VARIETIES OF ENGLISH: Words & Collocations Readings: Y. Kachru & L. Smith, Ch 7.
1 CHAPTER-1 COMMUNICATION IN THE PROFESSIONAL SPHERE...
Transcript of 1 CHAPTER-1 COMMUNICATION IN THE PROFESSIONAL SPHERE...
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CHAPTER-1
COMMUNICATION IN THE PROFESSIONAL SPHERE
1.0 Introduction
Language use in specialized areas like engineering, computer science, trade and
commerce, management studies and even politics, is receiving more and more attention
from researchers and from professionals alike. Language is the ‘verbalization of thought’
and is neither straightforward to process nor to break down into manageable pieces.
Humans themselves spend decades and many thousands of conversations to fully acquire
all the intricacies of any given language. Economic globalization, rapid technological
changes, and increasing organizational interdependencies have caused a need for
collaboration in all sectors of our society (Koskenlinna et al., 2005; Thomson & Perry,
2006) and so organizational communication has become increasingly intriguing and a
field for researchers to study because communication is one of the important criteria for
the success of professionals in organizations. “Business discourse is all about how people
communicate using talk in commercial organizations in order to get their work done”
(Bargiela-Chiappini, Nickerson & Planken, 2007). In the process of economic
globalization, business communication is language in use, which takes place in all
economic and social interactions.
Language informs the way we think, the way we experience, and the way we
interact with each other (Montgomery 1995). Malinowski claims that the central
character of language is as ‘a mode of action and as an instrument of reflection’. This
view emphasizes the role of language in ‘practical action’ and as a link in concerted
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human activity, as a piece of human behavior (Ogden&Richards, 1949). Wittgenstein
also came to think of language primarily as a system of representation and as a vehicle
for all sorts of social activity. ‘Don’t ask for the meaning', he admonishes, 'ask for the
use.’ Austin’s attention was first attracted to what he called ‘ explicit performative
utterances’ which uses sentences like ‘ I nominate…..’, ‘ you are fired….’, ‘ the meeting
is adjourned’ and ‘ you are sentenced …..’ to perform acts of the very sort named by the
verb such as nominating, firing, adjourning, or sentencing. One area of language study
where pragmatics is more or less unavoidable is any kind of study of spoken language in
professional interactions. In studying language and occupation or language and power,
one cannot avoid the use of pragmatic frameworks for analysis. There is undeniably a
formidable relationship between communication and organizational success. Language
pervades social life. It is the principal vehicle for the transmission of cultural knowledge,
and the primary means by which we gain access to the contents of others' minds.
Language is implicated in most of the phenomena that lie at the core of social
psychology: attitude change, social perception, personal identity and professional
interaction.
The Eleventh Plan of India focused on quality and employable education to more
people, and getting chances to study in world-class institutions. According to Daggubati
Purandareswari (2008), Union Minister of State for Human Resource Development, India,
the educational system will be restructured to impart competitive skills and capabilities of
global standards. ‘The Hindu’ editorial dated 21st March 2008, titled “Taking the stress
out of schools” very rightly points out that the existing school education system in India at
10th Standard and Plus Two levels is extremely stressful to the students. The parents
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expect them only to score more than 90% to gain admission in prestigious institutions.
Other objectives of education are subordinated to this aspect. The editorial also argues that
there has been a gradual shift from content-based to problem solving and competence-
based testing in the examinations at the tertiary level. But this has to be introduced at the
school level and speeded up and the focus has turned away entirely from rote-learning.
According to the editor, the goals of school education should be for preparing students for
life outside the classroom, laying the foundation for higher studies, and equipping them
for the job market.
The editorial also adds that the teaching methods must be reviewed and the teachers
trained to adapt themselves to the changing environment. But the truth remains that even
at the tertiary level it is not achieved. This scenario calls for immediate steps to develop
courses with emphasis on problem solving methods in secondary and tertiary levels in all
subjects. Globalization or rather glocalisation has put the world in a state of perpetual
transition. Economics, social structures and even demographics have changed. Modern
communications and the need to share technology have made the global economy both
competitive and independent. That independence and competitiveness has also created a
need for proficiency in a common language to enable sustainable development and easy
exchange of information. To this end, English is currently the accepted language for
communication in most global markets (Modiano, 2001).
The rapidly changing economic environment is forcing business institutions to
adjust both their structures as well as methods of operation, since much of their
cooperative effort and research is located in other countries. A good example of that
change is right within civil engineering, information technology, computer science in
India where many cooperative agreements have been established with more than five
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countries throughout Asia, America, and the Middle East (Civil Tech Design and
Consultants, 2006).
Thus, why is English proficiency so important when it comes to communication in
general? One main reason is that over the last century, English has been associated with
economic modernization, information technology and industrial development.
Competency in communicating in English is the key to a professional’s success. This
aspect is further discussed.
1.1 Importance of communicating in English in the professional sphere
Communication being what it is today, proficiency and competency in the English
language is a necessity. Competitive demands of government, industry and corporations,
both national and international, for economic and technological progress, require a
language that is effective and understandable within that economy and technology. The
most widely spoken language in the world is English, followed by French, Spanish and
Chinese. English is increasingly becoming the language of international business (Hill,
2007). Notably, English is the lingua-franca and the key to professional development.
Kachru and Nelson (2001) metaphorically divide types of English speakers
throughout the world into three groups represented by three concentric circles: Inner
circle, Outer circle and the Expanding circle. The Inner circle refers to native speakers,
namely British, American, Australian Canadian, Irish and New Zealanders who use
English as their first language or native language. The Outer circle represents users from
formerly colonized countries such as India, Pakistan, Singapore the Philippines, Nigeria,
South Africa and Zambia, where English serves as the Official language. In this sense,
English is used as the second language or as an intranational language. The Expanding
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circle consists of countries where English is used as a foreign language for international
communication by non-native speakers and includes Russia, Japan, China, Thailand and
Indonesia. In these countries, English is studied as a subject (Kachru & Nelson, 1996,
2001; Crystal, 2001; Pennycook 2001). The global spread of English through the three
concentric circles has taken place in different ways. Its spread in the Inner circle has
involved migrants of native speakers from the British Isles to New Zealand, Australia, the
United States of America and Canada. The spread of English in the Outer circle occurred
in colonial contexts of Asia and Africa, where English was used in socio-cultural
contexts. The spread of English in the Expanding circle has occurred because of the
impact of advancement of science and technology, commerce and various forms of
knowledge and information (Kachru & Nelson, 1996).
EXPANDING CIRCLE
INNER CIRCLE
OUTER CIRCLE
Diagram -1
Source: - Kachru’s Model of world Englishes. Kachru: 1992
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Table-1 Countries represented in the circles
INNER CIRCLE
Australia
Canada
New Zealand
UK
USA
OUTER CIRCLE
India
Malaysia
Pakistan
Philippines
Singapore
Sri lanka
Tanzania
Zambia
EXPANDING CIRCLE
China
Egypt
Japan
Korea
Saudi-Arabia
Zimbabwe
English is thus used for many purposes. First, English is used as a language for
international business communication owing to the nature of globalization where the
market has become a global one and people conduct business with other people
worldwide. Second, English is a dominant official language used as a means for contact
among governmental institutions and agencies such as the United Nations, the World
Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1996; Crystal, 1997). Third, English is used
globally in education; as a vehicle in academic conferences and contacts; in international
tourism and air traffic control; and in entertainment, advertising, media and popular
culture (Kachru and Nelson, 1996; Crystal, 1997; Harmer, 2001).
