10.54103/2036-461X/21516
Language has proven to be an important factor in film performance models, film finance considerations, and festival program selections. This essay uses multi-year global data sets (UN and supplementary databases) to analyse the relationship between the languages in which a film is produced and offered to cinemagoers on the one hand, and the co-production activities and dynamics which engender these patterns on the other hand. While European Commission policies, underlining the peculiar “linguistic polity”of the European Union, have been influential in the making of multilingual cinema productions motivated by subsidy rules, taxation and grant schemes, the pattern is rather global, reflecting uptake of cinematic product in many “territories” and the mobilization of film across national and regional language divides. The analysis shows that Europeanization has much wider implications beyond Europeans’ cultural consumption and identity construction, with Europe’s co-production policies casting a wider net of cultural resistance to Global Hollywood and its majority of English-language blockbusters as well as attending to language preservation in the European neighborhood in addition to Europe, where local and regional heritage policies are well instituted. The study examines the results against Abram de Swaan’s theory of the Global Language System, examining the Q-value theory to the language patterns emerging from film productions with multiple languages, which must be assessed in its relation to cultural consumption that may not follow from formal schooling and habitus formation.
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Q-value Theory
Cinema Co-production, Film Distribution in Multiple Languages and Inequality in the Global Language System: A Call for Robust Public Data
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Ann Vogel
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Yan, Jing, and Feng Yu. 2021. “Can International Co-production Promote the Performance of Cultural Products in the Global Markets? Evidence from the Chinese Movie Industry.” Review of World Economics 157 (4): 777–98. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10290-021-00415-4.
Cinema Co-production, Film Distribution in Multiple Languages and Inequality in the Global Language System: A Call for Robust Public Data
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                                                                                       Cinema Co-production,
                                                                                       Film Distribution in Multiple
                                                                                       Languages and Inequality in
                                                                                       the Global Language System:
                                                                                       A Call for Robust Public Data
                                                                                       Ann Vogel, University of Applied Sciences, Güstrow
                                                                                       Alan Shipman, Open University, Milton Keynes
                                                                                       Language has proven to be an important factor in film performance models, film finan-                     Keywords
                                                                                       ce considerations, and festival program selections. This essay uses multi-year global         Cinema Co-production
                                                                                       data sets (UN and supplementary databases) to analyse the relationship between the
                                                                                       languages in which a film is produced and offered to cinemagoers on the one hand, and
                                                                                                                                                                                       Multilingual Cinema
                                                                                       the co-production activities and dynamics which engender these patterns on the other           European Languages
                                                                                       hand. While European Commission policies, underlining the peculiar “linguistic polity”      Global Language System
                                                                                       of the European Union, have been influential in the making of multilingual cinema pro-               Q-value Theory
                                                                                       ductions motivated by subsidy rules, taxation and grant schemes, the pattern is rather                          DOI
                                                                                       global, reflecting uptake of cinematic product in many “territories” and the mobilization             https://doi.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License




                                                                                       of film across national and regional language divides. The analysis shows that Europe-        org/10.54103/2036-
                                                                                       anization has much wider implications beyond Europeans’ cultural consumption and
                                                                                                                                                                                             461X/21516
                                                                                       identity construction, with Europe’s co-production policies casting a wider net of cultu-
                                                                                       ral resistance to Global Hollywood and its majority of English-language blockbusters as
                                                                                       well as attending to language preservation in the European neighborhood in addition
                                                                                       to Europe, where local and regional heritage policies are well instituted. The study exa-
                                                                                       mines the results against Abram de Swaan’s theory of the Global Language System,
                                                                                       examining the Q-value theory to the language patterns emerging from film productions
                                                                                       with multiple languages, which must be assessed in its relation to cultural consumption
                                                                                       that may not follow from formal schooling and habitus formation.




                                                                                       INTRODUCTION: THE DOMINANCE
                                                                                        OF ENGLISH IN WORLD CINEMA
                                                                                          The cost of making a film means that, even if subsidized or sponsored, it
                                                                                       must usually find large audiences to generate a profit. Falling prices of camera
                                                                                       hardware and editing software have not eased the pressure, as low-budget
                                                                                       films must now compete with the no-budget films shot by gifted amateurs
                                                                                       and video shared for free. Digital and video piracy (UIS 2009; Hern 2021), and
                                                                                       negligible streaming royalties (Dalton and Associated Press 2023), add to the
                                                                                       challenge of keeping revenue above cost. Even Hollywood struggles to break
                                                                                       even on its box-office and streaming receipts within the US: often only the
                                                                                       addition of international sales makes American-made films profitable (Marvasti


