Business English as a ‘lingua franca’ (BELF)
“Linguists believe English is the fastest spreading language in human history because of technology and media like MTV. So the scale and scope and rapidity with which English is spreading is unprecedented and staggering.” HBS Working Knowledge
The market for English Language Teaching (ELT) might seem reasonably mature and competitive. But (much like search in 1998) it is still on Day 1.
Most people speaking English today are not communicating with native English speakers from the USA, the UK or Australia. They are communicating with other non-native English speakers.
The ‘average’ English speaker in 2016 is someone from Tokyo pitching to someone in Beijing. Or someone in Sao Paulo doing business with someone in Warsaw. In fact, a pivotal study into ‘Business English as a lingua franca’ (BELF) concluded that English is now perceived as a neutral, equal alternative as it is usually neither party’s mother tongue. In short, it is no longer ‘owned’ by any specific nation.
English has not become the global ‘lingua franca’ as a result of colonialism or soft power initiatives. It has been chosen by billions of people around the globe as the most effective and established method of communicating across borders. It has been co-opted as the language of ambition, of personal advancement and career progression
Many organisations, and governments, have already recognised that there is a clear correlation between mobility, affluence, innovation and English proficiency.
Organizations that effectively marry language strategy with their global talent management process gain a leg up on the competition, say HBR’s Tsedal Neeley and Robert Steven Kaplan.
As a result, companies are beginning to accept that they need more than just education and learning programmes; they need a ‘Strategy for Language’ that is separate from other aspects of the educational agenda. And that strategy, more often than not, has English as a central component.
Anne Kankaanranta and Leena Louhiala-Salminen, from the Aalto University School of Business in Finland, have proposed a model called Global Communicative Competence (see figure below) as a framework for language strategy. This framework consists of three layers: multicultural competence, competence in English as a Business Lingua Franca and the communicator’s business ‘know how.’
Methods of teaching BELF, according to this framework, would assume a shared “core” of the English language, but focus as well on interactional skills, rapport building, and the ability to ask for and provide clarifications. Crucially, this means that ALL employees, including native English speakers, would need to participate in order for it to be a success.
As an initiative designed to confer competitive advantage at the organisational level, BELF is most effective when championed by the CEO. The most celebrated example is Hiroshi Mikitani, the CEO of Japanese retail giant Rakuten. He has been an outspoken evangelist for the adoption of BELF internally, often in the face of outrage and condemnation from the business community elsewhere in Japan.
Why have companies chosen to adopt BELF?
“By declaring to our stakeholders that Honda, as a global company, will make English our official language, we are aiming to raise our presence and transparency as a global company.” Yuka Abe (Honda).
When two individuals with different native-tongues meet, there is a need for a shared language of some form to make discourse possible. Individual interpreters can be employed at the most senior levels in business and government but this is not a scaleable solution for large groups or organisations.
International initiatives to establish a lingua franca by mandate (either an existing language or an invented one such as esperanto) have been resisted for reasons of sovereignty and a desire to preserve cultural independence. Recent adoption of BELF, on the other hand, has been ‘bottom up’: less about individual mandate and more an acknowledgement of established practices on the ground.
Tsedal Neeley lists 3 overarching needs behind adoption of BELF
- Pressure from competitors — Multinational companies need to interact with clients, suppliers and business partners, and those that ignore the need for a language strategy “are essentially limiting their growth opportunities to the markets where their language is spoken.” This, in turn, gives their competitors an edge.
- Globalization of resources — Neeley references the term “Tower of Babel” to illustrate what can happen if an employee in France needs input from a colleague in Brazil. “Better language comprehension gives employees more firsthand information, which is vital to good decision-making.”
- International mergers & acquisitions — Mergers or acquisitions get increasingly more complicated if there’s a language barrier; “nuances are easily lost, even in simple email exchanges.” Neeley also notes that English made things easier for Hoechst’s and Rhône-Poulenc’s 1998 merger. Newly formed Aventis’ choice of English, rather than one of the new company’s two native tongues, helped it to “avoid playing favorites.”
Rakuten’s Hiroshi Mikitani has written extensively about his rationale for adopting BELF. The reasons he has highlighted are:
- Talent — a lack of English proficiency limits Japanese companies from pursuing global talent and retaining non-Japanese staff.
