Introduction:
 This chapter follows on from ideas put forward in
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previous chapters about how spoken and written English
varies according to its context and purpose. Here we look
at the specific ways in which English is used as a tool for
work. We also look at the use of English as an
international business language.
Think about the following questions:
Do you speak in the same way when you speak to your
friends as when you speak to your boss, or a doctor or
someone at the bank?
What are some of the differences?
What are the reasons for the differences? Is it because of
your relationship with the person? Or other reasons?
 By the end of this chapter, you will know how these questions
have been approached and to some extent answered by applied
linguistics.
 Main learning points include:
 How people communicate differently depending on whether their
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communication is in itself a form of work or whether they are just
chatting sociably.
The idea that communication at work plays a role in the
establishment and maintenance of relationships and group identity.
The fact that working language practices adapt to social and
technological developments.
The respect in which spoken and written English appears to
diverge from Standard English during international business
communication.
How language in the workplace is closely tied up with power.
 The chapter is started by looking at how English used in
everyday situations can be distinguished from English used in
the workplace.
 We will see how the forms and structures of English at work
are influenced by context and purpose, and by sociocultural
and technological development; and how English has evolved
to become the language of international business
communication.
 We shall see how people working together interact using
structured and goal-oriented genres that have evolved over
time. This leads to into a consideration of multimodal literacy
in professional practice, using the example of architecture, and
to a discussion of English as an international language.
 We will show the connection between language and power in
job interviews. A theme that runs throughout the chapter is the
importance of interpersonal communication in working
environments.
 To think about as you read chapter 4:
 Think about the different purposes for which English is used in
the workplace, and how these purposes affect the way in which
it is used. Think too about what it means for workers whose
mother tongue is not English to have to use that language for
working purposes.
 Put on your mind that the chapter’s general focus is on the
language use of white collar workers (managers…) rather than
of the blue collar workers (manual workers). Why do you think
so?
 How does workplace talk differ from ordinary
conversation?
 This chapter explores the special characteristics of the language
used at work. Chapter 1 contrasted everyday conversation with
the sorts of talk that take place in institutional settings such as
places of work.
 It was noted that turn taking often has to follow institutional rules.
It was emphasised that certain speech acts can only be carried out
by a holder of institutional authority. These two points are related.
 According to Drew and Heritage, institutional talk, as they call
workplace and professional talk, differs from ordinary
conversation in three ways:
1. It is goal oriented: participants usually focus on some core goal,
task or identity… associated with the institution or workplace.
2. There are constraints on what participants will treat as
allowable contributions, i.e. on what participants may say.
3. There are inferential frameworks and procedures that are
particular to the specific institutional or workplace context.
 A further feature of workplace interactions linked to all three
characteristics listed above is the fact that interactions are often
asymmetrical; that is, some speakers often have more power
and special knowledge than others.
 In interactions between professionals and lay people (a doctor and
a patient), where the professional has knowledge of a specialist
subject and of institutional procedures. This means that
participants in workplace interactions have institutional identities
(or professional roles) which interact with their personal and
discursive identities.
 Another way of referring to the goal orientation of workplace
interactions is to say that they are transactional, which means that
participants focus on doing a particular workplace task.
 If the sentence doesn’t involve transactional talk, it will be
described as relational; that is, the purpose is more of a social one.
This kind of talk allows the participants to bond socially, and thus
contribute to build a good relationship.
 This shows that not all workplace talk is transactional and that
relationship building at work is important.
 Frontstage and backstage:
 Many professionals or people working for organizations deal with
lay members of the public in the course of their work. We can
distinguish between two kinds of interaction in which English
can be used as a working language:
1. Interactions among co-workers, where people are working
together in the same workplace, occupation or profession.
2. Interactions between experts in an organisation or
profession and members of the public; that is, between
insiders in particular areas of work and outsiders. For
example, interactions between health professionals and
patients, or service encounters, where service providers
interact with customers.
 These two general types of workplace interaction
correspond to two sites in which social life can be studied:
front regions (fronstage) and back regions (backstage).
 Front regions are areas where a particular performance is in
progress, whereas back regions are where action occurs
that is related to the performance but inconsistent with the
appearance fostered by the performance.
