basis. Indeed, problems encountered in customer service, whether at check-in, the transit zone, or the boarding gate, constitute a potential risk for errors or delays when routing passengers to the correct flights. ALC’s clients are airlines that charge a penalty-fee each time ALC causes management errors or delays, inevitably leading to a major loss of revenue for the company. Thus the efficient management of problems contributes to profitability for ALC which, like all profit-making institutions confronting the laws of the market and competition, must permanently monitor its economic productivity. Let us now look at how this management of unpredictable needs materializes in workplace practices.

46 It is about 9pm at the Zürich airport, and I am seated beside a female employee (KM) working in the airport’s transit zone. After a day of intense work, the flow of passengers is starting to wane. She and I are discussing her professional trajectory, when a few passengers begin to line up at the transit counter. A man in his forties of Asian appearance (PAX) arrives at the counter. He sets down his passport (Brazilian, in this case) and ticket on the counter at the same time. The linguistic interaction with the passenger then begins as follows:

47

KM  hello?
KM  you are going to Paris now?
PAX  hu?
KM  to Paris?
PAX  . . . no Pa/l/is
KM  Paris? parlez français? (transl : speak French ?)
PAX  hä?
KM  English?
PAX  non,
KM  okay, we try!
PAX  @(Mandarin)@

48 After greeting the passenger in English, the employee looks at the ticket and types the reservation number into her computer while asking the passenger about his destination. The first attempt in English ends with a sign of non-understanding from the passenger, prompting a repetition of the question, to which he responds in the negative. The discrepancy between the passenger's “no” and the information the employee has on her computer immediately prompts an interactional sequence about language in which the language of the destination country indicated on the ticket (France) is initially called upon, followed by English, to which the passenger both responds in the negative. The absence of any shared languages is then determined, even though at this stage of the interaction, this is not yet constructed as a major problem (“okay we try”) by the employee, who in any normal situation should be able to obtain information solely from the computer.

49 After a few keystrokes on the computer, KM addresses the passenger once again:

50

KM  you have connection afterwards to Brazil?
PAX  uhm Conakry
KM  Brazil?
PAX  /Brazil/ (Mandarin) a Conakry. (Mandarin)
  Pause [14 secs.] (KM typing)
KM  okay, you flying Paris São Paulo? okay. (typing) can I see the passport please? your PASSport please? passport? yes, thank you (typing)

51 Based on her interpretation of her computer data, KM concludes that the passenger is going to Brazil. However, the passenger clearly states twice that he is going to Conakry. KM nonetheless remains decided on her initial interpretation of the information appearing on her computer and maintains São Paolo as the passenger’s final destination.

52 The employee carries on with her investigation, becoming increasingly aware that the information on the ticket is incomplete, while trying desperately over the next several minutes to understand what brought the passenger to mention Conakry. The longer it takes, the longer the line of waiting passengers grows, and the more urgent it becomes to find a solution. A few phone calls allow her to collect some fragments of information which, in the end, only reinforce her sense of incomprehension. At this stage, the absence of a common language becomes an actual problem, given the glaring discrepancy between the employee’s construal and the passenger’s mention of Conakry. KM thus returns to the question of language:

53

KM  you don’t understand what I’m saying right? okay, you speak chinese?
PAX  ähä
KM  and portuguese?
PAX  äh
KM  portugesh?
PAX  portugesh /????/
KM  cha vo eu öpper Portugisiesch? nöd wirkli und Chinesisch sowieso nid. super! das wird kompliziert! @@ ojeh! I try to find someone to speak with you. (typing)

54 Translation

55

KM  you don’t understand what I’m saying right? okay, you speak Chinese?
PAX  ähä
KM  and Portuguese?
PAX  äh
KM  Portugesh?
PAX  Portugesh /????/
KM  does anyone know how to speak Portuguese? Not really and Chinese not at all. Super! This is going to be complicated! @@ Oh dear! I try to find someone to speak with you. (typing)

56 After informing herself on the languages spoken by the passenger (Portuguese and Chinese), KM proceeds in a manner similar to WT in the excerpt on Special Assistance by first attempting to find out whether, among her nearby colleagues, any of them are Portuguese speakers. The absence of Portuguese or Chinese speakers (for the latter, KM does not even take the trouble of asking around), thus brings KM to call up the “list of rare languages” discussed earlier.

