Economics and Language

Abstract

This chapter discusses a relatively small range of contributions addressing the combined fields of economics, communications, and language.¹ Language is a constituent for scholarly work in economics. Language is used to build and develop certain research tools, methods, and instruments in different realms of economic science. Despite the focus of this book being on central banking, I would like to shed light on the question of how economists have been working on language. Economists are not used to systematically reflecting on their use of language. This chapter presents an overview of how economic sciences have dealt with communication, and it outlines an example of how central bank modelling has been influenced by the acknowledgement of the constitutive roles played by language and changing contexts, that is, by stepping out of the model view.