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English is first and foremost a means of obtaining better and well-paid jobs and
promotions in the workplace. It has been described as the “key to professional
advancement”.
Students need to be competent in English if they so desire to study in overseas
universities which is validated by tests such as the TOEFL and IELTS. English is used to
gain access to knowledge and information through computer mediated communication
including online conferencing, emails, chat rooms and World Wide Web resources etc.
It is difficult to imagine a profession that does not require one to interact with other
people. We use interpersonal communication every day, to handle complaints from a
demanding client, to persuade a boss to give you some time off, or to comfort a friend
dealing with a difficult relationship. The importance of professional communication in
modern-day scenario must not be underestimated, since this is the life blood of any
company. Any survey of employers or recruiters will inevitably name “communication” as
an essential skill in the workplace (Carnevale, Gainer, & Meltzer, 1990; Fisher, 1998;
Gaut & Perrigo, 1998; Koncz & Collins, 2007; Maes, Weldy, & Icenogle, 1997;
Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS), 1990). Business and
management schools have long recognized the importance of communication instruction
to professional success (Reinsch, 1996), and engineering, health, and design programs are
increasingly including communication within the professional curriculum (Dannels, 2002,
2003; Lundgren & McMakin, 2004).
Professional communication consists of two aspects, internal and external
communication. Internal communication takes place when people within the same
company communicate and interact with each other. Large workforces in the biggest
companies make this an essential aspect of running any business, and this involves passing
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of orders, reporting of results, reporting of complaints, discussion of new ideas,
examination of client needs, determining of marketing strategies, production of the goods
and motivating of employees. All these aspects are crucial for the smooth running of a
business, and embracing new technology in the modern world for these purposes will be
helpful. The other form of communication that is necessary is external communication,
and this involves interacting with vendors, clients, customers, press representatives and
legal representatives. All these channels require great tact and showmanship, and no
profession can survive without following the proper lines of communication. The needs of
the clients have to be understood, progress needs to be regularly conveyed to them,
procurement of raw materials needs to be carried out, synergy and partnership with other
companies needs to be nurtured, and customers need to be targeted properly. All these
tasks require a concerted effort from all departments of the organization, and this can only
be achieved through proper means of business communication.
Firstly, any communication requires specific knowledge about the topic and
professional communication must take into account the specific business context (Varner,
2007), which is labeled as business institutional context. In order to ensure success in
business communication, business people need to be equipped with professional expertise,
including knowledge of institutional goals, corporation size and activity, organizational
structure, available technology, methods of control, business strategies, business practices,
working procedures, etc. As far as institutional goals are concerned, business interactions
involve an orientation to some core goal, task or identity conventionally associated with a
business organization. For example, products need to be sold to customers, and employees
need to be put into the right positions to maximize the effective operations of the
corporation (Nickerson, 2000). Institutional context is instrumental in professional
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business interactions in that it highlights professionalism and business-orientation within a
business context and distinguishes business context from other contexts.
Secondly, business interactions are grounded in certain cultures, and business
cultural knowledge is of vital significance, especially in cross-cultural business
interactions. Business people need to know about the national culture, the general business
culture, and the specific corporate culture. Vandermeeren (1999) identifies national culture
within the same type of business as a determining factor in the amount and type of foreign
languages used in promotional material. Corporate culture, a contributing factor to
economic success, refers to “the pattern of beliefs, values and learned ways of coping with
experience that have developed during the course of an organization’s history, and which
tend to be manifested in its material arrangement and in the behaviors of its members”
(Brown, 1995). For instance, the use of the English language is part of the corporate
culture in IT industries. Besides this, cultural adaptation and cultural empathy are equally
important in cross-cultural communication in order to achieve cooperation and common
ground, and eventually business goals.
Thirdly, business interactions manifest regularity to a large extent in that the
configuration of “recurrent situations that occur within a business organization, the
participants involved and the social action that is viewed as necessary by the participants”
(Nickerson, 2000) determines the typified communicative practices of an organization, i.e.
genres (e.g. promotional genres). In short, professional practice determines discursive
practice. Then, business people need to embody both discursive practice and professional
practice, i.e. business genre knowledge. Business genre knowledge, highly structured and
conventionalized in form and content, refers to business people’s repertoire of
situationally appropriate responses to recurrent business situations, including the
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awareness and understanding of the shared practices of certain business communities as
well as their choices of genres in order to perform their everyday tasks. In this sense,
context is constitutive, especially in intra-cultural communication, since it helps
interlocutors predict and expect conventionalized language use. Language spells
behaviour and in organizations a common objective is specified which necessitates
appropriate responses so as to fulfill the objective. What constitutes appropriate
organizational behaviour is the next aspect discussed as language and behaviour are
interrelated.
1.2 Language and Organizational Behaviour
The field of organizational behaviour does not depend upon deductions based on gut
feelings but attempts to gather information regarding an issue in a scientific manner under
controlled conditions. It uses information and interprets the findings so that the behaviour of
an individual and group can be canalized as desired. Psychologists, social scientists and
academicians have carried out research on various issues related to organization
behaviour. Employee performance and job satisfaction are determinants of
accomplishment of individual and organizational goals. Organizations have been set up to
fulfill needs of the people. In today’s competitive world, the organizations have to be
growth-oriented.
The key elements in organizational behavior are people, structure, technology and
the external elements in which the organization operates. When people join together in an
organization to accomplish an objective, some kind of infrastructure is required. People
also use technology to help get the job done, so there is an interaction of people, structure
and technology. People make up the internal social system of the organization. They
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consist of individuals and groups, and large groups as well as small ones. People are the
living, thinking, feeling beings who created the organizations. Organisations exist to
achieve their objectives. Organizations exist to serve people. People do not exist to serve
organizations. The workforce is one of the critical resources that needs to be managed. In
managing human resources, managers have to deal with:
i) Individual employees who are expected to perform the tasks allotted to them.
ii) Dyadic relationships such as superior-subordinate interactions.
iii) Groups who work as teams and have the responsibility for getting the job done.
iv) People who are outside the organization system such as customers and government
officials.
Structure defines the official relationships of people in organizations. Different
jobs are required to accomplish all of an organization’s activities. There are managers and
employees, accountants and assemblers. These people have to be related in some
structural way so that their work can be effective. The main structure relates to power and
to duties. For example, one person has the authority to make decisions that affect the
work of other people. Some of the key concepts of organization structure are listed
below:
a) Hierarchy of Authority: This refers to the distribution of authority among
organizational positions and authority grants the position holder certain rights including
right to give direction to others and the right to punish and reward.
b) Division of Labor: This refers to the distribution of responsibilities and the way in
which activities are divided up and assigned to different members of the organization
which is considered to be an element of the social structure.