57 This list, with the names of languages in alphabetical order, has two sub-sections for Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin). In accordance with the rule specified on the list—which is to refrain from always calling the first person on the list—KM picks the second name under the first sub-section and calls the person listed, failing to take into account the existence of two different Chinese dialects. After getting a hold of her interlocutor, she asks him if he can come to the transit zone. After a roughly 10 minute wait, a man (SH) in his thirties who works between the baggage sector and Special Assistance arrives. An initial exchange with the passenger leads him to ascertain that the passenger speaks Mandarin, whereas he himself is a Cantonese speaker. After a moment of palpable desperation on the part of KM, SH spontaneously proposes a solution, namely that he contact his mother, of Chinese origin, who speaks both Cantonese and Mandarin. SH then takes out his private mobile phone and calls his mother, speaking in Cantonese, then he passes the telephone to the passenger. The latter then interacts with SH's mother and explains his situation to her:

58

PAX [9] 喂，你好。我不是，我在机场里转机啊，在这里，我这个飞机票我是这样的，我是从非洲去的，去非洲，到徳国。徳国到法国他没有签证，没有签证他不让我上飞机，不让我上飞机就让我转到这个，机场让我转到这个，到这里来，到了法国，到了法国巴黎，是这样的。我呢，已经就是从法国，德国到法国这个票我已经不要了，在这里已经重新买过了，我已经买好了，现在是换个登机卡了，是这样的， 哈? 就是让他确定一下了。 嗯，我现在要到巴黎去啊 。 法国巴黎啊。 啊，好，好，好，我就是到法国巴黎转机然后就到非洲去，到肯纳克里啊。 好，谢谢你啊

PAX  I am not. I am here in the airport in order to transit. It is like this, my flight ticket is like this, I was flying from Africa, to Africa, arriving in Germany. From Germany to France I don’t have the visa, and they don’t allow me to get onto the airplane without a visa. The airport asked me to come here, to come here and to France, Paris, France. (The situation) is like this. I’ve already, well, I’ve given up the ticket from France, from Germany to France, and I’ve already bought a new ticket here, and now I just need to have my boarding card. It is like this. Ah? That is to let him/her confirm. En, I am going to Paris now. France, Paris. Ah, ok, ok, ok, I am going to Paris France and change the plan there and fly to Africa, to Conakry.

59 The explanations provided by the passenger, which are translated by SH's mother into Cantonese, then transmitted in Swiss German to KM, the transit employee, provide essential information that makes it possible to explain the discordance between the data available on KM’s computer (she will subsequently realize that she had entered the number corresponding to the passenger’s return flight) and the passenger’s insistence on his destination of Conakry. This information is equally crucial considering that KM was in the process of doing everything in her power to put the passenger on a flight leaving Zürich for… São Paolo.

60 The situation I have attempted to describe above makes it possible to highlight a set of phenomena which I consider particularly salient for understanding how an institution such as ALC manages issues of multilingualism within its workplace activities. This situation illustrates the very role played by linguistic factors in the daily situations faced by employees. Although KM quickly becomes aware of the absence of a shared language, as we saw, this is not immediately considered problematic because the work activities of visible personnel are so heavily codified by automation, and because speech acts revolve, above all, around managing the commercial relationship with the client. In certain cases, however, the need to obtain information from the passenger proves to be key and the absence of a common language then becomes an obstacle not only to the completion of an activity but to the effective execution of assigned tasks, in this case, the appropriate routing of a passenger and his baggage to the correct flight headed for the correct destination.

61 The use of language skills that are more difficultly managed (that is, less easy to anticipate) thus becomes a valuable tool in processes of problem resolution. Those who possess such unanticipated language skills are predominantly migrants employed in sectors with the least amount of social visibility. Although their language skills are not considered worthy of recognition (and do not allow them to access the more desirable positions), they are inventoried and can be called upon—in this sense, they are exploitable—when the institution needs them to successfully complete its work. The voluntary intervention made by SH—he had just finished his shift—and his mother, as well as the use of the personal mobile phone which he pays for, enabled the resolution of a problem that would have otherwise been costly for ALC. A semi-invisible employee thus becomes visible the moment the company needs his linguistic services.

