BOOK 3

L201B ENGLISH IN THE WORLD

Chapter 14
Working in English
David Hann
 Introduction
• The world of work is primarily about communication. Even when organizations measure their
success in terms of figures, such as increased turnover, higher profit, reduced overheads or
improved customer ratings, it’s primarily the effective use of language which achieves that
success
• Every aspect of companies’ activities and every department depends, to a lesser or greater
degree, on language in order to survive and thrive. Language has always been central to
business success, but it has become even more so in recent times as the ‘knowledge economy’
(one based on information rather than things) becomes increasingly important and
technologies allow people and companies to communicate their messages with ever-
increasing speed and spread.
• This chapter looks at the nature of language used in the workplace. It examines how teams,
companies and sectors establish their own distinctive ways of communicating and shows how
the concept of the community of practice helps explain these.
• A significant element in the process of developing an in-group communicative style is the
power dimension, which is especially important in the work environment where hierarchies
are usually more clearly defined than they are in people’s social worlds. Power is important
not only in the myriad of small individual encounters that make up the world of work but also
in the wider global context of international business communication.
• The English language’s predominance in international business opens up questions about the
ways in which particular individuals and, indeed, nations are advantaged and disadvantaged by
that fact. At the same time, the very ubiquity of a language which is often used in business
encounters with no Inner Circle speakers present raises further questions about who is
shaping the language and what different forms it’s taking. These issues are further explored
in the chapter.
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 1) The characteristics of workplace
language
• The world of work is primarily about communication. Even when
organizations measure their success in terms of figures, such as increased
turnover, higher profit, reduced overheads or improved customer ratings, it’s
primarily the effective use of language which achieves that success.

• We are all aware that we often subtly change the way we speak and act when
we move from social to professional encounters, whether these happen in our
place of work or in meetings with, for example, banks, solicitors or estate
agents. Even when work colleagues are also good friends, how we speak to
them in a meeting is different from the way we do so outside working hours.
Even brief exchanges such as greetings can demonstrate that the language of
work has its own distinctive features.

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 1) The characteristics of workplace
language
• Workplace interactions are often overridingly goal-oriented: e.g.
negotiating a contract, amending a customer database, checking a
document. They usually include explicit mention of their purpose,
while the subject matter of primarily social interactions lies in the
potential to establish and develop relationships. However, it needs
to be remembered that the social dimension is also important in
workplace exchanges.
• Like classroom talk, workplace talk tends to be more regulated
than everyday talk – although, of course, even the most casual
communications are regulated to some degree. However, the type
of overlapping talk present in face-to-face conversation would
often be problematic in a business meeting where participants’
points and opinions need to be heard and taken account of.
Indeed, in many such meetings, one of the most important
aspects of the chair’s role is to ensure that turns are equitably
distributed.

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 1) The characteristics of workplace
language
• A further characteristic of professional encounters which relates to some
degree to their regulated nature is that they are frequently asymmetrical
in nature – in other words, power is unevenly distributed. For example,
the chair of a meeting has the power to regulate the speech of others
present at that meeting, a power which is not reciprocal. In general, power
relations are more clearly manifest in workplace talk than everyday talk.
Similarly, knowledge as well as power is often unevenly distributed in
professional encounters. So, for example, someone will seek advice from a
doctor, an accountant or an architect precisely because these
professionals possess knowledge which the layperson lacks.
• In summary, the goal-oriented nature of workplace interactions, their
regulated nature and the asymmetries between interactants both in terms
of power and knowledge all help mould the language and make it
distinctive. Over time, the characteristics of particular types of encounter
become more ingrained and established with each repetition. So, the need
for efficient and effective communication at work means that teams and
groups of co-workers develop their own communicative routines. In this
regard, the concept of the community of practice is a useful one.

