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BELF: Business English as a Lingua Franca

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 14

BELF: Business English as a Lingua Franca

Marinel Gerritsen and Catherine Nickerson

Introduction
Communication between speakers of different languages has increased exponentially in
the course of the past decades in all walks of life, including in the business world. This is
the case not only for internal business communication, as more and more business organi-
sations are characterised by a multicultural, multilingual workforce, but also in external
business communication, where the different stakeholders involved in the communication
originate from different countries. In such commonplace situations in international busi-
ness communication, whenever person A with first language A speaks to person B with
first language B, there are four options available to them:

1 Both speakers use language A.

2 Both speakers use language B.
3 Person A uses his or her first language A, and Person B uses his or her first lan-
guage B.
4 Person A and Person B opt for a third language, language C, that both parties
are able to speak and understand well enough to communicate, i.e. they opt for
a lingua franca.

The choice that is made depends on many different factors. The foreign language pro-
ficiency of the interactants plays an important role; if B does not speak A, then option 1 is
not possible; likewise, if A does not speak B, then option 2 is not possible; and for option 3
to be successful, both parties must be able to understand both languages well. For option 4
to be successful, both parties must be able to use the chosen lingua franca well enough for
the interaction to take place. In addition, although research has suggested that organisa-
tions may be more likely to complete transactions such as sales transactions successfully
by following a strategy of accommodation (as in examples 1 and 2) rather than by using a
lingua franca (as in example 4; Vandermeeren 1999), the latter remains the norm in much
international business communication, more specifically in situations where the chosen
lingua franca is English. Artificially created languages such as Volapük and Esperanto
that were purposefully designed as a lingua franca have never played a significant role in

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 BELF: BUSINESS ENGLISH AS A LINGUA FRANCA 181

international business, and although French, German, Spanish and Scandinavian have
all been documented as being used as lingua francas (Vandermeeren 1999; Poncini 2004;
Louhiala-Salminen et al. 2005), English has played an increasingly dominant role in busi-
ness transactions in general around the globe over the course of the last two decades.
The role of English as an international business lingua franca is now beyond dispute
(Knapp and Meierkord 2002; Mair 2003; Seidlhofer 2004; Gerritsen and Nickerson 2004;
van Els 2005; Ammon 2006; Gunnarsson 2006; Jenkins 2006; Louhiala-Salminen and
Charles 2006; Mollin 2006; Seidlhofer et al. 2006; Bargiela-Chiappini et al. 2007; Bjorge
2007; Rogerson-Revell 2007). In this chapter we will discuss the methodologies that have
been used to investigate the use of business English as a lingua franca (BELF), i.e. in situ-
ations where speakers of two different languages opt for a third that is not a first language
for either one of them. In this respect we consider BELF transactions as a special type of
international business English (IBE), where IBE may be viewed as an overarching term that
includes interactions between first language speakers of different varieties, between speak-
ers of English as a second language (ESL) or foreign language (EFL), in communication
with other first language speakers, and, in the special case of BELF transactions, between
ESL or EFL speakers with other non-native English speakers. We recognise that much
of what we discuss may also be relevant for interactions between two native speakers of
English (NSE), or between an NSE and an ESL or EFL speaker, especially where partici-
pants vary in the level of expertise in a given domain, where they differ in cultural back-
ground or where they speak a different variety of English (for further discussion, see e.g.
Gass and Varonis 1991; Smith 1992; Lindemann 2002). For the sake of clarity, however,
we will limit most of our discussion in the rest of this chapter to BELF encounters.
BELF research is not in itself a methodology, nor indeed has it been associated with
any one methodology in particular. As we will demonstrate below, it is rather, a rich area
of research that has made use of a variety of different methodological approaches, each
intended to reveal a different aspect of lingua franca communication. In the sections that
follow, we will first discuss the nature of BELF communication, and the underlying
reasons why there may be a breakdown in communication in a BELF transaction. We will
then go on to highlight a number of the methodologies that have been used to investigate
the use of BELF communication, i.e. observations, survey research, corpus research and
experiments, and the characteristics of BELF communication that these have revealed.

Background: The nature of BELF communication

In this section, we will discuss the nature of BELF communication, and attempt to analyse
what the potential communication problems are in a BELF encounter that the interactants
need to be able to deal with in order to communicate successfully. Louhiala-Salminen et
al. (2005) provide the following working definition of BELF:

BELF refers to English used as a ‘neutral’ and shared communication code.