5. Conclusion

62 In this paper, I have attempted to propose an analysis not only of the processes involved in the entrepreneurial management of multilingualism, but also of the workplace practices in a space such as an international airport. I showed that multilingualism is a key component of the efficient economic management of the company's human resources and that the company’s capitalization of these linguistic resources, especially those of migrants, contributes to its productivity. What this research fundamentally shows is that the providers of these resources, namely the parole-d’œuvre (speech-force), do not benefit—except perhaps on a symbolic level—from added value. In contrast, the company itself is the primary—indeed, the only—beneficiary of these modes of linguistic regulation.

63 It becomes apparent to me that we need to fundamentally interrogate how we, as researchers, situate ourselves in relation to this economization of multilingualism. Indeed, research on multilingualism has long shown the importance of questioning the fundamentally monolingual ideology which we have inherited from political regimes resulting from the creation of the nation-states. The sociolinguistics of multilingualism was itself developed by addressing the forms of oppression exercised by these bodies of power. A sociolinguistics positioned in this way made it possible, in particular, to go beyond a strictly normative understanding of language as unitary and constitutive of a bounded and clearly identifiable community, and compelled us to consider language in society in terms of social practices that are necessarily heterogeneous, variable, and in many cases, multilingual. This insistence upon linguistic diversity thus led to a rethinking of what constitutes the actual and imagined borders of a language in a given society, and to challenging the dominant ideologies within the linguistic hegemony exercised by a social group in a position of power. Often then, the objectives—whether implicit or explicit—of a sociolinguistics of multilingualism were to put forward an alternative discourse, supported by empirical research, which would make it possible to valorize and recognize the intrinsic value of multilingual practices and linguistic diversity.

64 While it would be an illusion to think that these homogenizing forces have been overcome, it would be just as illusory to conclude that ideologies of multilingualism are not themselves also undergoing transformation. Thus, the question that emerges from this asks to what extent we are in a position to understand these transformations and how we are to make sense of them. The fact that multilingualism has surfaced as operational in different sectors of the new globalized economy—thus demonstrating a shift from a strictly monolingual vision of labor imperatives to a recognition of the importance of linguistic diversity—could bring one to conclude that these economic transformations constitute, for us researchers of multilingualism, a new and more favorable terrain for multilingual claims.

65 That companies, for example, are themselves aware of this fact appears to strengthen the arguments concerning multilingualism as a resource and a wealth (this time not only in cultural or cognitive terms but in economic terms as well). At issue is a clearly legitimate—though double-edged—tendency. Just as claims surrounding multilingualism have, in the past, sometimes been colored by a certain romanticism (the beauty of languages, the cognitive advantages, etc.) and were often disconnected from social reality in which language is a site of both struggle and the reproduction of social inequality, arguments about the economic added-value of linguistic diversity tend to overlook the discriminatory aspects of the capitalist marketplace as well as the mechanisms by which social inequalities are reproduced.

66 As we have seen, economic sectors follow a cost-profit logic in which languages, and more importantly speakers, are inscribed. Multilingualism surely takes on a certain degree of market value, making it possible to valorize some (though not all) language skills. However, an ‘economicist’ logic of languages reproduces processes of hierarchization between languages as well as between speakers, operating according to the logic of a volatile market in constant growth. Clearly, languages continue to constitute a context of social selection.

67 For its part, the non-recognition of these language skills in the workplace through salary or promotion results in the naturalization of languages and speakers and, in this sense, trivializes multilingualism while reducing it to a mere tool for utilitarian purposes.

68 As such, reflecting upon multilingualism in the present day, as in the past, necessarily entails understanding how languages are inscribed within a logic of competition for material and symbolic resources, as well as how the entrepreneurial logics in which we ourselves are situated regulate, instrumentalize, and exploit these skills. We must therefore attend to both the ruptures and the continuities in order to address the processes that produce and reproduce long-standing and newer forms of social inequality on the basis of language.