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c) Span of Control: This refers to the total number of subordinates over whom a
manager has authority.
d) Specialization: This refers to the number of specialities performed within the
organization.
e) Standardization: It refers to the existence of procedures for regularly recurring events
or activities.
f) Formalization: This refers to the extent to which rules, procedures, and
communications are written down.
g) Centralization: This refers to the concentration of authority to make decisions.
h) Complexity: This refers to both vertical differentiation and horizontal differentiation.
Vertical differentiation outlines number of hierarchical levels; horizontal differentiation
highlights the number of units within the organization (e.g departments, divisions).
Organizations can be structured as relatively rigid, formalized systems or as relatively
loose, flexible systems. Thus, the structure of the organizations can range on a continuum
of high rigidity to high flexibility.
It is the ability to work with people; it is the cooperative effort; it is team work; it is
the creation of an environment in which people feel secure and free to express their
opinions. Human or interpersonal skills represent the ability to work well with and
understand others to build cooperative effort within a team to motivate and to manage
conflict. These skills are important for managers at all levels. Managers need to be aware
of their own attitudes, assumptions and beliefs as well as being sensitive to their
subordinates perceptions, needs, and motivations.It is important to note that these skills
are called as soft skills and it is proved that the organizations nurturing the soft skills
within the organization are successful in their business operations. Some of the important
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soft skills include communicating, motivating, leading, delegating and negotiating skills.
As managers deal directly with people within as well outside the organization, such types
of interpersonal skills are crucial in maintaining effective interpersonal relations.
Managers with good interpersonal skills get the best out of their people. They know how
to communicate, motivate, lead and inspire enthusiasm and trust.
Therefore, language is not merely a collection of words to be processed and acted
upon according to set rules. Quite apart from all the syntactic, grammatical and semantic
difficulties encountered when trying to work out the structure of language, there are many
other extraneous influences that govern any sentence; such as intonation, the character of
the speaker, the occasion, the motives of the speaker, the use of jokes, sarcasm, metaphor,
idioms and hyperbole (when words may not be taken at face value), etc. The
understanding of language necessarily entails some understanding not only of the world,
but also of the conversational ‘context’ of an utterance. This point is made by Reichman
(1985), who says, “in addition to our knowledge of sentential structure, we have
knowledge of other standard formats (i.e. contexts) in which information is conveyed.”
As discussed, research has been done on the impact of organizational structure on
communication and behavior which needs special mention here as this study will stress on
the need for successful professional interaction when one becomes a part of an
organization; also, the need to fill the gap in the curriculum and the practical use of
language at the workplace. This leads us to the rationale of this study.
1.3 The Rationale of this Study
Educators need to take into account the learners’ aptitude and interests and should
encourage life-long learning. The learning environment and the activities selected by
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teachers should encourage thinking processes such as problem-solving and critical and
creative thinking as well as analytical skills. They also need to encourage learners to apply
their knowledge and experience to new situations. Koester (2006) states that there is a
practical application for this kind of research: “With the current emphasis on ‘soft skills’,
i.e., on effective communication in the workplace, insights gained from a close analysis of
workplace interactions are certainly of practical relevance to the practitioners themselves”.
Crandall and Basturkmen (2004) and Bardovi-Harlig (2001) emphasize that it is necessary
for learners to notice these pragmatic factors first, enabling them to begin to improve their
competence. The two core skills required for effective cross-cultural communication for
engineers to enhance competitiveness is proficiency in speaking and writing (Wardrope,
2002). To that end, many organizations are finding it necessary to improve their
employees’ skills in English in order to effectively and efficiently run their organizations
(Ellis & Johnson, 1995).
Employers consistently name communication as one of the essential skills for
success in a professional environment, and career success is frequently named as a benefit
of taking communication courses. However, a lack of consistency in the methods of
communication used by researchers, employers, and business faculty hampers effective
instruction and assessment of professional communication competence. Some researchers
propose a theoretical model that explains the contradictory expectations across academic
and professional contexts and provides a framework to develop assessment and instruction
in a way that distinguishes between trainer, and academic perspectives. Assessment of
professional communication must account for dynamic, complex behaviors that represent
specific skills as well as strategic use of conceptual understanding performed within a
specific context of organizational goals. Meanwhile, a communication “skills gap”
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continues to drive employers to provide additional training for their employees (Paradise
& Homer, 2007). With substantial attention to professional communication skills, it would
seem that clear learning objectives and assessment standards are readily available.
However, reviews of the published literature in the assessment of workplace
communication skills have found this not to be the case (Cyphert, 2006; DiSalvo, 1980).
Instead, a vast range of communication behaviors are named as important with virtually
no concern for specific or operationalized definitions, explicit descriptions of acceptable
skill levels, or assessment criteria. Further, studies that provide carefully detailed
descriptions of the assessed communication seem to raise additional concerns about
consistency. Employers who are reported as desiring conversational skills, for example,
are described to mean everything from simple coding and decoding of basic English
speech (Alexander, Penley, & Jernigan, 1992; Rush, Moe, & Storlie, 1986) to
sophisticated, strategic use of discourse to achieve organizational and personal outcomes
(Henry, 2000). Workplace communication studies indicate that employer demands placed
on effective presentation skills and attitude required of engineers of the 21st century far
differ from that of the 1990’s as a result of globalization and industrialization in the new
millennium (Nguyen, 1998; Patil, 2005; Radzuan, N. R. M., Ali F., Kassim H., Hashim,
H., Osman, N., & Abid, R., 2008; Schnell, 2006; Thomas, 2007).
Employers highlight three skills needed by all workers: teamwork, flexibility, and
communication. Since many workplaces are currently organized according to a matrix
system, an employee no longer has a specific job. Instead, his or her skills especially in
graphics, computers, or oral presentations make the worker a valued member of a team.
These three skills are essential for the matrix worker, since he or she must work well with
others and be able to switch easily from team to team, depending on the project. Oral
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communication is the mode of choice in most workplaces today; the paper memo is dead,
replaced by voice mail, informal conversation, and sometimes E-mail or fax-mail. The
industry has moved forward rapidly and technology also has changed but the outlook of
educational institutions and the curriculum have not changed that rapidly. So, we have to
bridge the gap by providing additional training to the people who are coming out of
colleges so that they are industry-ready. Today’s global workplace professional skill and
attribute requirement are a result of the “globalization of engineering education and the
increasing mobility of engineering professionals around the world” (Patil, 2005).
Engineers multi-task and are required to deal with various workplace
communicative events (meetings, discussions, presentations, advice) at both formal and
informal settings (Tenopir & King, 2004). As engineers spend about “58% of their time
communicating” (Tenopir & King, 2004), it is essential that graduates be equipped with
effective communication skills and attitude for workplace participation. Crosling & Ward
(2002) identified presentation as one of the various workplace oral communication
activities performed by engineers (cited by Eunson, 2008). Engineers need to be proficient
as presentation skills are an important workplace communicative event (Bhattacharyya,
Nordin & Salleh, 2009; Norback & Hardin, 2005). The researchers’ interest in this study
stems from the global concern over graduates lack of communicative competence for
workplace communicative events as experienced in the Indian setting. If a graduates
communicative competence is left unchecked, nation building plans will probably not
materialize due to insufficient human capital.