                                                                                       Cinéma & Cie vol. 23 no. 41 2023 · ISSN 2036-461X                                                            57
     and Canterbery 2005). But the export of English-language films intensifies the
     competition for filmmakers in other languages. Even when these are spoken
     internationally, none matches the global reach of English, which has become
     “hyper-central” in terms of the proportion of humanity that can engage with it
     (de Swaan 2013) and the dispersion of cultures that find affinity with audiovisual
     work expressed in it.
        A survey of feature films conducted in 2005–2006 (UIS 2009) found that in the
     majority of the responding countries (n = 75) the top ten admissions were for
     film originating in the US. Although “local” languages were used for feature films
     in most of the African, Asian and Arab countries that had responded, 36% of the
     films were produced in English, which remains the most widespread language
     used. According to a cited study of the films exhibited in Nigerian cinemas
     (1997–2003), English was the primary language of production, accounting for
     44% of films, followed by Yoruba (31%), Hausa (24%) and Igbo (1%).
        For films shot in languages other than English, export—if achieved at all—is
     largely limited to countries that are economically and geographically proximate
     to each other. In 2005–2006, most foreign films in Switzerland were from France,
     Germany and the United Kingdom; in Malaysia, most were from Australia and
     China. The origin of foreign films was often related to language, such as in
     Austria, where most foreign films were from Germany, and in Morocco, where
     Egypt was the main source. The limitation of films’ travel distance in Europe,
     as well as in lower-income regions, suggests that both cultural proximity and
     restrictions to commercial distribution play a part (UIS 2009). In 2013, the
     most popular feature films were by the US majors, while “the distribution of
     feature films beyond the borders of the countries that produce them is a serious
     problem in regions such as Europe and Latin America” (UIS and Albornoz 2016,
     13). Whether due to cultural or market barriers, the “gravity model”—that
     successfully predicts most global goods and services trade flows falling rapidly
     with geographical distance (Tubadji and Webber 2023)—appears to apply with
     particular force to non-English film.
        This essay probes available data from the audiovisual policy domain (UIS 2009,
     2012, 2013; UIS and Albornoz 2016; UIS, Benhamou, and Peltier 2011) to examine
     filmmakers’ response to the unrelenting rise of English in global cinema. It asks
     whether co-production and other strategies to promote consumption of a film
     in more than one language can counter natural language erosion, especially
     where minority (or lesser used) languages are distribution strategy targets. We
     inspect a raw data set provided by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) on
     national film production by language of film, currently recorded yearly for 2007
     up to 2017 and publicly available as spreadsheet at www.uis.unesco.org. Other
     commonly data sources used in cinema research (e.g., IMDb or the European
     Audiovisual Observatory) are not considered as they lack sufficient information
     from which to derive any parameters for language distributions and—as in
     the case of European Council information—do not correspond with the world
     language system as a unit of analysis.



58                                               Vogel, Shipman, Cinema Co-production
WHY ENGLISH “HYPERCENTRALITY”
IS HARD TO SHAKE
  Language, as a communication tool, is a prototypical “network good”, its utility
increasing to each user as more people use it (Klemperer 2018). The voluntary
learning of English across multilingual states such as India and South Africa
before and even after they attained majority rule, and of Chinese around Asia
today, reflects these network externalities, which have also allowed a small
number of multinational channels (e.g., TikTok) to dominate the social media
space. Network effects have turned English into a “hyper-central” language (de
Swaan 2013), with a significant proportion of humanity forced to learn or at
least engage with it because of the associated opportunities for communication,
work, trade and travel.
  At the same time, national languages remain part of humanity’s cultural
wealth (Bair and Wherry 2011, 1). Much information, literature and other cultural
production contains (or is contained in) languages specific to one community or
region, and not easily translatable into others. It may be necessary to learn these
languages to appreciate and absorb the culture they contain (Alexander 2018).
The cultural wealth of the local language may be one reason why those who
are raised in it choose to stay within it, and not acquire a more widely spoken
or global language. Other reasons for staying monolingual, even in a language
with comparatively few users, are the cost and time of language acquisition
and the number of community members who are already multilingual and can
translate for those who are not.
  Language groups typically consist of a core of monolingual users and
multilingual users. The bridging and brokering functions of multilingual
speakers are key to establishing the centrality of a language (de Swaan 2013). As
a result, the exchange of texts (culture) between the major and minor language
groups proceeds on highly unequal terms (de Swaan 2020). Multilingual agency
as one social form of “brokerage” (Stovel, Golub, and Meyersson Milgrom 2011)
has received little attention. Backed up by national and colonial policies, which
encourage, demotivate or constrain individual and family choices, monolingual
competency has typically been promoted, while nationalism still had to develop
pathways for brokerage, mainly doing so through specialists as in diplomacy,
international trade, and conflict negotiations. Competition among indigenous
languages also seems to favor persistence of colonial languages formerly
introduced (see also Laitin 1988). Entrepreneurs present individual efforts to
bridge into other economic spaces (Tubadji and Webber 2023; Selmier and Oh
2013).
  De Swaan (2013) models the global language dynamics by drawing on a
language’s communicative potential, assuming people adopt, use and abandon
language(s) based on a set of preferences apart from the network propensity
of languages to connect speakers. Sociologists of language designate a
minority language group where the language in question is specific, relates to a


