Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Role of Language in Human Capital and Entrepreneurial Development

博士论文研究：语言在人力资本和创业发展中的作用

• 批准号: 2016625
• 负责人: Nicholas Harkness
• 金额: $ 2.52万
• 依托单位: Harvard University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-11-15 至 2024-02-29
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2016625&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Role; Language

Policymakers and economists frequently link investment in a nation’s young people with its economic growth. Young people, they argue, are the nation’s human capital and future workforce. This perspective has affected the ways international institutions and governments manage the integration and transitioning of new capital and labor markets. Policies and programs often focus on the education and training of youth, placing special importance on the development of cognitive, socio-behavioral, and linguistic skills. This project is an ethnographic study that investigates how young people react to this pressure to develop their human capital and entrepreneurial ability. In addition to training a graduate student in data collection and analysis, this project aims to advance scientific understanding by providing descriptive knowledge of the motivations, experiences, and cultural values of everyday actors operating under changing political economic terrains. This knowledge is essential for policymakers and social scientists to understand the management of economic and institutional resilience.Through a twelve-month ethnographic study of emerging language entrepreneurs, the investigators will examine the ways that people in transitioning contexts experience and manage integration into the global economy through development of their human capital. The research focuses on the young employees of media startups, in a market where observers have determined that small and medium-sized enterprises like these are essential to private sector development, as they are widely seen as drivers of innovation and growth. The investigators will collect multi-perspective data through participant observation, interviews, linguistic analysis, and collaborative media collection to explore how and why language has become a site of both economic and personal transformation for young entrepreneurs. This research brings together the often-separate fields of linguistic and economic anthropology in order to investigate how people relate economic change to language use in everyday practice. This is especially crucial in a time when many social theorists and economic actors alike consider information and communication processes the driving market force. Findings will not only advance an understanding of how states and citizens react to changes in political economy, but will provide new insight into the consequences of policy decisions that take human capital development as their focus.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

政策制定者和经济学家经常将对一国年轻人的投资与该国的经济增长联系起来。他们认为，年轻人是国家的人力资本和未来的劳动力。这种观点影响了国际机构和政府管理新资本和劳动力市场的整合和转型的方式。政策和方案往往侧重于青年的教育和培训，特别重视认知、社会行为和语言技能的发展。该项目是一项人种学研究，调查年轻人如何应对这种压力，以发展他们的人力资本和创业能力。除了培训数据收集和分析的研究生，该项目旨在通过提供在不断变化的政治经济地形下运作的日常行为者的动机，经验和文化价值观的描述性知识来促进科学理解。这些知识对于政策制定者和社会科学家理解经济和制度弹性的管理至关重要。通过对新兴语言企业家为期12个月的人种学研究，调查人员将研究转型环境中的人们通过发展人力资本来体验和管理融入全球经济的方式。这项研究的重点是媒体初创公司的年轻员工，在这个市场上，观察人士已经确定，像这样的中小型企业对私营部门的发展至关重要，因为它们被广泛视为创新和增长的驱动力。研究人员将通过参与者观察、访谈、语言分析和协作媒体收集来收集多视角数据，以探索语言如何以及为什么成为年轻企业家经济和个人转型的场所。这项研究汇集了语言学和经济人类学的经常分离的领域，以调查人们如何在日常实践中将经济变化与语言使用联系起来。在许多社会理论家和经济行为者都认为信息和通信过程是推动市场力量的时候，这一点尤其重要。调查结果不仅将促进对国家和公民如何应对政治经济变化的理解，而且将为以人力资本开发为重点的政策决策的后果提供新的见解。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。