ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The social status associated with knowledge of a prestige language has been a major factor in language study for centuries, at least since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the era of the Grand Tour and of growing interest in reading and discussing the literature of Europe. Languages are again being presented as "good for the brain", but now on the basis of research suggesting bilinguals enjoy certain cognitive benefits. The book notes the growth of such cultural diplomacy from around 1900 onwards — both in bilateral assistantship schemes, and in the establishment of institutions. Britain's language learning is still perceived to be in crisis despite valiant efforts to promote languages in recent years, largely on the basis of the utility argument already despised by Rambeau in nineteenth–century America.