John Reinert, Engineering Manager, at Aeroflex UTMC Microelectronics in
Colorado Springs, Colorado, is quoted in the article ENGINEERS TAKE A HARD LOOK
AT “SOFT SKILLS” (Costlow, 2000) as saying that soft skills are just as important as
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engineering skills‘. Kalani Jones, Engineering Vice President at Tachyon Inc. (San Diego)
states that employers look for engineers who can lead a team and get a small team of four
to six people motivated. He says that it is hard enough to find a good engineer; finding one
who can lead a team and speak well in front of customers is really hard to find. According
to Vern R.Johnson, Associate Dean, at the University of Arizona‘s College of Engineering
(Tucson), many employers choose to hire skills rather than people, and the growing trend
in engineering today is for recruiters to look for skilled/global engineers who possess
excellent English communication and presentation skills. (Costlow, 2000).
The sheer range of elements that can be considered as part of communication
competence suggests that creating consistent definitions of professional communication
skills is an important first step toward developing appropriate curricula, instructional
methods, or assessment instruments (Cyphert, 2006). The range of communication goals
and competencies studied in the workplace extends across multiple industries, the full
scope of career stages, and contexts from corporate office to production line.
Further, communication competence seems to be defined in a different way by each
investigator. The diversity of communication behaviors that employers and academics can
value is no real surprise, nor is the potential for contradictions in what might be
considered competent communication. Comparisons of communication skills and
workplace requirements have long demonstrated a mismatch between the taxonomies of
communication skills. Knowledge of pragmatics is therefore central to understanding
power and its role in human communication. Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei state that a good
level of grammatical competence does not imply a good level of pragmatic competence
for two main reasons: "The disparity between learners and native speakers’ pragmatic
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competence may be attributed to two key factors related to input and the salience of
relevant linguistic features in the input from the point of view of the learner (1998) ".
Schmidt (1993) suggests that, if an English language learner is to acquire
pragmatics, s/he needs to take into account linguistic functions and the context. Kasper
(1996) believes that students need to receive proper input and be aware of it. Trenchs
(1997) states that the main aim of the various English language learning projects in
secondary schools that use electronic mails is not to acquire grammatical knowledge.
Through electronic mails (e-mails) students must "speak" with other students: therefore,
they use not only their grammatical knowledge of the English language but also their
pragmatic knowledge.
• First, students need to be able to use a wide range of tools for interacting
effectively with the environment: both physical ones such as information
technology, and socio-cultural ones such as the use of language. They need to
understand such tools well enough to adapt them for their own purposes –to use
tools interactively.
• Second, in an increasingly interdependent world, students need to be able to
engage with others, and since they will encounter people from a range of
backgrounds, it is important that they are able to interact in heterogeneous groups.
• Third, students need to be able to take responsibility for managing their own lives,
situate their lives in much broader social contexts and act autonomously. These
categories, each with a specific focus, are interrelated, and integrally form a basis
for identifying and mapping key competencies. The need for students to think and
act reflectively is central to this set of competencies. Reflectivity involves not just
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the ability to apply routinely a formula or method for confronting a situation, but
also the ability to deal with change, learn from experience and think and act with
a critical stance.
Thus, keeping in view the analysis of the external requirements shown by the job
market, interdisciplinary perspectives of education, professional standards and also
priorities of students’ needs, the following six competencies are potentially significant for
the future self-realization of each student. A system of integral key competencies and
special (function-oriented) competencies (based on the definitions of ‘Common European
Framework of Reference for Languages’, 2004) is presented here.
Table-2 Key Competencies and Special (function-oriented) competencies
Key competencies
Special
(Function – orientated) competencies
Autonomous Autonomous Linguistic
Interactive Interactive Strategic
For many years, the main objective of studies on the learning of English as a second
language was to analyse linguistic competence. The main reason for this was the teaching
methodology used in which grammar was central to learning. But, for some years now,
the communicative approach to second-language learning has put grammar-centred
classes to one side and fostered the use of pragmatics. This new vision of second-
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language learning has led many researchers to define (or redefine) terms such as
pragmatic competence, communicative competence or interlanguage. Many of these
researchers have considered that pragmatic competence, as well as communicative
competence, can be defined as the learner's ability to put into practice the knowledge that
s/he has of the target language in order to express intentions, feelings, etc and interpret
those of the speakers (Lara 2001).
In this context, ‘speech acts’ are undisputedly central to pragmatic competence. A
speech act is an utterance that serves a function in communication (Paltridge, 2000), be it
greeting, complaint, invitation, compliment, request, or refusal. Searle (1969) pointed out
that speaking a language is actually engaging in an act which is “a rule-governed form of
behavior.” Oxford philosopher and speech acts theorist John Austin (1975) proposed
that, as functional units in communication, the speech acts can be analyzed on three
levels: The locution (the words the speaker uses); the illocution, or illocutionary force
(what the speaker intends to do by using those words); and the perlocution (the effect of
those words on the hearer). It can be argued that perhaps pragmatic knowledge simply
develops alongside lexical and grammatical knowledge, without requiring any pedagogic
intervention. However, research into the pragmatic competence of adult foreign and
second language learners has demonstrated convincingly that the pragmatics of learners
and native speakers are quite different (Kasper 1997). Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper
(1989) report that, ‘Even fairly advanced language learners’ communicative acts
regularly contain pragmatic errors, or deficits, in that they fail to convey or comprehend
the intended illocutionary force or politeness value’.
The central idea or suggestion of the study is therefore that if the English course for
engineers “English for Engineers” which is offered during the first year of the four-year
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engineering programme in colleges and universities, is modified based on the corporate
expectations, then the course will achieve its goal, which is of building the confidence of
students preparing them for higher education or campus recruitments or the workplace.
The aim of the course should be to expose learners to the pragmatic aspects of language
and provide them with the analytical tools they need to arrive at their own generalizations
concerning contextually appropriate language use. The understanding of language
necessarily entails some understanding not only of the world, but also of the
conversational ‘context’ of an utterance. At this point, the researcher would like to
reiterate the point made by Reichman (1985), who says, “in addition to our knowledge of
sentential structure, we have knowledge of other standard formats (i.e. contexts) in which
information is conveyed.” The course should therefore be conducted during all the four
years because in the first year the students do not fully comprehend the requirements of
the industry in terms of language as use, language as behaviour and language as power.
1.4 What is the kind of communication one needs to be a successful engineering
professional?
