This book analyses the language that ordinary people employ when discussing money, debt and financial behaviour. In doing so, it addresses common underlying questions concerning definitions of money and value, and scrutinises how people construct, negotiate and articulate meaning in these domains.

Chapter 1:- Introduction: The View from the ground; Annabelle Mooney and Evi Sifaki.- I. Money and Childhood.- Chapter 2: Stories of value: The nature of money in three classic British picture books; Astrid Van den Bossche.- Chapter 3: The treatment of money and wealth in the Harry Potter series; Tanweer Ali and Eva Lebdušková.- II. Money and the Everyday.- Chapter 4: Money Talk at the Mass Observation Archive; Liz Moor.- Chapter 5: Snudging Cheapskates and Magnificent Profusion: The Conceptual Baggage of 'mean' and 'generous.'; Annabelle Mooney and Evi Sifaki.- Chapter 6: Neoliberalism in the academy: Have you drunk the Kool-Aid?; Liz Morrish.- Chapter 7: Falling Behind: Debtors' Emotional Relationships to Creditors; Anna Custers.- III. Money and the Media.- Chapter 8: The language of "Welfare Dependency" and "Benefit Cheats": Internalising and reproducing the hegemonic and discursive rhetoric of "benefit scroungers"; Chris Roberts.- Chapter 9: Does money talk equate to class talk?Audience responses to poverty porn in relation to money and debt; Laura L. Paterson, David Peplow and Karen Grainger.- Chapter 10: The Discourse of alternative credit: a multimodal critical examination of the Cash Converters mobile app; Gavin Brookes and Kevin Harvey.- IV. What is Money?.- Chapter 11: The Sociality of Debt: A Case Study of Kamba (Kenya) Conceptualisations of Borrowing and Lending; Froukje Krijtenburg.- Chapter 12: What is Money? Legal Language as Modern Day Alchemy; Kate Harrington.

This book analyses the language that ordinary people employ when discussing money, debt and financial behaviour. It documents and critiques this language from an array of disciplinary perspectives, with chapters on children’s books, government infomercials, television poverty porn, the emotional experience of being indebted, and more. In doing so, it addresses common underlying questions concerning definitions of money and value, and scrutinises how people construct, negotiate and articulate meaning in these domains. This wide-ranging edited collection will be of interest to students and scholars of linguistics, sociology, communication, literature and anthropology.

Compares the models with which lay individuals work with ‘official’ models of money and the economy Provides an important perspective on lay discourses and behaviours with money, something of great value to those who would encourage ‘good’ financial behaviour and economic literacy Makes clear that while money may be conceptualised as a thing it is rather an index of a range of other emotions, beliefs, relationships and social structures