BELF is neutral in the sense that none of the speakers can claim it as her/his
mother tongue; it is shared in the sense that it is used for conducting business
within the global business discourse community, whose members are BELF
users and communicators in their own right – not ‘non-native speakers’ or ‘learn-
ers’. (2005: 403–4)

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 182 THE HANDBOOK OF BUSINESS DISCOURSE

While we accept this definition in principle as capturing the essence of BELF communica-
tion, we would wish to add the proviso that the fact that BELF users are also non-native
speakers impacts on the interaction both in terms of the (cultural) discourse strategies that
are chosen, and in the language that is used to realise them. Essentially, BELF encoun-
ters may fail where there are differences either in cultural discourse strategies between
the interactants and/or in the language that is used to realise them. Generally speaking,
the literature on lingua franca communication would suggest that BELF communication
may fail for one of three reasons, which can occur singly or in combination: lack of com-
prehensibility, cultural differences and stereotyped associations. Although the literature
provides numerous examples of these three phenomena, much of what is cited is anecdotal
and examples specific to the business context are more difficult to find. The discussion
below draws on several studies that we are aware of into BELF communication, and it can
be viewed as the basis for a future research agenda to continue to investigate the causes of
failure in BELF transactions in a systematic, empirical way.

Lack of comprehensibility
Comprehensibility means that the message is understood by the receiver in the way in
which the sender intended, and research has shown that most comprehensibility problems
occur at a lexical and grammatical level. As reported by Tajima (2004), for instance, the
worst accident ever in aviation history was the crash between two Boeing 747 Jumbo Jets
in Tenerife in 1977, and this was due to a communication breakdown in a BELF situation.
The Dutch captain said in English ‘We are now at takeoff’, a phrase that was interpreted
by the Spanish controller as ‘We are now at the takeoff position.’ What the Dutch captain
meant to say, however, was ‘We are now actually taking off.’ The English sentence the
captain uttered was an unusual phrase in English aviation terminology and this was due to
interference from his native language of Dutch. Lexico-grammatical differences in BELF
encounters may hopefully lead to less catastrophic results, but they may certainly occur
on a regular basis. It would be a useful addition to our knowledge of BELF encounters
to investigate systematically the role played by lexico-grammatical differences (see also
Seidlhofer and Jenkins 2003, for a discussion on this point for lingua franca communica-
tion in general).

Cultural differences
A breakdown in communication can also be the result of underlying cultural differences
between the interactants. Speakers communicate from the perspective of their own cul-
tural background, which means that they use the communication strategies associated
with that culture even if they are communicating in a language other than their own
(first) language. While people may need to ‘speak the same language’ in such multilingual
contexts, they may not necessarily ‘speak the same way’ (Rogerson-Revell 2007: 188) and
similarly, they ‘tend to interact in accordance with the socio-cultural norms which govern
the use of their own first language’ (Vandermeeren 1999: 275), Shaw et al. (2004) show
for instance, that Europeans from Belgium, Denmark, Sweden and the UK have substan-
tially different ideas about what is preferable and acceptable problem-solving discourse
from Italians. The Belgians, Danish, Swedish and British showed a significantly greater

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 BELF: BUSINESS ENGLISH AS A LINGUA FRANCA 183

preference for straightforward but relational dialogues than did the Italians, who preferred
longer dialogues with the incorporation of additional politeness strategies. It may be the
case, as a result, that the problem-solving strategies favoured by the northern Europeans
are considered too direct – and therefore potentially detrimental to the communication –
by the Italians. In a similar way, Bjorge (2007) shows that in BELF email correspondence,
people who belong to cultures with a high power distance use more formal salutations and
closing phrases (e.g. ‘Dear Madam’, ‘Yours respectfully’) than writers from low power
distance cultures (e.g. ‘Hi’, ‘Cheers’). Clearly this difference may lead to communication
difficulties, because the high power distance cultures may experience the informal use of
language as impolite and too personal, and the low power distance cultures may experience
the formal use of language as unnecessarily distant.
A more extensive discussion on the impact of culture in BELF encounters is beyond the
scope of this chapter, and the nature of intercultural encounters in business in particular
is dealt with in more detail elsewhere in Chapter 24 of this volume. Later in this chapter
we will discuss the extensive survey of BELF in Scandinavia by Louhiala-Salminen et al.
(2005), together with the different methodologies that were used, and we will show how
the Swedish and Finnish BELF partners involved in the study were aware of the underly-
ing communication differences between them that could be attributed to culture.