The need for imparting communication skills and soft skills to engineering students has
been stressed by industrialists and business people in India. Not only oral communication
but written communication is also very important for engineers. Hissey (2007) states that
today's engineering executives want engineers who can write clearly, concisely and
comprehensively. Highlighting the importance of presentations skills for engineers, Hissey
(2007) says that oral presentations are increasingly an integral part of engineering
profession and calls for added emphasis in engineering curricula as well. According to
him, improved presentation and delivery style will enrich an engineer's career. Successful
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professional communication depends on pragmatically competent business people. How
do professionals acquire pragmatic competence to ensure successful business
communication? What does it mean for business people to become pragmatically
competent in business interactions?
Firstly, the definition of ‘competence’:-
Competence is an objective characteristic determined by integral personal system of
mental intelligence and abilities, assuming a synthesized unity of the following:
• knowledge and acumen
• cognitive skills and strategies
• practical aptitudes and abilities
as well as social and behavioural components comprising
• attitudes
• emotions
• values and ethics
• motivations functionally orientated towards positive result achievement in a
certain context.
Hence, business people acquire pragmatic competence both naturally and socially.
Pragmatic competence in business is partly acquired as linguistic and cognitive abilities
mature. Furthermore, it is mostly learned as they gain a full participation and membership
in a society, especially in a business community so that they are acculturated into it and
acquire specific manners of business communication that reflect beliefs, values, practices
of the given business culture.
Pragmatic competence is broadly defined as the ability to use language
appropriately in a social context. Generally speaking, the major components of pragmatic
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competence are systems of knowledge related to speech acts in general and speech acts of
certain basic types in particular, as well as systems of knowledge related to what is
implicated in addition to what is said. Following Leech (1983), most scholars generally
divide pragmatic competence into two types: pragmalinguistic competence—the ability to
use linguistic resources available to perform pragmatic functions, and sociopragmatic
competence—the ability to achieve appropriate use of linguistic resources in a given
cultural context. Bhatia (2004) defines discursive competence in professional practice as
the knowledge and skills that expert professionals use in specific discourse situations of
their everyday professional activities, which consist of three parts: textual space (textual
knowledge), socio-cognitive space (genre knowledge in relation to professional practice)
and social space (social and pragmatic knowledge).
The above account of general pragmatic competence suggests two levels from
which professional pragmatic competence could be investigated. In terms of goals, it is the
competence of using language appropriately to achieve business and interpersonal goals,
which feed into each other. Based on Cap (2009), it is business people’s ability of using
language to represent the organization, i.e. building up the image and identity of the
organization, and to accomplish smaller-size goals, such as promoting one’s point of view
and managing their floor in a business meeting. As stated earlier, the central character of
languages is as ‘a mode of action and not an instrument of reflection’. This view
emphasizes the role of language in ‘practical action’ and as a ‘link in concerted human
activity, as a piece of human behavior’ (Ogden&Richards, 1949). Therefore, language is a
vehicle for all sorts of social activity.
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1.5 Pragmatic Strategies in Successful Professional Interactions
Successful business interactions involve, among other things, favorable relationship and
organizational goodwill, i.e. the attainment of business and interpersonal goals. To
establish a strong business relationship, business people should relate to each other in
three important ways:-
• Positively
• Personally
• Professionally
Some of the ways the sender can do so include the following: stressing the receiver’s
interests and benefits; using positive wording; doing more than what is expected (Krizan,
Merrier, Logan & Williams, 2007). In business interactions, favorable relationships can be
characterized by concord and solidarity, good impression, effective leadership, to name
but a few. Business people may exploit pragmatic strategies to attain interpersonal goals.
Firstly, the person deixis “we”, both hearer-inclusive and hearer-exclusive, is often
used in business meetings to achieve ambiguous referential meanings for the sake of
concord (Poncini, 2004). Furthermore, people tend to prefer we, us, our to you and I in
business interactions, for example, when performing requests in the workplace, business
correspondence and negotiations, the use of first-person plural deixis is more cooperative
and intimate while the use of other deictic terms is more threatening and less sociable. For
instance, “if we just tell them exactly where it is …. ” is preferred to “if you just tell them
…” when requests are performed (Holmes, 2000). Moreover, verbal humor, especially
supportive humor, contributes to concord and social cohesion in business interactions,
increasing feelings of solidarity or collegiality between co-workers, colleagues, managers
and employees (Tannen, 1994). Supportive humor agrees with, adds to, elaborates or
25
strengthens the propositions or arguments of previous contributions, and takes the form of
very collaboratively constructed humor sequences, an obvious means by which people ‘do
collegiality’ at work (Holmes, 2000). Adopting this style, people in workplaces tend to
integrate contributions tightly, using devices such as echoing, mirroring or completing
another’s utterance.
Secondly, favorable relationships are built on the basis of good impression. In an
increasingly competitive employment market, making a good impression on one’s
interviewers could make the difference between getting the job or not. Job applicants’
lexical-grammatical choices are certain to influence interviewers’ impressions of
applicants during interviews, and politeness theory is used to highlight the beliefs that
motivated the candidates’ linguistic choices in negotiating their expertise. Lipovsky
(2006), based on the analysis of five role-played interviews and four authentic interviews,
discusses how job applicants negotiate their expertise politely so as to make a good
impression on their interviewers. To be specific, what is considered being polite in a job
interview? What level of politeness is appropriate? How do interviewers assess the
politeness of the candidate they are interviewing? For instance, the candidates’ style of
speaking with confidence and enthusiasm protected their interviewers’ face as it removed
the need to request extra information. It also enhanced the candidates’ own face as they
looked more proactive in their approach to the interview and more reliable in a general
way.
Thirdly, favorable relationships are further embedded in effective leadership.
Language use helps to achieve the construction of leadership in business interactions.
Tannen (1994) and Holmes (2000) show that female managers sometimes adopt male
humor to make their leadership more prominent. Nielsen (2009) analyzes authentic verbal
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communication between middle managers and employees, especially managers’
interpretative discourse in business meetings, and concludes that two kinds of repair, i.e.
clarifications and self-repair, are important ways in which middle managers “do
leadership”. When it comes to the degree of imposition in business interactions, Holmes’
(2000) research on language in the workplace shows that leaders in companies tend to use
many different strategies to achieve low imposition when giving directives, including
using the pronoun we instead of you to soften the impact of the directive; using hedged
structures to make the statement less strong; using modals to soften the strength of the
directive. Metaphor, for instance, is exploited in advertising products. Metaphors in
commercials take different forms, including gender metaphors, linguistic metaphors,
visual metaphors and other types of multi-modal metaphors (Velasco-Sacristán & Fuertes-
Olivera, 2006; 2006). In order to attract customers’ attention, manufacturers choose novel
target domains when constructing metaphors, and at the same time adopt the strategy of
muting, i.e. imposing artificial mapping constraints on innovative metaphors, to minimize
negative effects of metaphorical mapping and maintain positive effects (Ungerer, 2000).
Stressing benefit to the organization also means obtaining the goodwill of customers
which is essential to any business or organization. If a company has the goodwill of its
customers, it has their confidence and often their continued business. In order to win
goodwill, the company may take advantage of some pragmatic strategies. Trosborg &
Shaw (2005) present a list of possible strategies for handling complaints in customer
interaction as follows: thanking for the complaint, direct apologies, indirect apologies,
remedial acts, offer of repair, checking customer satisfaction, prevention of future
mistakes, and rejections, which promote retention of customers and increased sales. The
two ritual acts of thanking and apologizing are frequently recommended as obligatory,
27
such as “Thank you for taking the trouble to explain—I realize it has taken both time and
effort”. The more goodwill a company has, the more successful it can be.
