Receptive multilingualism as a strategy for sharing mutual linguistic resources in the workplace in a Swiss context

Abstract

The growing mobility of populations in important parts of the world has led, and is continuing to lead, to a lasting change from monolingual to multilingual teams of people working together, and the need for techniques for communication between people of different languages. A frequent stereotype envisages the most convenient solution as the choice of a single language, often English, including for the purposes of internal communication. Generally, it is linked to an ‘additive’ or ‘monolingual’ view on multilingualism and language choice, respectively: interlocutors speak one or the other language. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the DYLAN project showed the existence of alternative strategies based on a ‘multilanguaging’ philosophy: multilingual repertoires, defined as sets of ‘resources’ – both verbal (various registers, dialects and languages, mastered at different levels) and non-verbal (e.g. mime and gestural expression) – are jointly mobilised at the same time by the actors in order to find local solutions to practical problems. These alternative approaches demand integrated partial competences, e.g. local language(s) by expats or closely related languages, but inversely also English, as a tool for cross-linguistic and intercultural communication. They will be illustrated by examples from business meetings involving mixed teams in a range of companies operating across language borders.

Keywords:

• multilanguaging
• work place communication
• lingua receptiva
• Switzerland

Notes

1. This is an integrated project from the European Union's Sixth Framework Programme, Priority 7 ‘Citizens and governance in a knowledge-based society’. A total of 19 partners from 12 countries address the core issue of whether, and, if so how, a European, knowledge-based society designed to ensure economic competitiveness and social cohesion can be created despite the fact that, following enlargement, the European Union is linguistically more diverse than ever before. (cf. Berthoud, 2008 and http://www.dylan-project.org for an overview and Berthoud et al., 2012 for first results).

2. By language management we mean all the measures taken by a company concerning the collaborators’ representations of language(s), the construction of their linguistic repertoires as well as their use in internal and external communication. We investigated, for example, the choice of a corporate language, the role of languages in the hiring and promotion of collaborators, measures aimed at increasing these competences (language courses, exchange programmes between language regions, guidelines for a common corporate style, directives for linguistic landscaping and the companies’ websites, etc. (see Lüdi, 2010 for more details).

3. If we conceive the multilingual competence as an integrated whole, formed by partial competences in all the varieties (languages and dialects) that the repertoire of the multilingual person consists of, then we have to include a ‘strategic competence’ (Council of Europe, 2001), i.e. the mastery of exolinguistic and multilingual communication techniques.

4. Cf. García (2008); Pennycook (2010). ‘Languagers [are] people who move in the world in a way that allows the risk of stepping out of one's habitual ways of speaking’ (Phipps 2006, p. 12).

5. The aim of the ‘multilanguaging approach’ is to ‘capture the dynamic and evolving relationship between English, other indigenous African languages and multiple open semiotic systems, from the point of view of the language users themselves’ (Makoni & Makoni, 2010, p. 258).

6. In some cantons, this decision had to be – and has been – validated by a referendum.

7. ‘C‘est la démarche cognitive de l'utilisateur et la mesure de l‘effort cognitif fourni pour interpréter la nouvelle information qui constitueront la voix d'accès à l‘évaluation de la pertinence de l'information’ (http://toiltheque.org/Alsic_volume_1-7/Num1/stpierre/alsic_n01-rec2.htm with reference to Pinsky, 1992 and Sperber & Wilson, 1995).

8. In exolingual encounters, participants have to find a trade-off between two competing principles, both of which are necessary components of efficient communication: speakers have to make rapid progress and to accept a degree of opacity (the ‘progressivity principle’), but at the same time they must ensure that they understand each other by means of time-consuming reverse movements (repair sequences) and translation (the ‘intersubjectivity principle’). The former principle is forward-looking and tends to minimise the resources used, whereas the latter is backward-looking and tends to expand them. At work meetings the former principle is reflected in participants’ focus on the shared activity and their neglecting (‘let it pass’) of non-standard usage of English used as a lingua franca. The latter principle is reflected in repairs and use of translation, entailing a return to what has just been said, and hence a degree of redundancy.

9. See for examples Berthoud et al. (2012) and Grin and Mazzola (forthcoming) for a full description.