Cultural Knowledge as A Resource in BELF Interactions: A Longitudinal Ethnographic Study of Two Managers in Global Business
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13136/2281-4582/2019.i13.234Keywords:
Linguistics, BELFAbstract
This paper contributes to the growing field of research on English as a business lingua franca (BELF) and extends discussion on the role of culture and cultural knowledge in business interactions. It aims to provide insights into the relationship between cultural knowledge and professionals’ management of BELF interactions. The paper is based on a longitudinal ethnographic study of two Finnish professionals’ trajectories of socialization into global working life and their work as managers. It draws on interview data in which the research participants orient to Finnish and Chinese professional and everyday practices and differences between them and thereby display their cultural knowledge. The main aim of the paper is to investigate, using discourse analysis, how this cultural knowledge, as depicted in interviews, manifests in BELF interactions and functions as a resource for transactional and relational purposes. The findings show that cultural knowledge emerges in explicit and implicit commentary about professional and everyday practices that relate to language proficiency, understanding, interpreting, work culture, safety issues, food and business matters. The findings also show that repetition, paraphrasing, summarizing, metalanguage, local languages, directives and humour are effective resources used by the two managers at work.
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Virkkula-Räisänen, Tiina. “Linguistic Repertoires and Semiotic Resources in Interaction: A Finnish Manager as a Mediator in a Multilingual Meeting.” Journal of Business Communication. Special issue Language matters: Corporate Language in International Business Operations 47:4 (2010): 505-531.
Yanaprasart, Patchareerat. “Making an Asset of Multilingual Human Resources in Organizations.” The Routledge Companion to Cross-Cultural Management. Eds. Nigel Holden, Snejina Michailova and Susanne Tietze. Routledge, 2015. 112-130.
Zhu, Hua. “Interculturality: Reconceptualising Cultural Memberships and Identities through Translanguaging Practice.” Researching Identity and Interculturality: Towards a More Reflexive and Critical Methodology. Eds. Fred Dervin and Karen Risager. London: Routledge, 2015. 109-124.
---. “Intercultural Awareness: Modelling an Understanding of Cultures in Intercultural Communication through English as a Lingua Franca.” Language and Intercultural Communication, 11.3 (2011): 197-214.
Brandt, Adam and Christopher Jenks. “‘Is it Okay to Eat a Dog in Korea…like China?’ Assumptions of National Food-eating Practices in Intercultural Interaction.” Language and Intercultural Communication 11.1 (2011): 41-58.
Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen C. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Cogo, Alessia. “ELF and Super-diversity: a Case Study of ELF Multilingual Practices from a Business Context.” Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 1.2 (2012): 287-313.
---. ““They All Take the Risk and Make the Effort”: Intercultural Accommodation and Multilingualism in a BELF Community of Practice.” Intercultural Communication. New Perspectives from ELF. Eds. Lucilla Lopriore and Enrico Grazzi. Rome: Roma Tre Press, 2016. 364-383.
Du-Babcock, B. “An Analysis of Topic Management Strategies and Turn-taking Behavior in the Hong Kong Bilingual Environment: The Impact of Culture and Language Use.” Journal of Business Communication 43 (2006): 21-42.
EIU. Up or out: Next moves for the modern expatriate. The Economist. London, UK. http://graphics.eiu.com/upload/eb/LON_PL_Regus_WEB2.pdf, 2010 Last Visited January 31, 2019
Fiedler, Sabine. “English as a Lingua Franca–a Native-culture-free Code? Language of Communication vs. Language of Identification.” Apples-Journal of Applied Language Studies 5.3 (2011): 79-97.
Higgins, Christina. “Constructing Membership in the In-group: Affiliation and Resistance among Urban Tanzanians.” Pragmatics 17.1 (2007): 49-70.
Holliday, Adrian. “Small Cultures.” Applied Linguistics 20.2 (1999): 237-264.
Holmes, Prue and Fred Dervin (eds.). The Cultural and Intercultural Dimensions of English as a Lingua Franca, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2016.
Jenks, Christopher. “Talking National Identities into Being in ELF Interactions: An Investigation of International Postgraduate Students in the UK.” The Cultural and Intercultural Dimensions of English as a Lingua Franca. Eds. Prue Holmes and Fred Dervin. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters, 2016. 93-113.
