ABSTRACT
Developments in philosophy and literary theory have begun to alert economists to the significance of language. In problematizing the role of language as a means of communicating ideas, conducting arguments and describing the empirical world, such developments have initiated a wide-ranging debate across disparate academic disciplines. This has resulted in an acknowledgement of the literariness of many forms of academic endeavour, and the importance of rhetoric in the process of academic argument and debate. Within economics, these developments have stimulated a new interest in language, with different approaches emphasizing rhetoric, hermeneutics, literary theory, discourse analysis and constructivism.1