Cinéma & Cie vol. 23 no. 41 2023 · ISSN 2036-461X                                     59
     recognizable culture, and has little relevance for everyday usage in that group.
     The relative lack of ideological, institutional and political structures encourages
     the relative significance of minority language grouping (Nelde et al. 1996, 1).1
     De Swaan argues that a person picks a language X over another based on
     the perception that it will add value to her communication repertoire. This so-
     called communication value Q (“Q-value”) is formally derived from the person’s
     perception of the proportion of existing language speakers (prevalence P) as
     well as the proportion of multilingual speakers, which identifies the centrality
     of the language (centrality or C). (In this way multilingual speakers are counted
     twice, both as monolinguals in P and multilinguals in C.)

                                        QX = PX CX

        Since the Q-value derives from the repertoire of languages held by a speaker,
     Q measures the language-learning cost that people are willing to incur.
     When speakers of a language X learn the language Y, both X and Y gain in
     the numbers of multilingual speakers. But when within one speaker group a
     certain number of multilinguals exist, the wish to learn that other language
     may go down (de Swaan 2020, 2013). This perceived lesser worth may be due
     to diminished competition value (an advantage to speak X in addition to Y) or
     cost-saving provision of bridging services (such as easy translation tools or
     low-cost providers). Learning English en masse in China, for example, results
     in perceived lesser urgency by others to learn Chinese (see footnote 8 in de
     Swaan 2020, 208), creating less demand for Chinese language instruction.
        New technologies for moving artists and artwork around the world, along
     with reproductions of their work, have resulted in culture—and with it,
     language—becoming globally more accessible to consumers independent of
     socioeconomic status. While some artists can survive as “big fish” in the small
     pond of their native language, this is increasingly a low-profit option, despite
     being low-cost and low-risk (de Swaan 2020, 210). Local-language artists face
     competitive pressure from imports that may appeal to the same audience, even
     if embedded in a different culture and language, with the competition increasing
     as more of their audience responds to pressure to get familiarized with the
     more “supercentral” foreign languages such as Arabic, Russian or Swahili (de
     Swaan 2013). Artists can turn this threat into an opportunity by starting to
     work in a more widely spoken language or redesigning their work to be more
     translatable and cross-culturally appealing.
        Competition has intensified because the most successful producers of artwork
     in the larger and more linguistically unified countries can often still recover


     1         An example told by Vanhaelemeesch (2021, 171): “In most Central American
     countries, there is a large and diverse presence of indigenous peoples whose ance-
     stry predates the Spanish colonization of the Americas. In Guatemala alone, there are
     23 officially recognised languages spoken, but all educational programmes are held in
     Spanish, limiting the possibilities for people who live outside the urban centres.”



