Jonathan Pool
Encyclopedia
Jonathan Pool, born 1942 in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, is a political scientist from the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. He works on the political and economic consequences of linguistic circumstances and language policy
Language policy
Many countries have a language policy designed to favour or discourage the use of a particular language or set of languages. Although nations historically have used language policies most often to promote one official language at the expense of others, many countries now have policies designed to...

.

Pool studied political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...

 in Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 between 1960 and 1964. He then joined the Peace Corps
Peace Corps
The Peace Corps is an American volunteer program run by the United States Government, as well as a government agency of the same name. The mission of the Peace Corps includes three goals: providing technical assistance, helping people outside the United States to understand US culture, and helping...

 and went to Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

, where he taught English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

. After his return he studied in Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

, where he graduated in 1968 and earned his PhD in 1971.

Pool worked at the universities of Chicago, New York (Stony Brook)
State University of New York at Stony Brook
The State University of New York at Stony Brook, also known as Stony Brook University, is a public research university located in Stony Brook, New York, on the North Shore of Long Island, about east of Manhattan....

, Washington (Seattle)
University of Washington
University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...

, Stanford
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 as well as in Mannheim
University of Mannheim
The University of Mannheim is one of the younger German universities. It offers Bachelor, Master, and PhD degrees.The University is mainly located in Mannheim’s palace the largest baroque palace in Germany. The whole city center of Mannheim is aligned symmetrically to the palace.About 800 scholars...

, Paderborn
University of Paderborn
The University of Paderborn in Paderborn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany was founded in 1972. 15,228 students were enrolled at the university as of December 2010....

, and Bielefeld
Bielefeld University
Bielefeld University is a university in Bielefeld, Germany. Founded in 1969, it is one of the country's newer universities, and considers itself a "reform" university, following a different style of organization and teaching than the established universities...

 in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. After 1996 he worked as a chief strategist
Strategic management
Strategic management is a field that deals with the major intended and emergent initiatives taken by general managers on behalf of owners, involving utilization of resources, to enhance the performance of firms in their external environments...

 for Centerplex, an enterprise in Tukwila, Washington, near Seattle. He now is president of Utilika Foundation.

Pool has always been impressed by the degree to which peoples' first language
First language
A first language is the language a person has learned from birth or within the critical period, or that a person speaks the best and so is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity...

 and linguistic knowledge influence their lives. When, as a nine-year-old, he had a friend whose parents had immigrated from Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

, he decided to learn Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

 while his friend learned English, for reasons of fairness. While teaching English in Turkey he was surprised to find how many people got their jobs on the basis of their knowledge of languages rather than of their professional skills. This influenced the choice of his research field; in 1981 he published a paper on the measurement of the consequences of linguistic discrimination. At that time he met Reinhard Selten
Reinhard Selten
-Life and career:Selten was born in Breslau in Lower Silesia, now in Poland, to a Jewish father, Adolf Selten, and Protestant mother, Käthe Luther. For his work in game theory, Selten won the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences...

, with whom he worked on the application of game theory
Game theory
Game theory is a mathematical method for analyzing calculated circumstances, such as in games, where a person’s success is based upon the choices of others...

 on problems of linguistic diversity. In 1991 he published a research paper proposing an economic compensation for the need to learn languages. This was an early form of the concept of a language tax
Language tax
The language tax is an economic concept proposed by the Belgian economist Philippe Van Parijs. It is intended to compensate countries with a less widespread language for their expenses for teaching and translation....

.
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