YOUR LANGUAGE OR MINE? THE NONCOMMUNICATIVE BENEFITS OF LANGUAGE SKILLS
研究了在加泰罗尼亚双语社会中，语言技能除了沟通功能外，还能通过影响婚姻选择带来非沟通收益，对政策制定者和关注社会融合的学者有参考价值。
Do languages matter beyond their communicative benefits? We explore the potential role of preferences over the language of use, theoretically and empirically. We focus on Catalonia, a bilingual society where everyone is fully proficient in Spanish, to isolate linguistic preferences from communicative benefits. Moreover, we exploit the language‐in‐education reform of 1983 to identify the causal effects of language skills. Results indicate that the policy change has improved the Catalan proficiency of native Spanish speakers, which in turn increased their propensity to find Catalan‐speaking partners. Hence, the acquisition of apparently redundant language skills has reduced endogamy.