Research Companion to Language and Country Branding brings together entirely new interdisciplinary research conducted by scholars working on various sociolinguistic, semiotic, anthropological and discursive analytical aspects of country branding all over the world.

Branding is a process of identity construction, whereby countries gain visibility and put themselves on the world map as distinctive entities by drawing on their history, culture, economy, society, geography, and their people. Through branding, countries aim not only at establishing their uniqueness but also, and perhaps most importantly, at attracting tourism, investments, high quality human capital, as well as at forging financial, military, political and social alliances. Against this backdrop, this volume explores how countries and regions imagine and portray others and themselves in terms of gender, ethnicity, and diversity today as well as the past. In this respect, the book examines how branding differs from other, related policies and practices, such as nation building, banal nationalism, and populism.

This volume is an essential reference for students, researchers, and practitioners with an interest in country, nation, and place branding processes.

Irene Theodoropoulou is Associate Professor of Sociolinguistics at Qatar University. Her current research interests lie at the intersection of Modern Greek and Arabic sociolinguistics, intercultural communication and discourse analysis with politics, architecture, communication studies and sports. Her geographical areas of interest include primarily Greece and the State of Qatar. She is the author of Sociolinguistics of Style and Social Class in Contemporary Athens (2014), and her most recent publications include journal articles in Language Policy, Sociolinguistic Studies, Lingua, Journal of Arabian Studies, Discourse & Society and Visual Communication. Currently, she is the Lead PI of an Impact Grant, funded by Qatar University, on sports-related branding.

Johanna Tovar, née Woydack, is Assistant Professor at WU (Vienna University of Economics and Business) in the Department of Foreign Language Business Communication. Prior to moving to Austria, she was a postdoctoral fellow at City University Hong Kong. She received her PhD in Sociolinguistics from King's College London and holds a master's degree in Anthropology from the London School of Economics. She has done ethnographic fieldwork in a variety of organizations and workplaces, including call centers in Europe and Asia, pertaining to issues such as standardization, text trajectories, invisible work, resistance and compliance, monitoring, and migration. Her monograph Linguistic Ethnography of a Multilingual Call Center was published in 2019. Her most recent publications have appeared in journals such as Language in Society, the International Journal of Business Communication, English for Specific Purposes, and Sociolinguistic Studies.