60                                                Vogel, Shipman, Cinema Co-production
their costs, and make a profit, just by selling to their domestic market. They
can then make additional profit from any sales to foreign markets, even if these
are “dumped” at a price below cost, as has become typical for TV series (de
Swaan 2020; Chalaby 2016). When producers of artwork in linguistically smaller
markets respond by going outward, making their products more exportable,
the international competition becomes even more intense. Independent cinema
(Perren 2012) is one example of the problem text creators of small language
communities have. Artists must choose between creating for a limited domestic
audience, with competition initially low but potentially rising due to foreign
imports, or trying to gain attention by creating for those in a larger or major
language. They can “be a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big pond”
(de Swaan 2020, 210). “Big fish” text creators tend to do well where centrality C
is lower and P very high.
   The production decisions of filmmakers and cinema distributors are shaped by
knowing that consumers have made “sunk cost” investments in the capacity to
receive a particular language; and that, overall, social institutions help maintain
those competencies, since consumers have invested to this extent in the cultural
norms and assumptions associated with that language. In an original study
of early foreign engagement with China (Selmier and Oh 2013), the authors
show that “pidgin” forms of the language were adequate for commodity trade,
whereas fuller language acquisition was needed for the investment of larger
sums of capital, which required an ability to understand contracts and the social
norms underlying them. The “hyper-centrality” of English today is reinforced by
its association with diverse cultures: investment in English “buys” access to a
wider cultural range than most other languages (Mair 2013; de Swaan 2020).
   Real-world developments add challenges to the theorizing of the Global
Language System (de Swaan 2020; Vogel 1995), as the control of language
competency training today shifts away from national education policies toward
the digital economy and artificial intelligence (AI). This greatly eases translations,
albeit not without weakening the bond to the exclusivity of a national language
and its adjacent cultural markets, which is also intermediated by position in
the world language system and the dynamic global economy. Translation (for
books see Heilbron 1999) can be regarded as a measure of domestic retaliation
against foreign imports, and as trade-promoting when successfully spreading
text as export away from where it has been produced. Text creators can also be
or become multilingual or acquire translation of their product. Increasingly low-
cost or no-cost technology often expands both text creators’ ability to expand
attention for their products and their dependency on translators and a foreign-
language market corner in the destination country. Cultural exchanges broadly
encourage the tendency for producers and consumers to learn the major
language, as do smaller-community language users.
   De Swaan highlights the self-reinforcing advantages a larger language
confers on its users, referring to “the profits of occupying a particular place in
the system that is not of their own making” as a position rent (de Swaan 2020,
211). We may restate this as a natural resource rent, a premium comparable to


Cinéma & Cie vol. 23 no. 41 2023 · ISSN 2036-461X                                        61
     that enjoyed by owners of prime quality land. He sees “linguistic justice” as the
     sum of efforts and policies to compensate “the inequities of the World Language
     System” (de Swaan 2020, 211), while stressing the paradoxical situation of
     English: the more languages are diversified, as in Southeast and South Asia,
     South Africa, Nigeria, and India, the more English will be spoken (Mair 2013;
     Swaan 2020). Simultaneously, variety in smaller-language communities
     remains, with people not discarding their home language while learning English
     and joining its global speaker community. Threats to their collective cultural
     capital come from speakers’ inability to decode their own language, which
     most affects indigenous communities. Unlike so-called minority groups—such
     as Frisians in Europe (Williams 2002)—indigenous groups face problems from
     orally transmitted knowledge and financial resource strain which they need to
     overcome to rescue language as intergenerational cultural wealth (de Swaan
     2020, 212).
       Policy research analysis on Europe’s diversity policy almost three decades
     ago identified “language prestige” as a motivational force,2 finding that “the
     vast majority of language groups suffer not only from a lack of support [by
     state and/or civil society] but sometimes from open hostility to their existence
     and activities”. Demographic size rarely acts as a shield from language use
     erosion, which can even affect severely “some of Europe’s largest language
     groups” (Nelde et al. 1996, 8). The report found success where language groups
     carved out economic niches such as local tourism, rather than general market
     integration in the EU, as commanded by Union accession policy (Nelde et al.
     1996, 8).



     SURVIVAL STRATEGIES
     FOR NONENGLISH FILM
       Turning to cinema, there is political resistance to the decline of minority
     languages, especially when their speakers associate displacement by a
     majority language with loss of autonomy to majority rule. This resistance
     is stiffened by language being the vehicle, and storage unit, for much of the
     culture and tradition that binds a community. Governments respond to these
     pressures by subsidizing the production and replication of literature and film
     in minority languages and promoting vehicles such as film festivals to support
     the cause (Elsaesser 2005; Falicov 2016; De Valck 2007; Bisschoff 2009). State
     subsidy is now a principal survival strategy for non-English language film, the
     costs of which are often repaid by the preservation of cultural value, with the
     added political appeal of gaining support from strategically important linguistic


     2        The Euromosaic Report includes only European autochthonous language
     groups, i.e. groups laying claim to a territorial base that links language and society. This
     excludes, for example, languages like Romani and Hebrew (Nelde et al. 1996, 14).



