Central Banks and Coded Language: Risks and Benefits

by Elke Muchlinski

Overview

This book explores implications of the modern view of central banks rising from the proposition that words have no meaning beyond their use in a particular context and setting. It studies coded language to explain why a central bank's decisions and communicative interactions can't be devoted to a coded language which is an artificial language.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780230232280
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	05/03/2011
Edition description:	2011
Pages:	266
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

ELKE MUCHLINSKI, Economist and Philosopher, has held teaching positions at the Free University of Berlin, the University of Halle (2010-2011), University of Trier (2009) and University of Hamburg (summer term 2008).

Table of Contents

Dramatis Personae vii

Acknowledgements viii

Introduction 1

1 The Way Out of 'Monetary Mystique' 10

1.1 'Monetarist experiment' or 'smoke screen' 17

1.2 The new paradigm of the modern central bank 40

1.3 Monetary policy as a language analogy 59

2 A Conceptual Framework for Central Bank Communication 68

2.1 The information dimension 69

2.2 Constitutive process of information processing 83

2.3 The interaction dimension 90

2.3.1 The interdependence of structure and action 90

2.3.2 Understanding and judgment 102

2.3.3 The context dimension 121

2.3.4 Reflexive communication 125

3 Central Banking and Communication As a Function of Circumstance 131

4 Economics and Language 154

4.1 Economics, communications, and language 154

4.2 The constitutive role of language in economic models and description 159

4.3 Meaning, intention, and utterance 163

4.3.1 The speaker's intention 164

4.3.2 The principle of cooperation or postulates of conversations 170

4.3.3 The theory of 'implicature' 175

4.4 Formal language versus everyday language 185

4.5 The use of language as coordinative acting 189

5 Language, Expectations, and Circumstances 199

5.1 Benefits and risks of a coded language 203

5.2 Formal language as coded language 209

5.3 Meaning and understanding 213

6 Conclusion 224

Notes 226

Bibliography 231

Index 257