Language awareness as a challenge for business

Abstract

The following contribution is a meta-analysis of the language awareness discipline from a practical application point of view. It is based on a keynote speech at the 10th International Conference of the Association for Language Awareness, and deals with the implications of business requirements for language use in communication processes. The authors are marketing scholars and are therefore discussing language awareness from this outside perspective. The objective of the speech, and hence this paper, is to give a broad overview of language awareness issues in business, potential problem solutions, and the implications for language-oriented disciplines. The authors do not intend to develop research designs for specific questions but hope that the conceptual and empirical examples mentioned will lead to closer co-operation between the language awareness and the business fields, both in academia and in practice. This paper therefore is an attempt to cross disciplinary borders. The first part of the paper explains the setting of the issue; the second part gives an overview of language problems in a business context; the third part suggests some solutions for these problems; the fourth part briefly illustrates with an example of an empirical research project in the business communication field; and the fifth and final part is a summary and draws some conceptual and meta-analytical conclusions.

Keywords:

• sociolinguistic competence
• context
• awareness
• language attitudes
• language awareness

Notes

1. The authors conducted an exploratory, not representative, survey by analysing 200 German job ads published on the Internet platform stepstone.com on the 7 July 2010. They looked at different company functions and the required profiles were analysed with regard to academic degree, knowledge of languages, and willingness to accept international travelling activities.