62                                                    Vogel, Shipman, Cinema Co-production
minorities. A film showing in Urdu as well as Hindi, for example, may be adding
value to the language perception per se but also to its speakers—if the effect
is long-lasting, or if it keeps expanding, as when Urdu became the standard
additional language to any Hindi-language film. In India, where states support
film industries associated with minority language groups, only 2% of films are
shot in English (UIS and Albornoz 2016) despite its being widely spoken. India
produced 1,724 films in 2013, a growth of 66% since 2005 and understood as
a reemergence of regional film production for several language markets. In
Nigeria, Yoruba and Hausa are supported through the film industry and its
popular video format (Austen and Saul 2010).
    Beyond subsidy, the “multilingual” film uses audio content in several languages
or dialects (Chan 2008).3 This is highlighted by the 2005–2006 data on film
production (UIS 2009) with information on 38 countries, identifying 44 distinct
languages. More than one-half of these countries indicated more than one
language of film production (range of languages 1–6). Among these, only half of
the films identified in the survey were truly multilingual, as distinct from multi-
language production for distribution and consumption in several languages.
UIS data includes, in its “multilingual” count, films made in countries where
more than one language is widely spoken. This may exaggerate the number
of authentically multilingual films intended for, or capable of, international
distribution.
    A more common route to new audiences appears to be the “multi-language”
film, which may be shot in only one language but is designed for markets abroad.
Translation may be achieved by technological means such as re-recording,
dubbing or subtitling; or by film-making techniques such as visual effects and
simplified dialogue, all of which facilitate understanding by foreign-language
audiences. But these approaches often strip the film of its more linguistically
sophisticated and culturally specific elements—frustrating the aim of using film
to preserve a region’s cultural uniqueness, and promote its understanding by
an international audience. In fact, writers and filmmakers in most non-English
languages seeking international sales have to keep their “language intensity”
low, so that viewers can get value from the film with minimal knowledge of
its language. They may also have to limit their “culture intensity”, focusing on
norms and styles that are most easily understood by other cultures. This drives
the use of cartoons, visual imagery, or simple scripts that can be translated or
subtitled easily, when a product is intended for export, at times becoming a new
global cultural phenomenon. Makers of films and other products in English can
afford to be more “language intensive” and appropriative from different cultures,
because of the number of people worldwide who have invested in English’s
“hyper-centrality”. This raises the question whether cinema co-production can
stem the inequality in the global language system.


3         As confusingly used in UIS technical papers and as addressed in this essay.



Cinéma & Cie vol. 23 no. 41 2023 · ISSN 2036-461X                                       63
     COPRODUCTION: A EUROPEAN FORMAT
     AFFECTING THE LANGUAGE SYSTEM
        International co-production (Council of Europe 1992), linking production teams
     and locations in more than one country, can be an effective way of extending
     a film’s appeal (Lim 2006; Yan and Yu 2021). As well as combining talent from
     different countries on the production side, before and behind the camera, it can
     extend the range of visual and cultural influences that may draw an audience
     in. Co-production, including both trade bloc initiatives and national promotion
     schemes (e.g., for Japan see Shackleton 2007; UNIJAPAN 2009), may also
     enable distributors to break through cultural trade barriers, when governments
     impose quotas or local content requirements on imported film (Hong and Sun
     1999; Parc 2020). A study by Kanzler in 2008 (cited in UIS and Albornoz 2016,
     10–11) suggests a number of results regarding European co-productions (2001–
     2007): that their release is on average in twice as many markets as the national
     counterparts, that their revenue is on average 2.78 times higher than for those
     counterparts and that the “international market provides 41% of co-production
     revenue compared to 15% for national production” (UIS and Albornoz 2016, 11).
     This final figure implies that more profit is made abroad, or that co-productions
     are not primarily for the national audience to consume, representing an export
     good that attains prestige only abroad (Wu 2007).
        Survey results (UIS 2009) reveal that international co-production of films
     is mainly a phenomenon involving big producers in developed countries,
     particularly the EU. In 2006 France, Germany, Italy and Spain were the biggest
     coproducers of films, with rates ranging from 47% to 78% of annual feature
     film production, contrasting with China’s co-production rate of 14%. This can
     be explained in part by cooperation agreements (Council of Europe 1992).
     The European Convention on Cinematographic Co-production encourages the
     development of European coproduced film.4 Europe’s major policy instrument
     and fund (Eurimages 2021) distributes soft loans and subsidies for international
     co-productions as well as subsidies that also include the promotion of exhibition,
     targeting mainly features and independent filmmaking through cooperation
     agreements with various festivals and film markets, while also promoting
     gender equality in the film industry (Loist and Prommer 2019).5
        The aforementioned convention formulates the broader terms for regulating
     and overseeing the conduct of business regarding bilateral and multilateral
     co-production based on the Council’s goal to “achieve greater unity” between
     the Member States, to “safeguard and promote the ideals and principles which


     4          Film is a “work of any length or medium, in particular cinematographic works
     of fiction, cartoons and documentaries” (Council of Europe 1992).
     5          The Eurimages fund’s overseers are the 39 national representatives on the
     Board of Management; the top feature producing countries (France, Germany, and Italy)
     are permanent members on the highest executive committee.