- Knowledge ecosystem — Mikitani uses this term to refer to the ease with which employees can exchange information, skills and know-how to better engage with customers, clients and business partners outside Japan. A lingua franca underpins this capability.
- Time — A lot of time is saved when everyone in a company worldwide can communicate quickly, easily, without the need for translation. The need for this grows every day as the speed of business accelerates.
- Cost saving — translation is a big cost for Japanese companies! A lingua franca would reduce this cost substantially over time.
- Innovation — language barriers hinder innovation, a lingua franca facilitates it. Not just in terms of direct communication but in terms of people’s awareness of different cultural approaches and ideas. “English is not just a practical way of doing business, but involves a turn outward to search for new ways of thinking about doing business.”
Additional reasons include:
Contracts — Contracts between companies that do not share a common language are, more often than not, drafted in English. Furthermore, international tenders require applicants to submit their offer in English or to submit an English version.
What are the shortcomings of BELF?
There are many, although they are mainly issues of execution. Mikitani believes strongly that ‘English-nisation’ has been a success at Rakuten but acknowledges that the implementation was too severe and employees, at first, were not given adequate support.
Tsedal Neeley believes the decision to adopt a lingua franca must be balanced with the need to speak local languages and adapt to local cultures. Decision makers often mistake language skills for business experience and domain expertise so must be cautious about how they hire and promote staff.
What do companies need to support BELF programmes?
Traditional teaching methods and technologies have failed to keep up with the specific application of English within the corporate environment and the need of BELF programmes.
There exists a large and growing opportunity to meet the need the corporate market has for new products and services that support internal change management programmes aimed at establishing BELF.
These products need to recognise and cater to senior managers and business leaders, many of whom already possess a solid grasp of the basics of English, but have little experience of ‘business communication’ or the skills to convey issues of strategy or organisational culture effectively.
A comparison of how the two outlooks differ is summarised in the table below. (from this paper).
There is also an even greater number of companies who do not have a language strategy. In these organisations, uncontrolled multilingualism tends to lead to a chaotic and inefficient work environment. They present an opportunity to raise awareness of the need for BELF or to at least understand the rationale for its non-adoption.
BELF, as distinct from EFL (English as a foreign language) requires new pedagogical methods and tools. These methods need to take into account the specific requirements of BELF and move away from the purist dogma of ‘traditional’ EFL.
It has been observed that there is a
“very real danger that native English speakers, especially those who never mastered another language, risk missing out on business opportunities — whether in the form of contracts, idea development, job opportunities and the like — due to a basic lack of understanding of what international English communication entails.”
What makes BELF so appealing is that everyone needs to learn it, including ‘native’ English speakers, meaning the addressable market is significantly larger than has been assumed. All users of BELF need to take time to understand the specific nuances and techniques necessary to communicate effectively across borders.
References and citations
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/why-businesses-need-a-language-strategy
https://soundcloud.com/roger-carlenius/sets/harvard-business-school
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/judy-verses/four-reasons-your-busines_b_7939746.html
https://www.communicaid.com/business-language-courses/blog/company-language-strategy-need-one/
http://www.aelfe.org/documents/01_26_Kankaanranta.pdf
http://global-communication-competence.de/index.php/what-we-do/english-communication/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/should-organisation-have-language-strategy-samuel-bowrey
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2015/05/23/editorials/rakuten-forges-ahead-english/#.VsNwUZOLSfU
http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2015/06/30/honda-sets-english-as-official-language/?mg=id-wsj
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20130402135759-52782505-englishnization-the-reasons-why
http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2015/05/08/englishnization-advances-at-rakuten/
https://theconversation.com/renaming-english-does-the-world-language-need-a-new-name-14763
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2015/07/18/editorials/honda-makes-english-official/#.VswI6ZOLSfU
https://www.quora.com/Was-Rakutens-Englishnization-a-success
https://www.techinasia.com/hiroshi-mikitani-rakuten-english-nization
Appendix
The most significant number in business in 2016 is 3.9 billion. That’s the number of people NOT currently on the internet. No one knows exactly how long it will take for them to move online but, at the current pace, it is likely this will occur for most within the next 5 years. Once these new ‘netizens’ have satisfied their basic needs to communicate with friends, the vast majority will want to use it for one thing: to better themselves and improve their circumstances. To do so, they will all need to adopt the established ‘lingua franca’ of global communication: English.