Language use (pragmatic strategies) for successful business interactions is
determined by contextual factors related to the situation in which business is conducted.
Social distance between S (speaker) and O (others) (in terms of status, power, role, etc.),
for instance, is a highly relevant factor.
With the development of globalization and economic integration, cross-cultural
business interactions are booming. When people use a second language for cross-cultural
communication, pragmatic differences in the business world can lead to communication
problems such as misunderstandings and pragmatic failure. For instance, Miller’s (2000)
research on negative assessments in Japanese-American workplace interaction indicates
that cultural differences result in cross-cultural misunderstandings. Spencer-Oatey & Xing
(2004) analyze conflicts and misunderstanding that a Chinese business delegation were
confronted within UK and find that the root cause is the two parties’ different
understanding of “identity face”, the value that people claim for themselves in terms of
social or group roles. Cultural differences tend to account for most communication
problems, and thus become the focus of cross-cultural pragmatics in business. By contrast,
Ryoo’s (2007) research on business services interactions between African American
customers and Korean immigrant shop owners tends to draw a different conclusion that
the main determining factor in ritual service talk is not the interlocutors’ cultural
background but their situational roles. What is more, interculturality does not hinder and
instead promotes successful communication.
It is noteworthy that “more research into intercultural business communication
needs to go beyond a focus on miscommunication and cultural differences” (Varner,
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2007). Cross-linguistic research may further our understanding of stumbling blocks to
successful cross-cultural workplace communication and provide insights for the teaching
of sociopragmatics in second language acquisition settings. For example, Staplers (1995)
and Neumann (1997) study respectively different ways of expressing disagreements by the
Dutch and French, and different request types by Norwegians and Germans, which both
reveal that people in business contexts prefer clarity and directness over politeness and
indirectness in performing face-threatening acts such as disagreements and requests.
Birkner & Kern (2000) make a cross-cultural analysis of different presentation styles and
disagreement management during job interviews by people from West Germany and East
Germany respectively. Grieve (2009) reports on a study of cultural differences in
conversational structure and the expression of apology in German and Australian
workplace telephone discourse to find that Australians prefer to avoid face-threatening
acts and if an apology is required, minimize threat to face by telling half-truths while
Germans are more likely to provide a truthful account of events, express disappointment
and chastise their interlocutors.
Methodologically, though work on business pragmatics is usually evaluative in that
the aim is to find out which strategies or behaviors are associated with success, it cannot
be separated from being descriptive (describing what strategies are used), prescriptive
(prescribing what strategies should be used), interpretive (interpreting why such strategies
are used), and comparative (comparing strategies used in different cultures).
Theoretically, previous work on business pragmatics accords with two main
schools of thought identified in contemporary pragmatics: Anglo-American (the
component view of pragmatics) and European Continental (the perspective view of
pragmatics). It is concerned not only with the central topics of inquiry including
29
politeness, speech acts, dexis, etc. but also with general functional (i.e. cognitive, social,
cultural) perspective on linguistic phenomena, such as cognitive-pragmatic perspective
(metaphor), social-pragmatic perspective (impression management), cross-cultural-
pragmatic perspective. Pragmatic strategies guaranteeing successful business interactions
will involve more than one discipline on most occasions. Bargiela-Chiappini, Nickerson &
Planken (2007) argue that it is a must to take a multi-disciplinary and multi-method
approach to business discourse research, which coincides with the European Continental
approach of pragmatics. A multidisciplinary perspective on language use is what
pragmatics is doing and will do.
Pragmatics has potential application to all fields with a stake in how utterances are
understood, including man-machine interaction, communicational difficulties in face-to-
face interaction, second language learning (Levinson, 1983), which are also referred to as
applied pragmatics.
Business context, though notoriously all inclusive and indivisible, is segmented into the
following parts for the convenience of research, as demonstrated.
1.5.1 Actual Situational Context in Business Interaction
The actual situational context in Kecskes’ (2008) model is part of the context
created online as discourse unfolds, i.e. the interlocutors’ present experience of the outside
world. The actual context in business interactions comprises the actual language used
within business discourse, and the online situation in which business exchange is
conducted. The latter is characterized by a schematic structure of social situations (Van
Dijk, 2009) as follows: a Setting/Scene category featuring location, time and various kinds
of physical and social circumstances, and a main category for what happens in such a
scene consisting of Actors (personal identities and social identities, such as gender, roles,
30
etc.) engaging in some kind of Activity (plans, intention, purposes). For instance, business
people have to be aware of their own and others’ roles in the current situation, such as
employers or subordinates in the company; of the purpose of interaction, like problem-
solving or task-assignment. In general, the actual situation context plays a selective role in
meaning construction. It will help interlocutors to determine appropriate strategies and
interpret online meanings used in business interactions.
1.5.1.1 Private Context in Business Interaction
“Prior experience creates private context that gets encapsulated in lexical items in
the mind of speakers of a particular speech community” (Kecskes, 2008). Kecskes’ (2008)
term “private context” is followed to accentuate the differences as well as similarities
between the speaker’s and the hearer’s context, and their dynamism and interplay in
business interactions. Business people acquire their private contexts from their prior
experience of the business world.
Firstly, any communication requires specific knowledge about the topic and
business communication must take into account the specific business context (Varner,
2007), which is labeled as business institutional context. In order to ensure success in
business communication, business people need to be equipped with professional expertise,
including knowledge of institutional goals, corporation size and activity, organizational
structure, available technology, methods of control, business strategies, business practices,
working procedures, etc. As far as institutional goals are concerned, business interactions
involve an orientation to some core goal, task or identity conventionally associated with a
business organization. For example, products need to be sold to customers, and employees
need to be put into the right positions to maximize the effective operations of the
corporation (Nickerson, 2000). Institutional context is instrumental in business
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interactions in that it highlights professionalism and business-orientation within a business
context and distinguishes business context from other contexts.
Secondly, business interactions are grounded in certain cultures, and business
cultural knowledge is of vital significance, especially in crosscultural business
interactions. Business people need to know about the national culture, the general business
culture, and the specific corporate culture. Vandermeeren (1999) identifies national culture
within the same type of business as a determining factor in the amount and type of foreign
languages used in promotional material. Corporate culture, a contributing factor to
economic success, refers to “the pattern of beliefs, values and learned ways of coping with
experience that have developed during the course of an organization’s history, and which
tend to be manifested in its material arrangement and in the behaviors of its members”
(Brown, 1995). For instance, the use of the English language is part of the corporate
culture in an Indian-foreign Equity Joint Venture. Besides, cultural adaptation and cultural
empathy are equally important in cross-cultural communication in order to achieve
cooperation and common ground, and eventually business goals.