Stereotyped associations with a particular accent in English

Research in foreign language acquisition has shown that it is almost impossible for EFL
speakers to adopt a completely convincing NSE accent (Kellerman and Vermeulen 1995;
Bongaerts et al. 2000), and the idea that EFL speakers must learn to ape NSE speakers,
i.e. the type of linguistic imperialism that has been pilloried by authors such as Phillipson
(1992), Pennycook (1998) and Canagarajah (1999), has been increasingly replaced by
what Rogerson-Revell refers to as a ‘functional realism’ (Rogerson-Revell 2007). In this
approach EFL is viewed as a new variety of English, rather than an imperfect approxi-
mation of an NSE variety (Kachru 1986; Ammon 1996; Alexander 1999; Jenkins 2000,
2006; van Oostendorp 2002; Louhiala-Salminen and Charles 2006; Seidlhofer et al. 2006).
The English produced by an EFL speaker in a BELF interaction, then, will reflect the
speaker’s first language, and research shows that this may often have a negative influence
on the associations that a hearer may have with that speaker, since people may associate
other (unrelated) characteristics such as high or low status, high or low intelligence, and
a particular professional background with a given accent. British hearers, for instance,
perceive speakers of German English as less prestigious and less socially attractive than
speakers of Standard English, whereas they rate French English speakers much more
positively (Coupland and Bishop 2007). Likewise, when Nejjari et al. (under review)
studied the effect of a slight Dutch English accent compared to the effect of (British) RP
in the onset of a telephone sales talk for a Dutch asset management business, they found
that RP hearers – playing the role of potential customers – attribute a much lower status
to the speakers of Dutch-English they heard than to RP speakers.
Similar associations with different accents may also clearly impact a BELF encounter
in either a positive or negative way. However, despite the fact that interactions between
EFL speakers with different first languages are a common feature of business organisa-
tions in the twenty-first century, surprisingly little is known about the attitude that EFL

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speakers have towards the accents produced by other EFL speakers if they do not share
the same first language. Research is urgently needed in this area. The literature on BELF
interactions that we have selectively reviewed above would suggest that participants need
to be aware of the impact that differences in lexico-grammatical realisations can have on
their communication, they need to understand the impact of differences in accent, and
they need to understand the effects of the differences in discourse strategies that different
BELF speakers or writers may use to underpin the spoken or written transaction. The
burgeoning of cross-border business interactions and the increase in the diverse nature of
the workforce, both in multinational corporations (MNCs) and in local business environ-
ments (Louhiala-Saminen 2002), suggests that it is becoming increasingly important to
understand the different factors that may play a role in whether or not BELF encounters
are successful. In the remainder of this chapter, we will highlight a number of the meth-
odologies that have been used to investigate the use of and characteristics associated with
BELF.

Methodologies used in research on BELF interactions

The body of knowledge on BELF communication is based on research that has drawn pri-
marily on four different methodologies: survey research, the analysis of a corpus, experi-
mental research and observation. Survey research applied to BELF could be a survey
questionnaire or set of structured interviews about the use of English world-wide in an
MNC, and the problems associated with its use. The analysis of a corpus, could be a corpus
of business meetings, email correspondence or advertising texts in which BELF is used,
which a researcher then analyses to establish what the general characteristics of BELF in
the corpus are. In experimental research a research team could devise a set of experimental
procedures to establish empirically the attitudes of one set of BELF users, e.g. German
BELF users, to the accent typical of a second set of BELF users, e.g. French BELF users.
All three of these methods have often been used in combination with an initial period of
observation, which is used to inform the questions in a questionnaire survey, to underpin
the selection and analysis of an appropriate corpus, or to design the test items and measur-
ing instruments in an experiment.
In the discussion below we will refer to a number of different studies and discuss the
contribution that each approach has made to the existing body of knowledge on BELF
communication. For survey research we will focus on Vandermeeren’s work (1998, 1999)
on the car component and electronics industry in five European countries, and on Charles
and Marschan-Piekkari’s work (2002) in an MNC. We will then discuss how survey
research was combined with a corpus analytical approach in Louhiala-Salminen et al.’s
(2005) study of cross-border mergers in Scandinavia. For the experimental approach
(which is often prefaced by the compilation of a corpus) our focus will be on the work of
the Nijmegen group, (e.g. Gerritsen et al. 2000; van Meurs et al. 2004; Nickerson et al.
2005; Nejjari et al. under review; together with researchers such as Wang 2007 and van
den Doel 2006).
The survey of foreign language use in European business carried out by Sonja
Vandermeeren during the 1990s is a landmark study that uses the survey method as its
main methodology. Data was collected in this large-scale project in the sociolinguistic
tradition (e.g. Vandermeeren 1998, 1999) by asking companies in Germany, France,