Kankaanranta, Anne and Brigitte Planken, “BELF Competence as Business Knowledge of Internationally Operating Business Professionals.” Journal of Business Communication, Special issue of Language Matters, Part 2, 47.4 (2010): 80-407.
Kankaanranta, Anne and Lu Winnie. “The Evolution of English as the Business Lingua Franca: Signs of Convergence in Chinese and Finnish Professional Communication.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 27.3 (2013): 288-307.
Kaur, Jagdish. “Intercultural Misunderstanding Revisited: Cultural Difference as a (non) Source of Misunderstanding in ELF Communication.” The Cultural and Intercultural Dimensions of English as a Lingua Franca. Eds. Prue Holmes and Fred Dervin. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters, 2016. 134-156.
Louhiala-Salminen, Leena, Mirjaliisa Charles and Anne Kankaanranta, “English as a Lingua Franca in Nordic Corporate Mergers: Two Case Companies.” English for Specific Purposes 24:4 (2005): 401-421.
Louhiala-Salminen, Leena and Anne Kankaanranta. “Professional Communication in a Global Business Context: The Notion of Global Communicative Competence.” IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication 54.3 (2011): 244-262.
Lüdi, Georges, Höchle, Katharina and Yanaprasart, Patchareerat. “Plurilingual Practices at Multilingual Workplaces.” Multilingualism at Work: From Policies to Practices in Public, Medical and Business Settings. Eds. Bernd Meyer and Birgit Apfelbaum. John Benjamins Publishing, 2010. 211-234.
Nickerson, Catherine. “The Death of the Non-native Speaker English as a Lingua Franca in Business Communication: a Research Agenda.” Language Teaching 48.3 (2015): 390-404.
Pullin Stark, Patricia. “No Joke – This is Serious!: Power, Solidarity and Humor in Business English as a Lingua Franca (BELF).” English as a Lingua Franca: Studies and findings. Eds. Anna Mauranen and Elina Ranta. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009. 152-177.
Räisänen, Tiina. “Discourses of Proficiency – Endangering Aspects of English in an Individual’s Biography of Language Use.” Dangerous multilingualism: Northern Perspectives on Order, Purity and Normality. Eds. Jan Blommaert, Sirpa Leppänen, Päivi Pahta and Tiina Räisänen. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 207-227.
Räisänen, Tiina. Professional Communicative Repertoires and Trajectories of Socialization into Global Working life. PhD Thesis, Jyväskylä Studies in Humanities 216, 2013.
---. “Finnish Engineers’ Trajectories of Socialisation into Global Working Life: From Language Learners to BELF Users and the Emergence of a Finnish Way of Speaking English.” The Cultural and Intercultural Dimensions of English as a Lingua Franca. Eds. Prue Holmes and Fred Dervin. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters, 2016. 157-179.
---. “Translingual practices in Global Business – a Longitudinal Study of a Professional Communicative Repertoire.” Translanguaging as Everyday Practice. Ed. Gerardo Mazzaferro. Springer, 2018. 149-174.
Sarangi, Srikant. “Intercultural or Not? Beyond Celebration of Cultural Differences in Miscommunication Analysis.” Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA), 4.3 (1994): 409-427.
Schnurr, Stephanie. Exploring Professional Communication: Language in Action. London: Routledge, 2013.
Schnurr, Stephanie and Olga Zayts. Language and Culture at Work. Abingdon: Taylor and Francis, 2017.
Virkkula-Räisänen, Tiina. “Linguistic Repertoires and Semiotic Resources in Interaction: A Finnish Manager as a Mediator in a Multilingual Meeting.” Journal of Business Communication. Special issue Language matters: Corporate Language in International Business Operations 47:4 (2010): 505-531.
Yanaprasart, Patchareerat. “Making an Asset of Multilingual Human Resources in Organizations.” The Routledge Companion to Cross-Cultural Management. Eds. Nigel Holden, Snejina Michailova and Susanne Tietze. Routledge, 2015. 112-130.
Zhu, Hua. “Interculturality: Reconceptualising Cultural Memberships and Identities through Translanguaging Practice.” Researching Identity and Interculturality: Towards a More Reflexive and Critical Methodology. Eds. Fred Dervin and Karen Risager. London: Routledge, 2015. 109-124.
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