Capitalism in Language, and the Digital Era

Abstract

This paper examines salient features of linguistic capitalism in the digital era, focusing on the dimensions of space, speed, and marketplace. We attempt to reconstruct the linguistic and economic connections of computation and algorithmic or cybernetic capitalism that reinforces global industrialization. We draw on work that discusses the keystone of Google’s success, which is built on three algorithms, PageRank, Adwords, and auto-completion. Auto-completion transforms linguistic materials with little economic value into a potentially profitable economic resource. We discern some semiotic aspects of data-isation and monetization of digital language. In the digital language spaces dominated by algorithmic capitalism as an aspect of informationalism, signs are detached from their narrative function and temporal dimension, while referring only to other signs. We then explore touch on the question of speed and velocity, which define a new linguistic capitalism. Here, ‘fast language’ is a key element in the marketplace of digital language, both as content and as technology. With the current dominance of companies such as Google, such a study is significant, as it sheds light on the economy of language and linguistic capitalism in the current highly pervasive online context.