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 BELF: BUSINESS ENGLISH AS A LINGUA FRANCA 185

the Netherlands, Portugal and Hungary to fill in written questionnaires about the use of
foreign languages in a variety of intercultural settings. The project aimed not only to iden-
tify patterns of language use within the target corporations, but also to establish why these
patterns existed, and whether there was a link between foreign language use and export
performance. In 1993 and 1994, corporations representing the car components sector and
the electrical and electronics industry were surveyed in the five countries, resulting in a
response from 415 corporations. The survey showed that English was in widespread use
but also that other languages were used and were considered necessary by the specialist
informants. For instance, 42 per cent of the French companies reported that they used
German almost always in correspondence with German companies, compared to only 30
per cent who almost always used English, and likewise, although just over 30 per cent of
the German companies reported that they almost always used English in correspondence
with French companies, almost 25 per cent reported that they almost always used French.
As Vandermeeren observes, at least for German–French written business interaction in
1993 and 1994, English did not dominate as a lingua franca and a considerable number of
the corporations chose to use the first language of their business partner.
Vandermeeren discusses the relationship between the selection of BELF for all trans-
actions and the conscious choice of not using BELF, but using the business partner’s
language. She suggests that at least for the French corporations that responded to the
survey, the choice of German in correspondence with German business partners seemed
to be associated with a better export performance than where companies had opted for
English in their correspondence.
Vandermeeren’s study provides a useful snapshot of the languages used as lingua franca
in a particular sector in European business at the beginning of the nineties, or at least what
the respondents reported to her by means of a written survey. Inherent within the survey
as a methodology is the fact that the findings are based on what respondents report they are
doing, and not on what they may actually be doing, such that in Vandermeeren’s study, for
instance, it would have been a useful addition to observe respondents as they went about
their daily business, to interview them or to collect further information on language use
in the form of a corpus. In more recent studies that have incorporated a survey as part of
the research methodology, researchers have used other, additional methods to collect their
data, for example, in Li So-mui and Mead’s (2000) study of English as an international
language in the textile industry in Hong Kong, observation, interviews, a survey and a
corpus are used.
Two studies of lingua franca English in the Scandinavian context have been of enor-
mous influence in defining the field of BELF research. The first of these is the 2002 study
of language use at Kone Elevators by Charles and Marschan-Piekkari, and the second the
2005 study of English lingua franca use in two Nordic corporate mergers by Louhiala-
Salminen et al. Charles and Marschan-Piekkari (2002) is a study which uses an extensive
survey and interview investigation of middle management at Kone Elevators, an MNC
with a head office in Finland. Survey data was collected to investigate the relationship
between corporate language policy, i.e. the adoption of English as a corporate lingua franca
in the early 1970s, and the employees’ actual communication practices. One hundred and
ten staff were interviewed about their use of English and the problems they experienced,
representing twenty-five corporate units in ten different countries in Europe, Mexico
and Asia, and this was followed by six further in-depth interviews with key people within

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 186 THE HANDBOOK OF BUSINESS DISCOURSE