 Goffman implies the presence of an audience in fronstage
activity, as in interactions between lay people and
professionals, and a setting in which best behaviour is
expected. The backstage setting, on the other hand, is more
relaxed and allows minor acts for others present.
 The same person often has to switch between frontstage
and backstage interactions at work; and while workplace
interactions are mainly goal oriented and transactional,
relational language, which is quite similar to small talk
outside the workplace, also occurs. This means that the
distinction between workplace language and everyday
language is not a hard or absolute one.
 Try to answer the following questions:
 Can you think of an example of when your
interaction with another person has been
constrained by its institutional context? For
example, if you have a job that involves interacting
both with co-workers and with customers or
clients, are there things you would say to one
group but not the other?
 Do you think it is important to have good
relationships with the people you work with, and
how do you use language for this purpose?
 Workplace genres:
 Discourse communities:
 Another aspect that is often used to talk about groups of
people who use particular ways of communicating in
order to pursue a common goal is that of discourse
community. In discourse community the members do not
necessarily work closely together or form relationships
involving mutual engagement.
 However, their spoken and written interactions may still
be characterised by a particular register: a set of
conventions for language use, possibly including specialist
vocabulary.
 A discourse community may be geographically dispersed,
yet its members use language to pursue common goals in
ways that distinguish them from other groups.
 Genres:
 According
to Swales, genres are: classes of
communicative events which share some set of
communicative purposes. This is similar to the
definition of genre in Chapter 2 and highlights two
aspects of genres:
1. Different texts or utterances can be said to belong to
the same genre because they share the same
communicative purpose.
2. Genres follow particular patterns or schematic
structures, which may involve participants playing
specific roles, and using particular vocabulary or a
particular style of speaking or writing.
 For example, in frontstage service encounters,
such as the one in extract 3, the communicative
purpose for the customer or service recipient is to
obtain goods or services. The interaction usually
begins with a greeting and request for service and
ends with a service provision and a closing, and it
is characterised by the use of politeness features.
In the backstage workplace interaction in extract
2, the communicative purpose is to reach the
decision.
 Genres have predictable structures and
characteristics but can also vary; for example, in
the range of language used for instruction giving.
 Genres in a changing world of work: the example
of the business email:
 In the early twenty-first century, email has emerged as
one of the most important means of communicating
information in English for commercial purposes.
 The business email has now to a great extent replaced
the traditional business letter, as well as some kinds of
telephone communication. Like the blog, the business
email has features of both written and spoken
language, and has been influenced by a variety of
other genres, but change over time (e.g. as a result of
changing technology).
 According to Yates and Orlikowski the business email
developed from the genre of written memos, which are
company–internal messages circulated between
employees, and were once distributed in typed or
handwritten form.
 Yates and Orlikowski said that email is also used for
other kinds of messages; for example, very informal
exchanges between individual colleagues. Therefore
they see email as a medium, rather than a genre.
 Gimenez, on the other hand, claims that many
features of email communication were carried over
from telephone communication.
 While business letters use language that is typical of
written language, business emails tend to use language
that is more typical of spoken English.
 Email:
 As mentioned earlier, the example of the business email
shows that genres change and evolve to adapt to
changing demands in communication and technology in
the workplace.
 Jensen shows that email is even being used for
international business negotiations, which until a short
time before were being conducted face-to face.
 Try to answer the following questions:
 Think of a discourse community of which you are a
member. Does it have particular items of vocabulary that
would not be understood by outsiders?
 In what ways have recent technological developments
changed the way you communicate?
 English as an international
intercultural communication:
language
and
 Another factor that distinguishes English used for work
from English used in social encounters or family settings is
that the speakers or writers are often not native speakers of
English. This term is loosely used to describe a person who
grew up using a language to communicate.
 For many years, people who are native speakers of different
languages have used English as a lingua franca (or contact
language) for purposes of trade.
 More recently, English has become the international
language, not only for trade, but for all kinds of business
and other forms of international communication. In fact,
there are now many more people using English in this way
than people who use it as a native language.
 There has been a growing interest in recent years in what
the characteristics of English as a lingua franca (or ELF)
are, and whether there are significant differences between
the way lingua franca speakers and native speakers use
English.
