ABSTRACT
While linguistic change has increased the freedom of businesspeople to expand their business activities globally, it also has threatened the security of non-native speakers of the chosen language. In their working environment, modern presuppositions with regard to the linguistic norm are still dominant, which leads to discontent of non-native speakers. Among lay people, it is generally believed that non-native speakers’ insufficient linguistic competence hinders healthy business communication. Maclean (2006) argues that such a modern belief also exists in the majority of prior linguistic research on intercultural business interaction, which has been carried out by English-speaking researchers. In this perspective, insufficient linguistic
competency is often seen as a hindrance. According to Bilbow (1997: 464), much of the research conducted by applied linguists into native-non-native speaker interaction proffers the view that non-native speakers are deficient in terms of their English language skills. A number of Japanese researchers follow this line of argument and have researched the need for Japanese people to learn how to speak or write like native English speakers, or how to behave based on native-speaker norms. Corpus studies investigating how native speakers speak have flourished (e.g. Someya 2002). Bauman (1997: 17-19) argues that aiming at uniformity is part of modern order-building. The assumed homogeneity among all speakers of English tends to make people think that basic mechanisms of conversation, notably those of turn-taking, back-channelling, and topic management are shared as well. However, past research that investigated such mechanisms in social interaction found that there are considerable variations among speakers from various backgrounds (e.g. LoCastro 1987; Firth 1996). Hence, such assumption has made non-native speakers strangers in business interaction. An indigenous perspective taken by Okamura (2008) illustrates the marginalization of Japanese engineers in Western business discourse by presenting evidence of their feelings of inferiority. Her data indicate that the employees’ difficulties in communicating in English can be attributed to a lack of knowledge of taken-for-granted ways of turn-taking during negotiation, presenting data, and writing emails rather than linguistic competence itself. Fujio’s (2008) survey resonates with Okamura’s findings and shows that Japanese businesspeople have problems communicating in English, due not only to their weak language competence but also to their lack of cultural knowledge. Both factors tend to place Japanese businesspeople in peripheral positions (Norisada 2008). These studies from local perspectives indicate that cultural variables underlying English-speaking business discourse as well as a command of English constitute a kind of domination by native or near-native English speakers since they are familiar with business discourses based on the English language. The authors believe that the label of “English-speaking business discourse” demands reflection on the consequences of referring to a geographical as well as sociocultural multitude of native-English speakers. The authors take a position to view business discourses socially constructed by users of English language that consist of mostly educated employees who have been disciplined in English-speaking business environments rather than taking an essentialist position to view that there are British or American nation-specific business cultures (Bargiela-Chiappini 2009). Discourse in this article is viewed as more than just a language. It is a combination of “saying (writing)-doing-being-valuing-believing” that are discursively constructed and agreed through accumulated social interactions (Gee 1996: 127). From the perspective of business discourse, a similar picture of marginalization of non-native speakers is also seen in studies that investigate non-native speakers of Japanese in various work settings. The struggles and frustration of non-Japanese employees who use Japanese language for business are discussed
in Kondo’s (2007) study. Kondo administered a questionnaire to 100 nonJapanese employees working in Japan. Kondo’s data suggest that Asian (Chinese and Korean) employees have different difficulties from those of Westerners (West European, North American, and also Australian or New Zealander); Asian employees are expected to assimilate into Japanese business norms. Because of the similarity of Japanese and other East Asian cultures as well as their high level of command of Japanese, their Japanese colleagues and supervisors expect these Asian employees to align with Japanese normative behavior. Thus, Asian employees find it difficult to maintain their own cultural identities. Western employees, on the other hand, tend to maintain their own cultural norms within the workplace. It is taken for granted that Westerners behave differently from Japanese. Nevertheless, Kondo’s questionnaire reveals that Western employees are frustrated with “inefficiency” on the Japanese job site. Kondo discusses unnecessarily long meetings and unclear decisions made in such meetings as examples seen as inefficiency. It could be argued that the Westerners’ negative evaluation of Japanese meetings is based on their application of Western assumptions and criteria in evaluating Japanese business behavior. Kondo’s study also shows that, when Japanese language is used for business, Japanese normative behavior is also brought in. The choice of language seems to affect the security and freedom of players with different linguistic competences, and consequently empowers or disempowers them. The cultural variables underlying language that create conflict and tension will be discussed in the following section.
