Understanding the Financial Industry Through Linguistics: How Applied Linguistics Can Prevent Financial Crisis

Imagine a collection of villages all beset upon by monsters. One village defeats their monsters using silver bullets. They convince all surrounding villages that their solution should be the only standard. The next village uses silver bullets to repel the monsters but fail! Why? Because the first village was fighting werewolves, the second village was fighting vampires. This is our data challenge – recognizing not all problems are the same – and there are no single silver bullet solutions.

There are many communities within financial services, each with nuanced needs that require slightly different solutions to address what may look like the same problem. The financial services industry is unique for being based upon information and communication. It is the failure in understanding that multiple existing financial languages exist and pursuing interoperability that sits at the crux of financial crisis – not the lack of a single unified financial language.

This book is an essential read for any professional dealing with data and information challenges. The author presents a new, unique approach to broad industry issues, leveraging applied linguistics. They discuss how to break barriers that exist between language and data; the aim to make it easier for the financial industry (including regulators) to communicate – for the benefit of all investors. Unconventional in the cross-disciplinary pairing of applied linguistics and financial services, it is practical and intuitive in pursuing solutions. While focused on financial services, the approach is relevant for other industries that have similar challenges.