Whose Culture and How Far? Culture Presentation in Current Business English Textbook Series

Abstract

International business communication is associated with cultural norms of both native and non-native business counterparts. It seems that the study of culture presentation from the perspective of English as a lingua franca in business English textbooks has been rather underexplored. To this end, cultural contents in two internationally distributed business English book series published by leading publishers were examined. It was found that the selected textbooks in the series were in favor of a representation of native speakers in global business encounters, the inner-circle culture of native speakers was the dominant culture content, and the level of cultural presentation tended to remain in the knowledge-oriented rather than communication-based level. This leads to an argument in favor of critical and reflective culture presentations in business materials.

Keywords:

• Culture
• Business English textbooks
• Business English as a lingua franca (BELF)
• International business communication
• Critical cultural awareness

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Roya Pashmforoosh

Roya Pashmforoosh is a PhD candidate in TEFL at Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran. She received her MA degree from Sharif University of Technology. Her areas of interest include Interlanguage Pragmatics, Speaking Assessment, and English as an International Language.

Esmat Babaii

Esmat Babaii is Associate Professor of applied linguistics at Kharazmi University, Iran, where she teaches research methods, language assessment, and discourse analysis to graduate and undergraduate students. She has served on the editorial boards and/or the review panels of several international journals. Her most recent work—Failed Restoration in the C-Test: Types, Sources, and Implications for C-Test Processing—has appeared in Grotjahn, R., (2014), Der C-Test: Aktuelle Tendenzen/The C-Test: Current Trends.