Abstract Summary
Departing from the historical context of partitioning home language and society language in Denmark, and through a study of children’s and youths’ mediating roles in everyday language practices within homes and in relation to Danish society, the present paper illustrates a nuanced picture of shifts in home language policy.
Abstract :
Federal Reserve Communication of Economic Expectations
One tool the Federal Reserve uses to manage the public’s expectations about the economy during times of economic crisis is external communication. Chairmen like Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke have argued it is the signal or message of a change in economic policy that causes policy makers, journalists, and securities traders to act (Bernanke, 2014, Yellen, 2014).
Yet communication utilized as a monetary policy tool by the Federal Reserve has a relatively short history. While the President’s ability to set policy and shape public opinion on matters of the economy has been well documented (e.g., Wood, 2007a; Wood, 2007b), research on the Federal Reserve as a policy maker and opinion leader is relatively unstudied despite its important role in setting monetary policy (Hubbard & O’Brien, 2014). This is unsurprising given the Federal Reserve’s relatively short history of using communication as monetary policy tool; indeed, the Federal Reserve Chairman did not give a press conference until 2011 (Holmes, 2014).
Therefore, to understand how the Federal Reserve communicatively constructs economic policy, an examination of both the communicative style and language choices by Federal Reserve chairmen will offer insight into the ways that they, as leaders and spokespersons of the Federal Reserve, frame economic realities. I contend that an effect of these frames results in the need for stakeholders to manage uncertainty about the direction of the U.S. and global economy in both a proactive and reactive manner.
As such, it is possible to study the Federal Reserve’s framing of economic realities using discourse analysis. This manuscript examines the ways that the complexity and tone of the Federal Reserve’s language, as manifested through Federal Reserve Chairman, are used by the Federal Reserve to constitute economic policy and the impact of these frames on stakeholders and market watchers.