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 Communities of practice
• A group of people engaged in a shared activity, such as that of a particular
workplace, can be characterized as a community of practice (CoP). It is defined as
‘an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in an
endeavour. Ways of doing things, ways of talking, beliefs, values, power relations – in
short, practices – emerge in the course of this mutual endeavour’ (Eckert and
McConnell-Ginet, 1992, p. 464).
• The idea of social networks came to the fore in linguistics in the 1980s as a way of
recognizing that individual speakers do not simply use one fixed communicative
style, but adapt the way they speak to the company they keep. The concept of the
CoP builds on that idea by recognizing the complex and fluid nature of people’s
existences and the fact that they often inhabit many different communities which
form around the pastimes they pursue, the work they engage in, the worship they
take part in and so on.
• Practices encompass not just the ways a group communicates but also its norms of
behavior, its hierarchy and its values, which are themselves reflected through the
language it uses.
• Individuals adapt and change their language as they move between the different
CoPs that they are part of or interact with. Let’s look at a couple of examples of CoP
in-group language, one of them business-related, the other not.
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 Activity Exploring the language
repertoires of different communities
 Activity Exploring the language repertoires of different
communities
Commentary
• In attempting to determine the field of interest, activity or expertise that
each extract is from, the first thing you may have noticed was the lexis.
• In Extract A, words such as dividend and investor tell you that you’re in the
world of finance and accounting, while rod, casting, reel and carp indicate
that this text is for fishing enthusiasts.
• Furthermore, there are specialist terms which outsiders would not be
familiar with. If you’re neither an accountant nor an angler, you may be less
than confident about what ex-dividend day behaviour or ex-day price to
drop ratio are (Extract A), or what a shocker or a quiver (Extract B) refer to.
• You may well have identified that the first extract was from an academic
journal rather than an accountancy magazine because of its referencing and
associated conventions.
• In addition, the style is also an indicator of the genre that it’s from. The
language is impersonal, such as it is well-known rather than we all know.
• In contrast, the author of the angling article is happy to use the first-person
pronoun – I was mightily impressed – and does not hesitate to use informal
and emotive language – its eye-catching fluoro-orange tip.
• In large part, these contrasting styles are driven by the purposes of each
piece
 Language that includes and excludes
• Specialist terminology emerges in particular fields and amongst particular CoPs. It
grows out of the need to communicate about recurring ideas and concepts as
effectively and efficiently as possible. This is why, when you study a specialist field of
knowledge for the first time, a vital element in that process is learning about new
concepts and their associated terms.
• So, for example, when starting university studies, you need to familiarise yourself
with the conventions of essay writing and referencing. So, referencing demonstrates
to readers that the writer is drawing upon previous research and evidence to support
their argument. It also allows readers to follow up and read the cited research if they
wish to.
• However, it’s inevitable that in the process of developing their own ways of talking
and doing things, communities not only include but exclude. Outsiders cannot fully
access their ways of communicating.
• The sociolinguist Howard Giles noticed how everyone changes their style of
speaking and way of behaving depending on who they are interacting with. He
developed accommodation theory in order to help account for and explain how
people alter their way of speaking or behaving or ‘accommodate’ to others.

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 Language that includes and excludes
Example
• Read the transcription of the doctor’s
utterances and decide which turns are
addressed to: .
• A) the child
• B) her mother
• C) the paediatric trainees.
• What features of the language help you
to identify who is being addressed?