Thirdly, business interactions manifest regularity to a large extent in that the
configuration of “recurrent situations that occur within a business organization, the
participants involved and the social action that is viewed as necessary by the participants”
(Nickerson, 2000) determines the typified communicative practices of an organization, i.e.
genres (e.g. promotional genres). In short, professional practice determines discursive
practice. Then, business people need to embody both discursive practice and professional
practice, i.e. business genre knowledge. Business genre knowledge, highly structured and
conventionalized in form and content, refers to business people’s repertoire of
situationally appropriate responses to recurrent business situations, including the
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awareness and understanding of the shared practices of certain business communities as
well as their choices of genres in order to perform their everyday tasks. In this sense,
context is constitutive, especially in intra-cultural communication, since it helps
interlocutors predict and expect conventionalized language use.
It deserves to be specially noted that the tentative division may result in some
overlap between actual situational context and private context but they highlight different
aspects. To take “goal” in both parts for example. The former underscores the
interlocutors’ online evaluation of the relatively flexible “goal” in the current situation
while the latter emphasizes their entrenched knowledge of the persistent business “goal”,
which can be accessible at any time. They work together to facilitate business interactions.
Texts in the philosophy of language frequently cite the tripartite distinction between
syntax, semantics, and pragmatics made by Morris (1938). According to Morris, syntax is
concerned with the structural properties of signs (i.e., with word-word relations),
semantics with the relations between signs and the things they signify (i.e., with word-
world relations), and pragmatics with the uses of signs by speakers and hearers to perform
communicative acts (i.e., with word-user relations).
1.5 .1.2 Verbal Communication in Organizations
Verbal communication is a primary vehicle organizations use to maintain contact
with their internal and external environments. Through the use of oral and written
language, organizations, and all of their subsystems, coordinate, control, lead, and
manage individual and group behavior. Verbal communication provides the tools needed
to obtain, transfer, and store information and knowledge. “The competitive advantages
achieved by those who use information well are formidable” (Wind & Main, 1998). Even
though they are referring specifically to cutting-edge techniques and technology, the
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conclusion applies to everyone in an organization. Verbal communication has always been
critical to organizations but the shifts toward service, information, and knowledge work
combined with the increasing use of modern technology places an even greater emphasis
on the use of language and symbols. The digital age utilizes electronically transferred
symbols increasing our reliance on various forms of written communication.
Language, the underpinning of verbal communication, allows us to assign meaning
to things. As we assimilate into an organization, we create individual realities based on
language so we can predict and control our own behavior. We are forced to decipher from
a variety of clues what messages mean and which messages are important. As such, verbal
communication provides the written and unwritten, spoken and unspoken rules and
procedures. These lead to a common purpose, or a set of ground rules, which constitute
the process of organizing the various subsystems. Understanding the nature of verbal
communication can be difficult because “language is both common place and enigmatic,
both superficially simple and infinitely complex” (Bowman & Targowski, 1987). Gass
and Seiter (1999) conclude: “Words are the primary means of persuasion. They not only
affect our perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, and emotions, they create reality”. Language has
a major impact on all individuals and shapes their organizational reality. Verbal
communication is written and oral.
1.5.1.3 Written Communication in Organizations
Written messages have numerous organizational functions. These include mission
statements, corporate goals and values, short and long range plans, job descriptions, work
orders, e-mail, announcements, bulletins, informal notes, house magazines and organs,
annual reports, handbooks, procedures, operation manuals, official guidelines, regulations,
codes, contracts, performance appraisals, and meeting agendas and minutes to name a few.
34
The organization’s public statements, such as annual reports or press releases, provide a
great deal of information about the type of culture an organization would like to project
(Deal &Kennedy, 1982). No less important are the ongoing memos, e-mails, letters to an
organization’s customers and other interacting systems in the organization’s environment,
Intranet and other electronic communications, and the written credos, sayings, and general
culture forming messages surrounding the workplace. “The amount of text generated by
office workers exceeds all other forms of printed matter. Original documents created by
office workers are 80% of all original documents” (Ward & Snider, 2000). The power of
the written word is clear. For example, although oral praise is appreciated, putting it in
writing often has a greater impact (Pell, 1995). A sarcastic comment made in passing
becomes carved in stone when committed to the written page or sent by e-mail. Managers
consider written communication important, spending a significant amount of their working
day engaging in this activity. But, “most executives (75%) said they either hate or merely
tolerate business writing” (John Rost Associates, 1984). Managers are not pleased with the
written communication they receive and “nearly 60 percent described it as ‘fair or poor,’
and they had several other words for it: unclear, wordy, disorganized, impersonal” (John
Rost Associates, 1984.)
1.5.1.4 Oral Communication
Managers and supervisors prefer speaking to writing (Armour, 1998). Oral
communication is used in practically any activity requiring coordination. For example,
interviewing, delegating, meetings, performance appraisals, giving and receiving orders,
public statements, and instructing are primarily verbal. The less formal oral
communication behaviors are just as important and include “howdy,” “way to go”
comments, break time, and the ritualizing of particular informal, but expected behaviors.
35
Organizations have rich oral traditions surrounding events that have happened in the past,
which are passed from work group to work group and form a substantial body of the
known and commonly accepted data. Written and oral communication is important to
every organization.
1.5.2 Understanding Verbal Communication
The relationship between language and perception and the symbolic nature of language
are two important aspects of verbal communication. These two aspects are discussed.
1. (A) Language and Perception
Language both facilitates and hinders our effectiveness in communication. Because
we place a strong belief in the written word, as manifested in contracts, policy statements,
and possible legal challenges, the impact of language in an organization can be one of the
first communication processes we encounter. Our business and legal ethics mandate a
dependence on language. To “get it in writing” or have the statement “signed” or
“initialed” provides written proof of commitment. We also are guided in how to do our
jobs by written and oral language. A large amount of operational information, or how to
perform tasks, appears in writing and is explained verbally. In many ways, language is the
best paradigm of the influence of perception on our understanding of reality. There is “the
inescapable relation of language to the user’s and the receiver’s schemes of perception. To
say a thing in a particular way is to advance to a particular way of seeing — a way based
on values” (Rentz & Debs, 1987). Managers are counseled: “When planning an important
communication, the focus should be on language, because it’s language that governs
thought, persuasion, and the perception of character, attitudes and values” (Blake, 1987).
Unfortunately, “some managers refuse to believe that the most important aspect of
36
communication is not what is said or written, but the perception left by the communicator”
(Barton, 1990). Language does more than just relay facts.
1. (B) Language, Culture, and Discrimination
In subtle and not so subtle ways, our language use communicates messages about
our background, education, and heritage. We utilize language to express our views of
other groups. Political correctness is an attempt to use inclusive speech through nonsexist,
nonageist, and nonracist language (Hoover &Howard, 1995). We do have a choice
regarding our language usage and verbal communication that excludes or marginalizes
others and creates unnecessary and potentially harmful divisions. Different cultural
backgrounds impact in all aspects of verbal communication. Note that stereotypes are
fixed or conventional notions deny individuality. They can prevent us from examining our
own reality as we look at other groups of people. Cultural characteristics are knowledge-
based and provide a framework from which to understand more about a particular group
but they do not define all members of the group (O’Mara, 1994). For example, Western
languages focus on objects or referents and their logical relationships. Asian languages
focus more on promoting and maintaining harmony. So, how something is said can be
more important to Asians than the actual content of the message (Calloway-Thomas,
Cooper, & Blake, 1999).