 Seidlhofer (2004) has identified a number of features of
pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar that seem to be
common to lingua franca (such as the contrast between
long and short vowels, the various sounds that correspond
to the letters TH, and grammatical features such as
dropping the third person, articles…. Etc.)
 These would often be considered errors, but Seidlhofer
argues that, as they don’t cause any problems for
comprehension among lingua franca speakers, they should
be considered typical features of ELF, rather than mistakes.
 This point relates to wider argument made by researchers
in EFL that as English is now used as an international
language, native speakers of English no longer own
English, and it is therefore not up to them to determine
what is or is not acceptable- at least in international
English usage.
 Another feature of lingua franca discourse identified in
many interactions is the use of accommodation strategies.
Accommodation involves adapting to the speech and
behaviour of the person you are speaking to. Typical
accommodation strategies in EFL interactions include
repetition, paraphrasing, simplification and codeswitching
( switching to a native language of the other speaker).
 The reasons for codeswitching, according to Connor, were:
in most cases for clarity, sometimes for fun or to create
solidarity.
 Intercultural business communication:
 Connor’s discussion of the written communication between
the Finnish broker and his international business partners
mentions the role that culture can play in international
business interactions. Her study shows that non-standard
language usage causes very few problems.
 Interestingly, studies of intercultural communication have
shown that misunderstandings can be caused by cultural
differences, rather than linguistic difficulties.
 Spencer-Oatey has carried out research on intercultural
communication between people from significantly different
cultural backgrounds: British and Chinese. One instance of a
cultural misunderstanding she describes arose during the
visit of a group of Chinese business people to a British
company. The visit ended badly with both the Chinese visitors
and the British hosts feeling annoyed with each other.
 Many of the problems were due to the British company
misjudging the status of the visitors, rather than to cultural
differences as such. However, cultural differences also played a
role, in particular the level of formality expected and what the
respective rights and obligations of hosts and guests were
assumed to be.
 In the U K. there is a preference for informality, whereas
China is a culture with a large power distance, which means
that status differences are recognized and respected. As a
result, the British hosts were not aware that such things as
seating arrangements or lack of formal protocol could be
interpreted as a lack of respect for their status.
 Spencer-Oatey’s
study
shows
that
intercultural
misunderstandings can arise, even when both sides act with
the best of intentions. However, many international business
interactions
occur
without
any
problems
or
misunderstandings.
 Poncini’s study shows that national culture may not necessarily
be an impediment to communication in intercultural business
interactions. It also shows that, even in a situation where English
is used as a lingua franca, language is used not only for
transactional or utilitarian purposes, but also for relationship
building.
 This illustrates the point made at the beginning of this chapter,
that relational as well as transactional goals are achieved through
workplace language use.
 The examples of spoken and written international business
interactions given in this section show that the language used in
such situations can differ in a number of ways from that of
people interacting as native speakers of English.
 Furthermore, cultural factors may influence the interaction in a
number of ways. Nevertheless, the examples also show that there
is a great deal of variation in the level and function of the English
used in such situations and that it fulfils both transactional and
relational purposes.
 Try to answer the following questions:
 Do you regard yourself as a native speaker of English? Do
you speak differently depending on whether you
consider yourself to be talking to a native speaker or a
non-native speaker?
 If two non-native speakers of English can understand
one another, does it matter whether they are using the
language in a way that native speakers would regard as
correct?
 Have you ever seen misunderstandings arise between
people of different national origins when thy
communicate in English? Was this due mainly to
language or to cultural differences?
 Do you think that English as a lingua franca should be
recognised as a variety of English?
 Relationships at work:
 This section begins by looking at a highly influential
theory of how people interact at work, and then looks
at an important device used for relationship building
in the workplace; the use of humour.
 Communities of practice;
 So far we have been trying to identify what makes
workplace language distinctive. But of course,
workplaces also differ from one another, and people
working together share background knowledge, a set
of procedures and a particular workplace culture. This
is why it is sometimes difficult to make sense of
transcripts of workplace conversations.
 Groups or teams of people who regularly interact for a
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particular purpose, for example at work, have been referred to
as communities of practice (Wenger, 1998). The term practice
indicates that people in such groups are trying to get things
done and that they have developed routine procedures for
this.
