Communication in International Management - 3 Essay

Communication in International Management - 3 - Essay Example In Germany, the government-owned postal service, Deutsche Post World Net, gradually utilises English as its official language. Much smaller firms are doing the same. The elevator maker, in Finland, known as Kone, assumed English in the 70s; Merloni Elettrodomestici, a midsized home appliance producer, in Italy, did so in the mid-90s (Blommaert, 2010). Management meetings at big banks like Credit Suisse in Switzerland, as well as Deutsche Bank, in Germany, are normally in English. Whereas there are many reasons why English has spread so fast globally and within Europe, a majority of these reasons are found on what critics term as econcultural grounds, that is, they are the consequence of the development of a world market, as well as global development in the fields of culture, science and technology and the media (Blommaert, 2010). A number of languages have been utilised all across the world as contact lingos for global trade and communication. In Europe itself, there have been a num ber of lingua francas as from the Roman times such as Greek, French, Latin, English and German. English, German and French are still widely used in parts of Europe and constitute what scholars refer to as the big languages of Europe (Tietze, 2008). For sure, in its strictest sense, the phrase ‘lingua franca’ appears to be compared to a pidgin in that it is a language with no native speakers. The phrase, English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), is mainly applied in this manner exclusively to refer the use of English between people whose mother tongue is not English. Scholars have added ‘B’ to ELF when it comes to using English in business contexts – Business English Lingua France (BELF) (Tietze, 2008). On to the thesis, this paper focuses on question 3, â€Å"implications of using English as a business lingua franca for businesses and native, as well as non-native English speakers.† The use of English The complication of the application of English, as a mother tongue, international language in non-English speaking parts of the world and also as a second language, has been acknowledged by Blommaert (2010), Brannen (2004) and Joseph (2004) and suggestions for transforming Crystal’s (2003) concentric circles structure of world English use to contain this complication have been proposed by Seidlhofer (2005) and more lately by Blommaert (2010) to consider the various, active roles of English in diverse parts of the world. For example, Tietze (2008) argues that in Germany, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, even though English is not the official language, it serves a number of commercial, social, educational and traditional functions, which rationalise classifying these nations as belonging to both Braj Kachru’s ‘outer’ and ‘expanding’ circles. It could likewise be claimed that Denmark and Sweden could gradually be seen as spanning these circles. In addition, the latest succession of 10 more natio ns to the European Union, in 2004, increased the nations in the ‘expanding circle’. This mobility of Europe’s borders and individuals within them, coupled with rising chances for regional trade, adds to the difficulty of language use across Europe and, without a doubt, provokes the development of a global language or languages. Global firms and international business commerce mainly imply a main need for individuals to converse across the globe, at least at a universally written and verbal level (Seidlhofer, 2005). Multilingual communication and translation are vital, but