64                                                 Vogel, Shipman, Cinema Co-production
form their common heritage”, defending freedom of creation and freedom of
expression as well as “cultural diversity of the European countries” as one of
the goals of the European Cultural Convention (CETS 220 1992, 2017, 1). This
path appears as different from domestic policies in many multilingual countries
in the Global South, where historically consumption in several languages is
necessary to balance communal interests and to reach speakers. The same
goes for region-spanning languages, e.g. Egypt’s central role in Arabic-spoken
cinema. In Europe, co-production policy also aims to reduce the influence of
English-spoken blockbuster cinema product (Stringer 2003) which nonetheless
enjoys robust success (de Grazia 2005).
   Funding eligibility in Eurimages involves rules on the number and diversity of
the coproducing agents, rules defining minimum and maximum contributions of
total production cost of a work, rules assigning rights to the coproducers, rules
on national employment and national location for production of the work, and
financial rules. Co-production status can be granted to works that signal a real
“recognition as a national work in the country” and help promote the European
identity through co-production. Export trade is regulated as to quota attribution,
language of the film and festival participation. Article 14 on languages stipulates
that “the competent authority of a Party”, which is the overseeing authority
for a co-producing party in question, “may demand from the co-producer […]
a final version of the cinematographic work in one of the languages of that
Party”, while Article 15 on festivals stipulates that co-produced works “shall be
shown at international festivals by the Party where the majority co-producer is
established, or, in the case of equal financial participation, by the Party which
provides the director” (Council of Europe 1992, 5). In 2006, the EU ratified the
UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity.
   In practice, a co-production can have two or more “nationalities” so that tax
incentives and other public support can be picked up in more than one country.
More recent reports (UIS and Albornoz 2016) confirm activities concentrating
on western Europe—with France ranking top, its co-productions involving
Belgium, Germany and Italy. Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands are also co-
production leaders despite not having a large production base. Belgium’s 2013
co-production share, for example, was 76%, the highest among top coproducers
in 2013. Ireland, following with 62%, also likely benefitted from a tax advantage
for co-production location.
   The growth in films co-produced between Global South and EU countries has
remained “modest”, even though such films have generally been successful
and facilitated EU-market access and increased attendance for co-productions
(Vogel 2012; Falicov 2016). The EU has supported external co-productions, e.g.,
to address the absence of public funds in African countries. As with strategic
partnerships and joint ventures in other industries, filmmakers from the Global
South are incentivized to enter co-production with EU (or US) filmmakers by
the prospect of access to finance, distribution, technology and training that are
concentrated in the higher-income countries. But these potential gains may be
outweighed by the “heavy administrative burden, possible impediments to the


Cinéma & Cie vol. 23 no. 41 2023 · ISSN 2036-461X                                     65
     development of African film production companies, the dominant influence of
     European taste and the homogenisation of production” as observed by Cocq
     in 2006 (cited in UIS 2009, 5). In the survey, 70% of countries that produced
     less than 30 films also had a co-production share below 40%, which is likely to
     relate to the lack of resources to produce film according to traditional industry
     conventions in the first place.
       European co-production policy can be interpreted as an attempt to tax away
     the extra profit that producers gain by adopting a dominant or “hyper-central”
     language. The position rent attached to this (de Swaan 2020) can be measured,
     for example, as the box-office revenue that film-makers in the UK or US can
     gain by distributing their film to other English-speaking countries outside the
     respective domestic market. If the costs of production have been fully recovered
     via domestic sales, any additional revenue from exports counts as economic
     rent. The scope for foreign sales depends on the extent to which the producing
     country’s language is used or understood abroad. Effectively there will be big
     rents to US-made films, and Indian films shot in English; much smaller rents to
     Chinese films shot in Mandarin or Japanese films in Japanese. The incentive for
     co-productions to break into new languages rises as the centrality of the home
     language falls.



