ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the results of a survey on business communication influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic and makes a proposal for Business English as a Lingua Franca (BELF) research and collaboration with industries from an applied linguistics perspective on the basis of the survey findings. The first section makes a brief introduction of the development of the Japan Association of Applied Linguistics (JAAL) up to the present as currently BELF is extensively researched by one of its very active special interest groups (English for Specific Purposes [ESP] SIGs) in Japan. The second section introduces some qualitative findings from a survey on the current situation of BELF communication in Japan, including the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
