218 pages

English

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Reconceptualizing English for International Business Contexts , livre ebook

Channel View Publications - Vildana Dubravac , Elma Dedović-Atilla

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218 pages

English

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Description

Assesses whether traditional English language teaching with emphasis on grammar and accuracy is necessary in business contexts

This book presents a critique of current English as a Business Lingua Franca (BELF) practices using research conducted in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The authors identify English communication behaviors that hinder or promote success in the workplace, and trace these back to curricula and teaching practices. The authors suggest which skills employers need and expect from employees, and question whether English courses concerned with general academic English skills and business vocabulary are sufficient training for linguistically-complex workplaces. The book also examines whether the focus on achieving native-like proficiency with high grammatical standards and a strong emphasis on form are adequately preparing students who aspire to use English in professional contexts as a means to ‘get their job done’.

Abbreviations

Introduction

1 The Role of English in the Global Community

2 BELF

3 The Use of English in the Bosnian Context

4 Business Communication in B&H from the BELF Perspective

5 Conclusions and Implications

Appendices

References

Index

Sujets

Communication Studies

Business Communication

Marketing et communication

Idioma inglés

Business English

Southern Europe

Professional

Postgraduate education

General officer

Sociolinguistics

ELF

English

Economics

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Business

General

Research

Postgraduate

Anglais

Informations

Publié par	Channel View Publications
Date de parution	05 août 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781800416024
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1750€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Reconceptualizing English for International Business Contexts

LANGUAGE AT WORK

Series Editors: Jo Angouri,Warwick, UKUniversity of andRebecca Piekkari,Aalto University Business School, Finland Language at Work is a new series designed to bring together scholars interested in workplace research. The modern workplace has changed signiﬁcantly in recent years. The international nature of business activities and the increasing rate of mobility around the world create a new challenging environment for individuals and organisations alike. The advancements in technology have reshaped the ways employees collaborate at the interface of linguistic, national and professional borders. The complex linguistic landscape also results in new challenges for health care systems and legal settings. This and other phenomena around the world of work have attracted signiﬁcant interest; it is still common however for relevant research to remain within clear disciplinary and methodological boundaries. The series aims to create space for exchange of ideas and dialogue and seeks to explore issues related to power, leadership, politics, teamwork, culture, ideology, identity, decision making and motivation across a diverse range of contexts, including corporate, health care and institutional settings.Language at Workwelcomes mixed methods research and it will be of interest to researchers in linguistics, international management, organisation studies, sociology, medical sociology and decision sciences. All books in this series are externally peer-reviewed.

Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol, BS1 2AW, UK.

LANGUAGE AT WORK: 7

Reconceptualizing English for International Business Contexts

A BELF Approach and its Educational Implications

Elma DedovićAtilla and Vildana Dubravac

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Jackson

DOI https://doi.org/10.21832/DEDOVI5997 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Names: Dedović-Atilla, Elma, author. | Dubravac, Vildana, author. Title: Reconceptualizing English for International Business Contexts: A BELF Approach and its Educational Implications/Elma Dedović-Atilla and Vildana Dubravac. Description: Bristol; Jackson: Multilingual Matters, [2022] | Series: Language at Work: 7 | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This book presents a critique of current English as a Business Lingua Franca (BELF) practices using research conducted in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The authors identify English communication behaviours that hinder or promote success in the workplace, and trace these back to curricula and teaching practices”—Provided by publisher. Identiﬁers: LCCN 2022016329 (print) | LCCN 2022016330 (ebook) | ISBN 9781800415997 (hardback) | ISBN 9781800416017 (epub) | ISBN 9781800416024 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: English language—Globalization. | English language—Business English—Study and teaching. | English language—Study and teaching—Bosnia and Herzegovina. | Business communication—Bosnia and Herzegovina. Classiﬁcation: LCC PE1073.4 .D43 2022 (print) | LCC PE1073.4 (ebook) | DDC 306.442/21—dc23/eng/20220425 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022016329 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022016330

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN-13: 978-1-80041-599-7 (hbk)

Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol, BS1 2AW, UK. USA: Ingram, Jackson, TN, USA.

Website: www.multilingual-matters.com Twitter: Multi_Ling_Mat Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/multilingualmatters Blog: www.channelviewpublications.wordpress.com

The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certiﬁcation. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certiﬁcation has been granted to the printer concerned.

Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India. Printed and bound in the UK by the CPI Books Group Ltd.

Contents

Abbreviations

Introduction 1 The Role of English in the Global Community Theoretical Perspectives on the Spread of English World Englishes English as a Lingua Franca 2 BELF Conceptual Background From the Research Perspective Defining Features of BELF Global Communicative Competence Summary 3 The Use of English in the Bosnian Context A Historical Overview English in B&H Today Bosnian Business Context and the Role of English Research on Business and English in B&H and Neighboring Countries Summary 4 Business Communication in B&H from the BELF Perspective Rationale of the Study and Research Questions Addressed Research Design Sampling and Participants Research Instruments, Procedures and Administration Data Analysis Research Findings Interpretation of the Results

vii

1 5 5 8 11 18 19 19 22 48 51 53 53 56 57

61 64 66 67 68 69 76 84 85 156

vi Reconceptualizing English for International Business Contexts

5 Conclusions and Implications Conclusions and Implications for Business Practitioners Conclusions and Implications for Educators Suggestions for Researchers Final Remarks Appendix References Index