     MEASURING LANGUAGE DIVERSITY
     IN CINEMA AND ITS LIMITATIONS
       Diversity in cinema productions relies on many different factors, including the
     ability of producers to work with filmmakers and actors from different places, the
     number of films released and the level of technical standardization. As argued by
     UNESCO researchers, a strong definition of cultural diversity is needed because
     the meaning has been “analytically neglected” and in need of “systematic or
     robust understandings” (UIS, Benhamou, and Peltier 2011, 11). They see diversity
     in terms of two complementary dimensions, where the first involves the criteria
     that apply to individuals, such as their choice of genre or filmmaker profile, and
     the second relates to more material criteria that apply to products, like the
     nationality of a film. These human and material criteria may be linked, and while
     some aspects are easily quantifiable, others are more qualitative (UIS, Benhamou,
     and Peltier 2011). The authors associate diversity in cultural-economic goods
     with “industrial structures and in the governance of companies” in the creative-
     cultural industries, concluding that governments should be targeting the growth
     of SME (small and medium-sized enterprises) directly or indirectly, including
     subsidies (UIS, Benhamou, and Peltier 2011, 11; on subsidization of film business
     see the debate in Parc 2020).
       One useful measure appearing in other cultural policy papers (UIS 2012) is
     that of internal and external language diversity. Internal diversity denotes that
     the languages of domestic film production mirror the linguistic characteristics of



66                                               Vogel, Shipman, Cinema Co-production
the country, whereas external diversity observes the use of foreign languages in
domestic film production. Production and consumption of multilingual (or multi-
language) films may indicate both internal and external diversity. This measure
concerns attributes of cultural-economic goods rather than linguistic properties,
such as for example the notion of the “distance between two languages”
(Ginsburgh and Weber 2011) or the proportion of language speaker groups (de
Swaan 2013).
   These linguistics-focused analyses focus on language diversity, whereas UIS
explorations have sought to observe diversity on many dimensions. For example,
a 2014 survey of UIS feature film production in 2012 and 2013 (UIS and Albornoz
2016) with data for 97 countries (22% of the data being estimates rather than
national-government information) defines audiovisual diversity as diversity in
sources (content producers, distributors and the diversity of firms’ personnel in
the sector), diversity in and of feature film (diverse genre, gender/ethnic diversity
of people making the films; diversity of ideas in feature films); and diversity of
audience exposure to feature films, “distribution of audiences” and content
diversity. As the report notes, “contents should mirror the multiplicity of groups
co-existing in a given society [..] and echo the expression of foreign cultures”; they
should secure that consumers have audiovisual choices, create and disseminate
audiovisual content (UIS and Albornoz 2016, 6).
   These discussions direct attention at shortcomings in the data and the conceptual
approaches related to the important feature of language in cultural-economic
production, including feature co-production. The UIS survey was designed to
ensure more comparability “and better quality data in the field of cultural statistics”
in the light of changes to film industries in “certain developing countries” (UIS
2009, 1). While raw data have been added, now presenting information on 2007–
2017 for a great array of countries, it still remains the most detailed comparative
survey of language in film production to date whose potential for research with
publicly accessible data remains unlocked. While fuller assessment cannot be
given here, a few further observations critical of the range of possible observation
and measurement biases that need to be addressed shall be given.
   For example, a reported measure of distance (vs linguistic disparity) may be
whether the language is spoken in a neighboring country. Finnish is a prime
example as it is very dissimilar to Swedish on linguistic diversity measures, such
as the Dyen matrix (concept discussion in UIS, Benhamou, and Peltier 2011).
Producing films in Swedish, Estonian, and English in addition to 62% in Finnish, films
can essentially be exports to neighboring countries, while English may be for the
EU market. This may relate to cultural and regional proximity but not to linguistic
similarity (UIS and Albornoz 2016). Intriguingly, the notion of the multilingual film
may be unsuitable in economic research because in each market where it sells,
i.e. competes with other goods, it enters the marketplace as “monolingual” rather
than retaining linguistic diversity. To use the same regional example, a Finnish
co-production showing in Swedish in Sweden is not competing on the Finnish-
language attribute. A film can also succeed in one language and not in another,
which is not the same as saying it can succeed in one country but not in another.