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 Language that includes and excludes
Example
Discussion:
• Turns 3 and 7 are the doctor addressing the child. The doctor uses a
particular register often labelled ‘child-directed speech’ (CDS) which has
simple lexis, and shows how adults accommodate to the child’s
understanding.
• Turns 2 and 5 are the doctor addressing the mother.
• Turns 1, 4 and 6 are the doctor addressing the absent trainees
• The main factor in deciding who is being addressed is probably the
specialist terminology which is used with the paediatric trainees. Terms
such as arched palate, midline and goiter are not in common everyday
use.
• Beyond the lexis, another notable fact is that the language addressed to
the mother focuses on how the condition impedes what Jody can do in
relation to her breathing and the use of her muscles.
• The training commentary, in contrast, tends to concentrate on the
physical manifestations of Jody’s condition and the procedures for
ascertaining these.
• The doctor demonstrates skill in accommodating to three very different
audiences simultaneously.
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 Activity Reading 14: ‘Humour and workplace
culture’
• Humour can be considered a distinctive feature of workplace culture, with
considerable variation in the amount and type of humour which characterises
workplace interaction in different communities of practice.
• Holmes and Stubbe’s research demonstrates how different CoPs develop their
own distinctive norms for interacting. The ways in which the speakers from the
two workplaces in the reading habitually communicate together is very different,
and humour is clearly manifest in contrasting ways. However, the commonalities
between the two groups are as significant as the contrasts.
• In both, humour is a marker of ingroup identity and, as with the exclusive
nature of the specialised language of CoPs discussed earlier, it serves to both
affirm group membership and keep others out. It’s also clear, as mentioned
previously, that the ways in which CoPs behave and communicate are influenced,
in part, by broader factors such as culture and gender.
• Finally, the reading also highlights a previous point about the nature of
workplace CoPs: power is an important dimension. Humour is used by the staff in
the companies featured in both Case Study 1 and Case Study 2 to assert and
sometimes challenge authority. The use of humour makes this exercise of power,
and resistance to it, socially acceptable. The power dimension is one which is
explored further in the next section.
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 2) Language and power
• It has already been noted that there is often an asymmetrical distribution of
knowledge in particular professional encounters. Indeed, such asymmetry can be
seen as a defining characteristic of encounters which involve consultation or advice,
including those between a doctor and their patient or a lawyer and their client.
• However, asymmetries in knowledge or power are not always so explicitly
recognized or even consciously noticed and are common in professional encounters
where the participants have different linguistic and cultural backgrounds and
experiences. This is something which can lead to people being inadvertently
(unintentionally) disadvantaged
• Interviews are a typical example of a gate-keeping encounter, that is, an encounter
where access to opportunities, jobs or services is controlled by others (in this
case, the interviewers). Interestingly, Roberts and Campbell (2006) found that
‘ethnicity itself was not the major indicator of success’, since ‘[c]andidates who
were born abroad were much less likely to be successful than British candidates.
• They argue that the problem for candidates born outside the UK was not their
general competence in speaking English, but their lack of what Pierre Bourdieu
calls linguistic capital: the ability to produce utterances that will be considered
appropriate in a range of specific social and institutional situations; for example,
using just the right level of formality to make a good impression when interacting
with people in authority.
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 2) Language and power
• There are thus unwritten rules about the kinds of responses that are considered
to be appropriate to certain types of questions in job interviews, and successful
candidates are able to ‘align’ themselves to the expectations of the interviewers.
• In order to make a good impression, candidates need to achieve the right
balance between institutional discourse, which deals with the candidates’
qualifications, and personal discourse, which is more informal and allows the
interviewers to judge the candidate’s personality (Roberts and Campbell, 2006).
• Candidates need to use the right level of formality and establish a good
relationship with the interviewer.
• ‘Misunderstandings’ often arose when candidates ‘were expected to infer the
hidden purpose of questions and to present their experience according to British
interview norms and styles’
• This highlights the structural difficulties that outsiders can face in trying to enter
a professional or workplace community and access the economic opportunities
that it would provide.

