ABSTRACT
This chapter elaborates on the notion of business knowledge among BELF speakers and present how business practitioners and scholars conceptualize such knowledge. After reviewing some relevant literature, the chapter introduces empirical study on the perceptions of both business practitioners and scholars on the 'B' of BELF. The concept of BELF was developed to grasp three imperative qualities that make it distinct within the 'umbrella discipline' of ELF (English as a lingua franca): its domain of use (international business), the role of its users (professionals), and the overall goal of the interactions (getting the job done and creating rapport). Finally, the chapter concludes by discussing the question if and why we need the concept of BELF in the first place. The concept of BELF is needed to make sense of the communication of the community of business professionals with their mutual engagement, joint enterprise and shared repertoire of resources.