the organisation. Despite the fact that English had been in use within the corporation for
more than thirty years at the time when the study took place, the employees interviewed
reported that lack of language proficiency caused problems in the communication, as did
the frequent lack of a shared language among a set of interactants. Tellingly for BELF
research, the employees interviewed reported that there were difficulties caused by the
diversity of different Englishes that were used within the company, and perhaps most
interesting of all, BEFL and (B)ESL speakers had less difficulty understanding other
BEFL and (B)ESL speakers than they did their NSE colleagues, particularly the British
NSEs. As a result, one of the recommendations made by Charles and Marschan-Piekkari
is to raise NSEs’ awareness of BEFL and (B)ESL varieties and to teach them how to
communicate more effectively with those speakers. Similar findings are reported by
Rogerson-Revell (2007) in her survey of participants that use IBE at a European business
organisation, including BELF and NSE speakers, suggesting that this should be an area
of interest for both researchers and teacher-trainers in the future.
The 2005 study by Louhiala-Salminen et al. also focuses on BELF in Scandinavian
corporations. This multimethod study looks at the use of BELF in two Swedish–Finnish
corporate mergers: a bank and a paper manufacturer. It combines a written question-
naire survey, a set of interviews and the compilation and analysis of both a written and a
spoken corpus. The study set out to investigate the use of BELF, and more specifically to
identify the similarities and differences between the Swedish and Finnish employees in
BELF encounters and the problems that arose between them. In this respect, it involved
the collection and analysis of not only the language challenges faced by employees in
using BELF on a daily basis, but also the cultural challenges they perceived. The data and
methods used were varied, and this allowed the research team to build up a rich picture
of BELF use within the two corporations. For instance, in the survey part of the project
920 questionnaires were circulated across the two corporations and a total of thirty-one
interviews were held with key informants to verify the information reported on in the
written survey. Then a corpus of four complete BELF meetings were analysed (using a
discourse analytical approach), followed by the analysis of 114 BELF emails (using genre
analysis), again to investigate the language and cultural challenges that had been signalled
by the survey respondents and interviewees in the first stage of the project. For instance,
the Finnish and Swedish employees viewed each other (and themselves) as direct (Finns)
as opposed to discussive (Swedes), and this was also reflected in the discourse character-
istics observed in the spoken and written corpora. An important finding of the study on
BELF use in business organisations is that despite its ‘neutral’ status as a ‘cultureless’
communication instrument, ‘it can be seen to be a conduit of its speaker’s communication
culture’ (2005: 417).
Louhiala-Salminen et al.’s study is of course not the only study to use a corpus-based
approach in investigating BELF: studies such as van Mulken and van der Meer’s analysis
of replies to customers (2005), Poncini’s study of multicultural business meetings in Italy
(2004), Tajima’s study of interactions between pilot and controller before air traffic acci-
dents (2004), Planken’s discussion of BELF negotiation situations (2005), and Bjorge’s
study of email correspondence (2007) are all excellent examples. What sets Louhiala-
Salminen et al.’s study apart, however, and suggests at the same time a fruitful area of
future research, is its combination of different methodologies and analytical approaches
and its focus on the role played both by language and by culture.

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 BELF: BUSINESS ENGLISH AS A LINGUA FRANCA 187

For the past decade, researchers at the Radboud University Nijmegen, in the
Netherlands have been investigating the use of English and the effects of this use in the
(non-NSE) European context. Using both corpus analysis and experimental investiga-
tion, the group has sought to establish the ways in which English has been incorporated
into a variety of different business texts in the various languages spoken throughout the
European Union, and then to investigate the comprehensibility of and attitudes to that
English amongst the more educated population. Therefore, for instance, Gerritsen et al.
(2000) look at television advertising in the Netherlands, van Meurs et al. (2004) at job
advertisements, also in the Netherlands, and Gerritsen et al. (2007) at the use of English
in product advertisements in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain.
The studies show a consistent – and increasing – use of English lexis in the business genre
under investigation over a period of time, and the experimental investigations have shown
that compared to the use of the local language, consumers across the EU hold neutral to
negative attitudes towards the use of English. Additional investigation has shown that the
use of English does not have any effect on the image of the product or the company with
which it is associated, and also that, even for the highly educated sector of society, 30 per
cent of the English lexis used is not at all understood. While we accept that these situations
may be different in nature from the other BELF interactions we have discussed, since
the national cultures involved are not in communication with each other, we also believe
that this type of BELF communication will continue to increase within the European
context.
Other very recent experimental research, both at the Radboud University Nijmegen and
elsewhere, has focused on the comprehensibility of different EFL accents, and has so far
provided contradictory findings. According to Nejjari et al. (under review), for instance,
British NSEs are able to comprehend fully sentences uttered with a strong Dutch
English accent, whereas the studies by van den Doel (2006) and Wang (2007) indicate
that some EFL accents are less comprehensible for NSEs than others, depending on the
first language of the EFL speaker; i.e. the more the accent resembles English the better
it is understood. This is also true for ELF communication between EFL speakers with a
different first language, such that the more the languages resemble each other the better
the speakers understand each other. More experimental research in this field is clearly
needed, especially in BELF encounters with EFL speakers of different languages.
Experimental methods clearly have their limitations. Texts are manipulated to repre-
sent a particular variable or set of variables, sacrificing authenticity in the process, and
respondents may answer in a different way in an experimental setting and in real life. In an
ideal situation, the data collected by means of an experiment should be complemented by
data obtained in real-life situations (observation). Having said that however, experimental
research is an important, perhaps crucial, approach in investigating BELF interactions,
since it is only through the combination of survey, corpus and experimental investigations
that we will really be able to isolate those characteristics of BELF communication that may
cause a communication breakdown, and likewise, those that are not likely to do so.