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 3) English as the global language of business
• Given that English is the default language of global business, a working
knowledge of the English language would seem to be an essential element in the
linguistic capital of anyone wishing to do business beyond the confines of their
own national boundaries.
• The dominance of the language seems to favour those whose first language is
English. Furthermore, the promotion of standard Inner Circle varieties of the
language by private and public educational institutions across the world appears
to disadvantage L2 English speakers in many spheres of activity, including
business.
• However, the very ubiquity (spread) of English puts the place of its original
custodians into question. It has been claimed that about 80% of all interactions in
English take place between people for whom English is not a first language
(Chauvot, 2011). This reflects the reality that a growing number of English
communications involve no Inner Circle speakers of English.
• This opens up questions over the ownership of the language which are of
relevance to global business. Can English still be claimed to belong to the nations
which have been responsible for its spread around the world? Should the
employees of multinational organizations still feel bound by the norms of British
and American standard varieties? Why would a Czech businessperson working
exclusively with, say, suppliers from Asia want to aspire to such norms?
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 English as the global lingua franca of business
• The very fact that English has become the ubiquitous (global) default language
of international business and, indeed global communication more broadly, has
encouraged the emergence of an alternative perspective on the nature of English
used in international settings.
• This has led to the advocacy of teaching and promoting English as a lingua franca
(ELF) which is defined as ‘[a]ny language that is used by speakers of different
languages as a common medium of communication’, and historically refers to ‘…
a trading language, first used in the eastern Mediterranean’ in the seventeenth
century. Today, English is the lingua franca most often used in global business.
• The advocates of ELF see its teaching, learning and use as a recognition of the
fact that English on the world stage has become ‘deterritorialised’. In other
words, speakers of ELF are not attempting to assimilate to or learn about a
particular culture.
• For a learner and speaker of ELF, the national cultures of the United Kingdom,
the United States or Australia, for example, are irrelevant. Such a speaker is
simply looking to construct a viable working knowledge which will help them to
achieve their goals, commercial or otherwise. To meet those goals in an
international setting, accommodating to one’s fellow interlocutors is crucial.
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 English as the global lingua franca of business
• Of course, all communication is, to some degree, a situated negotiation of
meaning, but advocates of ELF see accommodation as the driving force in
shaping communication in these intercultural contexts.
• In terms of the power dimension discussed previously, there seems to be a
number of advantages in recognizing and promoting ELF.
• Firstly, it diminishes the in-built advantages that Inner Circle speakers have in the
language. After all, in a sense, they too have to learn a new way of speaking.
• Indeed, it seems that ELF speakers are more adept (skillful) at communicating in
intercultural contexts than those who stick to established norms.
• In addition, decoupling (separating) the language from its historical roots and in
particular its association with British colonialism may help to redress the
oppression and continuing inequalities of Empire.
• In short, ELF liberates the language from the complications of culture and the
norms which privilege some speakers over others.

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 English as a European lingua franca
Its future …
• After Brexit, the UK’s relationship with its near neighbours has changed for good.
And with that change, the relationship between the English language and the
countries of Europe, and specifically the EU, may also change. After all, the UK
was the most powerful nation whose first language was English within the Union.
• There has been relatively little debate about whether the use of English as a
lingua franca will continue in the EU.
• Some politicians, especially in France, called for English to lose its place as the
preeminent language of the Union. Others claimed that the influence of English
in the EU was fading.
• Overall, there has been little questioning of the place of English in conducting
business in Brussels or, indeed, its currency as a second language in many of the
countries of continental Europe.
• Factors such as the economic and cultural clout (influence) of the language in the
wider world and the investment that many EU member states have made into
English through their educational systems have ensured that the preeminent
status of English will not be seriously questioned in the foreseeable future. What
is more debatable is the nature of the English that emerges in post-Brexit
Europe.
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 English as a European lingua franca
The benefits of ELF

• Advocates of ELF argue that the English language should be liberated from the
norms of Inner Circle varieties when used in international settings.
• ELF is a means of getting by in English rather than a variety of the language.
However, Seidlhofer and Widdowson (2017) do concede that Brexit will probably
help de-stigmatise the use of ELF in the EU and help ELF speakers to throw off
any inferiority complex they may have in relation to British Standard English.
• Indeed, adherence to British or American English norms is difficult to sustain in a
world where English is used in so many different cultural and linguistic contexts
with no Inner Circle speakers participating (allows de-coupling of the language
from its imperialist roots, the privilege of native speakers and
‘deterritorialization’ of English).
• This is especially true in the world of business where transactional objectives
are paramount, so that clear rather than ‘correct’ communication is key.
• This links to another benefit of the promotion of ELF: it foregrounds the
importance of accommodating to one’s interlocutors in successful
communication, a useful principle of interaction in any circumstance.

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