Languages for Special Purposes in a Multilingual, Transcultural World

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Abstract on Marlene Miglbauer’s article: “What research can tell us about how best to prepare business students for the multilingual workplace”

A large number of employees interact on a daily basis with colleagues with whom they don’t share their mother tongue. Today there are a lot of multilingual teams as a result of the increased mobility of workers and the internationalisation of companies.

In Europe English is mostly chosen as the common or corporate language in business. But even though English has acquired this status, the daily activity in the workplace is reflected in the language choice for work purposes and negotiated in everyday interactions.

This paper explores what communicative challenges employees face when working in a foreign language. English and other languages are used in very specific communicative situations.

Based on these findings, implications for teaching English to future employees in multilingual workplaces is an important topic for discussing. Over the last few decades, new kinds of tasks and especially linguistic skills are demanded and expected from employees in multilingual workplaces. The nature of business has changed in many ways. Nowadays employees need to be fluent in more than one language and taking Europe into consideration English has become the most prominent one. Communication skills in English are essential in everyday work life. This leads to consider the importance of teaching to business students and also adapt their curriculums to workplaces in the real world.

officeEnglish as the international language in European business settings

The Eurobarometer reports that 25% of the respondents use English daily at work and English is also regarded as the most useful language for one’s personal career. The prevalence of English has not been ignored by researchers. Relevant studies analyse business meetings with multicultural participation, analysing the employees’ perception of working in English and their experience, and also focusing on how language is used to construct business relationships and corporate culture. In this context English functions as a tool, as a means to facilitate contact and build relationships which may be essential for the company’s daily business.

In spite of English being used for work contracts, technical programmes and applications, internal meetings and communication, some documents point out that not all communication takes place exclusively in English. It happens that people don’t speak English in the office if they have the same mother tongue. This means that the local language, which is the easiest language option, has an impersonal function of showing solidarity.

Whereas English is used to communicate with colleagues in other subsidiaries all over Europe, depending on the history and the proximity of languages, regional or “mixed” languages can also replace English as the lingua franca, such as in the Yugoslavian successor states and in Scandinavia.

Main challenges

In spite of the fact that most communication in English in international business in Europe occurs between non-native speakers of English or speakers who use it as a second or third language (the barrier and the “fear” is always bigger when talking to a native speaker), employees encounter challenges in the area of vocabulary, phonology and especially the use of English for specific functions and special terminology.

To summarize, challenges occur and it is necessary to know which aspects of language teaching should be considered and included in instruction.

Which skills are necessary for business students to have in order to stand the test of working in a multinational company? There are four broad areas that seem to be the most important ones: diversity, written skills, general business terminology and interpersonal communication skills.

Regarding written skills, business correspondence in the form of different types of emails is highly relevant. On the other hand, having a high level of fluency in oral communication has been also stated as one of the most essential skill by quite a few studies, concerning work-related oral communication such as meetings, teleconferencing, negotiations and presentations, as well as more private-related communication such as small talk in the office, pre-meetings, networking or dining out. All of them are important skills to acquire and consequently need to be focused on in teaching.

This paper was presented at the 19th European Symposium on Languages for Special Purposes, that took place on 8-10 July 2013 in Vienna.

Click the link to download the original paper What research can tell us about how best to prepare business students for the multilingual workplace by Marlene Miglbauer:

By Lidia Capitan Zamora. Journalist, web editor and social media expert.

Communication Trainee at TermCoord