Discussion and future developments

As Seidlhofer and Jenkins (2003) suggest, perhaps the most fruitful area of inquiry in
lingua franca research in the future will be to develop appropriate methodologies to

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 188 THE HANDBOOK OF BUSINESS DISCOURSE

identify those aspects of communication that are most likely to lead to disruption in the
interaction. Rather than focusing on language proficiency in general in courses designed
for EFL or ESL speakers, the findings of such research could then drive teaching and
training materials to focus more efficiently on those areas that are likely to cause a problem.
The same would also be true for courses designed for NSEs of English in raising their
awareness of BELF and other types of IBE interactions.
In this chapter, we have identified at least four areas of lingua franca communication
that have as yet received little attention. The first of these is the role played by compre-
hensibility, and specifically what factors affect comprehensibility in either a positive or a
negative way. Second, there are as yet few studies that have looked in a systematic way
at the role played by different aspects of culture in BELF communication – with the
exception of the European-wide project based at the Helsinki School of Economics that
incorporates culture in an electronic survey of corporate communication (www.hse.fi/
ckh). Third, BELF research would benefit from research that is specifically designed to
identify the associations that hearers have with accents that are dissimilar to their own in
business interactions, as well as with accents (in English) that are the same as their own.
And finally, little has as yet been done to categorise the relative seriousness of different
types of communication failures; e.g. is a lexical miscommunication less or more threat-
ening to the communication than a cultural miscommunication related to, for example,
the degree of directness used in an encounter? All four of these areas would benefit from
the application of the same set of consistent methodologies to build up a picture of BELF
communication around the globe.
In addition to the methodologies that we have discussed above (observation, survey
research and corpus research), it would be useful to add the focus group as a qualitative way
of investigating BELF interaction. A focus group consists of a number of people, usually
around eight to ten, who are working in an organisation, for instance, where English is
used. Focus groups can be used at two points in a research project. They can be used in
order to determine the scope of a large research project, such that a focus group discussion
on the use of BELF and the problems associated with its use can be used to underpin a set
of questionnaire or interview questions. A focus group can also be used after a period of
observation, a survey, a corpus analysis or an experiment have taken place. The group can
then be used to discuss the findings, since the reaction of the group may shed new light on
how these may be interpreted and why.

Conclusion: implications for scholarship, research and training

As we discussed in the previous section, much still needs to be done in developing
appropriate methodologies for the systematic investigation of BELF. Despite some
commentators’ suggestions that languages such as Hindi and Chinese will steadily gain
in popularity as business languages (e.g. Graddol 2004), we believe that English will
continue to dominate both business lingua franca interactions specifically and interna-
tional business communication in general. The work of researchers such as Briguglio
(2005), Bolton (2002, 2003) and Chew (2005), for instance, shows the existing need for
English in Asia, and the newly emerging interest in the English used in the business
processing outsourcing (BPO) industry across Asia, i.e. in call-centre communication
in countries such as India, the Philippines and China, will make a major contribution

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 BELF: BUSINESS ENGLISH AS A LINGUA FRANCA 189

to our understanding of BELF, BESL and IBE interactions in the future (Forey and
Lockwood 2006). Growth areas of business that are directly related to a nation’s pro-
ficiency in English, such as the BPO industry, would clearly benefit from a battery of
diagnostic tools combining observation, survey, corpus analysis, respondent surveys
and focus groups, in order to improve upon the effectiveness of the communication that
takes place in customer interactions.
The research findings and methodologies that we have discussed here suggest two
obvious areas on which teaching and training should focus. First, it is important to raise
students’ awareness of the different varieties of English that are used in the business world,
and along with that to facilitate their understanding of their own variety of English – be
that NSE, EFL or ESL – and the impact that that variety might have on a speaker from a
language background different to theirs. In this respect, we agree with Jenkins’s conten-
tion that EFL should not be viewed (by trainers or teachers) as ‘incorrect’, but rather more
as a variety of English with its own characteristics (Jenkins 2006). Second, and perhaps
more importantly, teachers and trainers need to make students aware of the impact of
culture. This would involve not only an awareness of the students’ own culture and associ-
ated communication strategies, but also the culture and strategies used by other colleagues
that they are likely to come into contact with in the process of doing business.

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