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     Truly multilingual films essentially require a multilingual speaker competence,
     which makes them unattractive for many film-distribution territories, including the
     profitable US American theatre screen. US majors “operate in coordinated fashion
     in foreign markets” which curbs local production and independent distribution,
     leading to narrowing diversity of feature film, in relation to number of screening
     slots in the domestic theatres of those countries and the dynamics surrounding
     pricing and admissions cost (UIS and Albornoz 2016, 13).
        Marked shortcomings include the persisting fact that most UIS data still
     come from the Global North-countries and here also from the core of Europe
     and Northern America. The 2005–2006 data exemplify this imbalance, showing
     a coverage rate of 88% for Europe and North America, 54% for Asia and 45% for
     the Arab world. Inspected at the national level, this shows a “development bias”,
     as data majority comes from more developed countries. Looking across the data
     supply, the monitoring of the UIS data reflects macro-socioeconomic inequality,
     the more recent diversity likely resulting from co-production.
        Among the available data, some entries of countries and languages in which
     films were produced do not give the number of films, except for a total annual
     country figure. There are three years of Czech Republic data (171 films in total),
     one year of Kazakhstan data (11 films), one year of Togo data (16 films), two
     Mozambique years (54 films), 2 years of Madagascar data (87 films), and two
     years of Netherlands or Dutch data (174 films) which were not shown by language
     specifics. The vacant category of “Other languages” is a further obstacle to precise
     diversity measurement. It potentially conceals events that could add to those
     “supercentral” and “hyper-central” languages which may help in corroborating
     assumptions about the tendency for English to prevail not just in the context of
     cultural diversity policy instruments but also perhaps because of it.
        Another major methodological problem is transparency in enumeration of
     works, preventing effective statistical error calculation. For example, there are
     no entries for Poland and Germany, which would have had national production
     during 2007–2017. This does not mean that there are no films produced in Polish
     or German: in a Belarus-recorded film made in 2009 in German, Polish, and
     Russian, or in many Austrian and Swiss films in this dataset those languages
     emerge, albeit as minority effects. Similarly, data from the now large producer
     China are not included, except for productions in Macao SAR. Hong Kong, with
     an old and prestigious film industry, is also omitted. While no Afghanistan data
     are listed, a film made in Great Britain in 2014 is produced in Dari, Afghanistan’s
     major language (local Persian); and there are many others where Dari is included
     in the multiple-language set.
        The simple measures of language diversity in UIS reports are not theory-driven
     despite the obvious social science interest in cultural diversity and inequality.
     Cinema language data can therefore not be approached by primarily adding up
     language counts for a film, as relative impacts from language attributes in their
     real-world effect through distribution and consumption by speaker groups differ
     in decisive ways that theory aims to model. With more enhanced data, language
     diversity could be measured using comparable indicators to those developed



68                                                Vogel, Shipman, Cinema Co-production
in economics for the distance between product categories or the distribution of
market shares.



CONCLUSION AND FUTURE RESEARCH
  In this essay we introduced the study of cinema language pertaining to its
importance to the global language system and to film production, exploring
UNESCO’s UIS dataset and related staff reports. Beyond the more technical
papers there has been scant attention by researchers—despite the importance
of language diversity as good protected through cinematic works and its wider
role in the survival of languages, and despite its significance as a film factor that
drives commercial release strategy and consumption choices. There remains a
need to show that public measures such as co-production, as part of “cultural
governmentality”-driven agendas (Reckwitz 2017), actually have the intended
social consequences such as the prospering of languages and communities
that maintain them, and that cultural diversity and expressivity policies are
worthwhile taxpayer-money spend on cultural economies like cinema.
  With the original theory of the Global Language System (de Swaan 2020)
we aim to show that language, proposed as a hyper-collective good, is a
network good affording position rents. Only when “other-language proficiency”
expands to a point where speakers move toward that other language (or other
languages), can the network benefits be challenged (de Swaan 2020, 211).
English as “hyper-central” cultural text influences people’s language usage and
cultural consumption and also serves as status marker, conferring difference in
labor markets in non-English speaking language communities.
  Today’s lesser central languages struggle to survive the domination by
“hyper-central” and “supercentral” languages and to maintain intergenerational
transmission. Additional erosion of minority languages emerges from the
“march” of images as global symbolic brokers of the “iconic turn”, able to
pass by the boundaries which texts provide by image as an affordance. This
“stab in the back” by (other) culture increases through yet another threat, the
bundle of programming languages known as “coding”, which has made its
way into research logics and communal expressions regardless of natural-
language differences. Against these, communal efforts to mobilize around
traditions of culture and language, and state efforts to assist these according
to national policy ideas, may also weaken—unless they may be “enriched” or
“museumalized” (Vogel and Shipman 2023; Boltanski and Esquerre 2020).
  Co-production studies are difficult to perform empirically due to methodological
constraints emanating from data collection efforts that mostly remain
incomplete for such a highly complex creative good as cinema. Overall, the UIS
reports and exploratory data analysis provide first clues about the inequality
that cultural diversity instruments cannot fend off easily. More research and
more sophisticated statistical analysis are needed, as are resources for the
provision of robust public data to make such analyses worthwhile.


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