182 182 185 188 189 190 194 208

Abbreviations

BE BELF B&H CA CAT CC CEFR CLIL CoP EBC EC EFA EFL ELF ELT ENL ESL ESP FTA GCC IC IELTS IICS KMO LEC L1 L2 MNC NS NNS OC PCA RS

Business English English as the business lingua franca Bosnia and Herzegovina Conversation analysis Communication accommodation theory Communicative competence Common European Framework of Reference Content and language integrated learning Community of practice English business communication The expanding circle Exploratory factor analysis English as a foreign language English as a lingua franca English language teaching English as a native language English as a second language English for specific purposes Face-threatening acts Global communicative competence The inner circle International English language testing system Intercultural and interactional communication skills Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure of sampling adequacy Linguistic and extralinguistic competence First language Second language Multinational company Native speaker Non-native speaker The outer circle Principal component analysis Reading skills

vii

viii Reconceptualizing English for International Business Contexts

QSI TEFL TOEFL SAT SLA SPSS SS TIGs UAE UK US WS

Quality School International Teaching English as a foreign language Test of English as a foreign language Speech accommodation theory Second language acquisition Statistical Package for the Social Sciences Speaking skills Transient international groups United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States of America Writing skills

Introduction

The Scope of the Book For a long time, there has been heated discussion in academic linguis-tic circles concerning the current role and place of English in the global community. Some scholars perceive the omnipresence of English as cultural and linguistic supremacy (Canagarajah, 1999; Phillipson, 1992), while others take a more pragmatic view and highlight all the beneﬁts of the world sharing a common language (Crystal, 2003; Davies, 1996; Seidlhofer & Hulmbauer, 2013; Widdowson, 1998). Regardless of all the theoretical bookish clashes and disputes, the reality unfolds its own story in which English has taken the leading language role on the global stage, acquiring the status ofthe global language used internationally across different walks of life and for different purposes (Crystal, 2003). It has been increasingly used in education, science, academia, media, sports, entertainment, politics, diplomacy, travel and business. The magnitude of the importance of English proﬁciency today is reﬂected in the fact that it has become one of the essential literacy skills that every individual striving to make progress in the global world in any sphere is bound to possess (Carmichael, 2000). A large body of research is exploring the nature and features of the English language and its usage in various ﬁelds worldwide, including the business ﬁeld, presenting the domain this book has set out to explore. Globalization has deﬁnitely contributed to the deterritorialization of this ﬁeld, the concept ofmultireplacing the earlier one ofmono, work-places no longer characterized by one nation, one culture, one language, but rather by more than one nation, more than one culture and more than one language. To describe this, scholars use the termtransnationalwhen referring to current workplace communication (e.g. Kingsley, 2013; Räisänen, 2018), pointing out the increasing ‘ﬂuidity of work spaces and mobility of workers’ (Canagarajah, 2020: 5). To stay competitive in such a changing job market, one needs to rely on multilingual competence, i.e. a satisfactory level of proﬁciency in more than one language and developed communication skills required for meaning negotiation. The COVID-19

2 Reconceptualizing English for International Business Contexts

pandemic has created even greater diversity in the ﬁeld of work (Canaga-rajah, 2020), with online communication more prevalent than ever before and borders less relevant. The aforementioned concept ofmultinow also includes competence in the use of different applications, different modes of communication and different registers. However, although the focus is on competence in more than one language, English still occupies the most prominent place in addition to the speaker’s ﬁrst language. It remains a dominant lingua franca used for general business communication involv-ing international participants (Canagarajah, 2020). A number of theoretical concepts and studies investigating various aspects and modes of business communication in English have been car-ried out, providing valuable insights and ﬁndings on the topic. This book has attempted to make its own contribution to the research on business English (BE) communication, by narrowing it down to the exploration of one particular business setting: Bosnia and Herzegovina’s (B&H) busi-ness context, the context belonging to the under-researched Global South (Pennycook & Makoni, 2020; Rudwick & Makoni, 2021). While the Global North has addressed this issue through studies mainly conducted in Nordic, Central European and Asian contexts, until now there has not been a comprehensive study that actually identiﬁes English language needs in this part of Europe within a business context nor an attempt to specify particular genres of business communication that really exist and matter in the job market, drawing upon the business English as a lingua franca (BELF) perspective. Hence, raising awareness about this concept and conducting a study that would explore and pinpoint the exact nature, role, importance and features of English used in different contexts within this speciﬁc job environment seem critical. Therefore, this study aims to expand our knowledge of global business communication, providing us with novel ﬁndings from the Global South, which are to complement those from the Global North, making the overall picture more balanced and comprehensive. A number of issues regarding the topic need to be raised, shedding more light on many unanswered questions. First of all, an important question to be answered is what kind of English is needed within different business contexts, having also in mind the interaction with two different groups: native speakers (NSs) and non-native speakers (NNSs). Furthermore, an exploration of the signiﬁcance of different English skills and genres in different settings seems to be nec-essary. In addition, investigating what English communication behaviors hinder or bring about success in a workplace, i.e. what parts of the curric-ulum and teaching practices and modes seem to contribute to success in a workplace and which ones seem redundant in a speciﬁc business setting, should certainly be one of the many questions to be answered. Another important issue to be resolved is whether English courses concerned with general academic English skills and business vocabulary are sufﬁcient to prepare individuals to adequately employ English communication skills