ABSTRACT
German politician Guido Westerwelle (1960-2016) told a British reporter at a press conference in Berlin that he would not answer any questions in English. The newly emerging global networks, economic and social, are only possible when people can communicate with each other, and the dominant vehicle for communication in most parts of the world today, the 'globalising language', is English. Competence in languages such as English and German is an economic resource for individuals living in the 'knowledge societies' of the twenty-first century. One indicator to measure wealth is to look at the gross national product (GNP) of economies, which is a broad measure of total economic activity and summarises the value of all finished goods and services produced in a year. Scientific and scholarly exchange has always had a transnational component. Researchers and academics communicate across geographical and linguistic borders, and most of them are able to read and write in more than just their own language.