According to Wenger, communities of practice are
characterised by three criteria:
1. mutual engagement
2. joint enterprise
3. a shared repertoire
Mutual engagement means more than simply working
together; it also indicates that people working together
develop a relationship. Joint enterprise refers to working
together for a common purpose to achieve particular goals,
and shared repertoire refers to the means by which the
members of a community of practice communicate with one
another.
 This category is of particular interest to us, as it includes the
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language and jargon that are specific to a workplace. However,
shared repertoire consists of more than just language; according
to Wenger, it includes routines, words, tools, ways of doing
things, stories, gestures, symbols, genres, actions, or concepts.
Think about a group of people with whom you interact regularly;
for example, your co-workers, family or fellow students. Is it a
community of practice? To decide whether or not it is, think
about whether it confirms to the three criteria:
1. mutual engagement: do you have a relationship with the other
people in the group, based on the things you do together?
2. joint enterprise: does the group have a common purpose or set
of purposes?
3. a shared repertoire: do you have special ways of
communicating or doing things, or any specific words or
abbreviations you use regularly?
 Humour and workplace culture:
 Holmes in her project (the language in the workplace
project) has looked at the role of humour in the workplace
and how its use can be linked to workplace culture.
 Holmes and Stubbe’s discussion of two case studies shows
that humour can be a distinctive feature of workplace
culture and can form an integral part of community of
practice. Humour can be supportive and collaborative, or it
can be contestive and competitive, involving jocular abuse.
Both types of humour are used to maintain good
relationships, but they show that humour can also be used
to deal with conflict and to exercise power in a mutually
acceptable way.
 This section will illustrate how things can go wrong when
the participants in the interaction do not manage to
establish a relationship.
 Language and power:
 This chapter began by outlining some of the distinctive
characteristics of workplace language, one of which is the
asymmetry and power difference in many workplace
interactions. Such asymmetry is particularly apparent in
fornstage encounters between professionals and lay people;
for example, doctors and patients. One obvious but
nevertheless critical aspect of many communications between
professionals and lay people is the extent to which the
professional is willing and able to talk about relevant topics in
a way that is clear to the uninitiated outsider.
 As in intercultural encounters, the lack of common
knowledge and understanding between a professional and a
client may not be confined to technical matters, but may be
related to differences in the cultural and linguistic
experiences of the people involved.
 Roberts and Campbell (2006) have directly addressed this
issue by recording and analysing interviews for low-paid
jobs in the UK. They aimed to discover whether ethnic
minority candidates were disadvantages in gate-keeping
encounters of this kind.
 They found that ethnicity itself was not the major indicator
of success, since candidates who were born abroad were
much less likely to be successful like 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.
 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.
 This analysis shows that job interviews place a very high
demand on candidates in terms of the linguistic skills required.
They not only need to demonstrate their qualifications and
relevant experience for the job, but they also need to align
themselves to expectations, use the right level of formality and
establish a good relationship with the interviewer. Roberts and
Campbell found this to be the case even in interviews for
routine manual jobs involving low levels of verbal interaction.
 This highlights the structural difficulties that outsiders or
novices can face in trying to enter a professional or workplace
community and access the economic opportunities that it
would provide.
 Try to answer the following questions:
 From your own experience, can you think of an
instance where humour has been used in a
workplace situation? Was this humour collaborative
or competitive? What do you think was the purpose
of this humour, and what effect did it have on
relationships?
 Have you ever had a job interview? Do you agree
with Roberts and Campbell that being successful in
an interview may come down to putting on a good
linguistic performance?
Conclusion:
 One of the main points made in this chapter is that when
people are working through the medium of English, the
language and discourse they use take on a range of
distinctive forms as a result of the different workplace and
professional settings in which they occur and the different
purposes for which they are used.
 We can see the specialised nature of English at work in a
variety of spoken and written genres, which fulfil particular
communicative purposes and have characteristic linguistic
and interactive structures. We can also see that language
used at work performs not only the transactional function
of getting things done, but also the relational function of
developing and maintaining working relationships.
Conclusion:
 When people work in English both within and
between organisations, language fulfils not only the
more obvious needs of effective information exchange,
but also the social and emotive functions of
relationship building. Moreover, it enacts power
relationships
between
participants,
possibly
embedding inequality and lack of access.
THANK YOU