1. (C) Naming and Understanding
A fundamental characteristic of language is its capacity to name things. During the
naming process, language necessarily provides signification to the item and excludes
everything else from that particular category. This provides both division and unity
because it excludes certain factors as it allows a common understanding of previously
disparate ones (Burke, 1969). If someone is called a student, union leader, lawyer, or
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IBMer, this label provides a category that explains what the person is not as well as
including what the person is. Perception is the selecting, organizing, and interpreting of
sensory stimulation into a meaningful and coherent picture of the world. Language is a
primary mechanism used to accomplish this end. Imagine, for a moment, waiting to be
introduced to your new manager and having one of your colleagues label the manager a
“real stickler for detail.” If you accept a job with the organization, you probably will be
influenced by the initial description of the manager’s biases. Although your job might
entail a large variety of tasks, it will be difficult to not focus on paying attention to details
as a major priority in everything you do.
1. (D) Denotative and Connotative Meaning
One useful way to understand the impact of language is to distinguish between
denotative and connotative meanings. Both verbal and nonverbal communication has these
two levels of meaning. With language, the denotative meaning is what the word literally
represents. There is no disagreement about what is meant because the reference is
explicitly clear to everyone. On the surface, people should have little difficulty in clearly
understanding each other. We use about 2,000 words in our daily conversations, which
should facilitate shared meaning. But, the 500 most used words have over 14,000
dictionary definitions (Griffin & Patton, 1976). Many words, such as F.Y.I., T.G.I.F., or
time clock, do have denotative meanings, but people have a variety of interpretations of
the meanings based on their individual experiences (Haney, 1967). Connotative meanings
depend on our own subjective reality much more than do denotative meanings (Odgen &
Richards, 1953). We have a fuller meaning for each word than its specific denotative
intent (Redmond, 2000). The emotional and affective responses that a word evokes from
us are the connotative meanings. This is a powerful perceptual issue for organizations
38
because it involves the impression or aura surrounding the word, based on experience
instead of the prescribed meaning. So, words such as strike, union, downsizing, or
management will be reacted to quite differently depending on who responds (Gould,
1996). For example, when a boss says, “I’m empowering you to make that decision,”
employees may hear “You know exactly what I want you to do but I want you to feel good
about it.” When being encouraged to “think outside the box” by managers, subordinates
may interpret this as “an admission that the manager is out of ideas, so, subordinates must
carry the load.” If you approve of something, you can label it as thrifty, but if you
disapprove, you can call it cheap. Other contrasts could include the contrasting labels of
extrovert versus loudmouth, cautious versus coward, determined versus stubborn,
information versus propaganda, or progressive versus radical. Words have connotative
meanings that influence our messages.
1. (E) Jargon
Although increasingly part of everyone’s communication, concepts such as perks,
quality circles, “just-in-time” suppliers, VAM (value-added manufacturing), TQC (total
quality control), and robotics originated in certain organizations. Each of these terms
began as jargon, which is the specialized or technical language used in an organization. It
functions as a shorthand code comprehensible to coworkers. “A single word of jargon can
identify an object, concept or task that would require an elaborate explanation for
someone outside the field. The special language of an occupation speeds communication
within a closed fraternity of workers, while effectively excluding others” (Kunerth, 1983.).
Each organizational culture develops specific terms for describing events.
Jargon serves to both include members of the profession and exclude outsiders. It can be
wielded as an instrument of power, intimidation, and evasion. A physician might refer to
39
axilla bromidromsis instead of an armpit’s foul-smelling odor and make the patient fearful
of a problem that might simply be a long shower away from being cured (Kunerth,1983).
Legal terminology is beyond the grasp of the uninitiated. Some college professors appear
to be guilty of judging the competence of an article partially by its reading difficulty with
increased difficulty being positively related to increased competence (Armstrong, 1980).
Tracy and Lee’s (1984) article, “Acculturation of Graduate Business Students to
Academic Values: Abstruseness as a Criterion of Competence,” discusses the impact of
higher education jargon on the MBA student who eventually learns to like using it because
the faculty assigns it greater credibility.
2. Semantic/Symbolic Analysis
Semantics offers an explanation for why organizations can develop new names and
why words are so open to multiple interpretations. Three principles underlie semantics.
First, meaning is in people, not words. Words do not mean, people mean. These two
sentences are popular summations of the important principle that everyone has his or her
own interpretation of reality (Craig, 1997). Second, language is representational. As we
already have seen, the word is not the thing. Words are symbolic representations of ideas
or objects (Condon, 1975). We are free to create whatever words we choose as we found
out with jargon and buzzwords and our only limitation is what other people interpret the
word to mean. We can take a term and make it represent a reality, but the shared meaning
is transactional. Third, both observations and inferences occur when we use verbal
communication. This semantic distortion needs to be identified, although there is little
likelihood you would want to eliminate it. A statement of observation is factual, can be
observed and verified, and is about the past or the present. Inferences can be made by
anyone about anything in any time frame (Haney, 1967). As a consequence, inferences are
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much less reliable if we are interested only in the facts. However, inferences comprise a
substantial portion of organizational communication.
1.6 Pragmatics of Language and Professional Discourse
First, all organizations use specific means for obtaining organizational goals, and
language is one of the most important. A sense of identification between the individual
and an organization is vital. In essence, organization members must buy into an
“organizational personality …accepting the values and goals of the organization as
relevant to on-the-job decisions” (Thompkins & Cheney, 1983). Even more
fundamentally, “language is the primary vehicle in this process of identification, and the
ways in which it is shaped and used by the individual often reveals his or her
organizational personality — the extent to which the person has adopted the values of the
organization” (Rentz & Debs,1987). Very little of this type of information is obtained
through the cognitive level. In fact, organizations frequently operate at the affective level
and myths become reality.
One of the aims of business discourse research is to find out how people use
language to achieve their business and interpersonal goals in the workplace. Pragmatics,
generally defined as the study of language in use, is characterized by the study of
linguistic choices, context, and language users’ intention with the purpose of making sense
of language use in different types of context. In this sense, “pragmatics is a very useful
tool in business discourse research because business discourse is a site of communication
where language plays a subtle role in negotiating human relationships, and hence, the
outcomes of a transaction” (Kong, 2009,). Therefore, pragmatics is a disciplinary
perspective on business discourse research. Chen, Cramer & Kojuma (1996) first use the
41
term “business pragmatics” when examining how far culture-specific traits persist or
change in both American and Japanese business people who interact for business
interactions. Shaw (2001) introduces the term “prescriptive business pragmatics”, which
describes how various transactions should be carried out, teaching people how to perform
functions like giving presentations, negotiating, and serving customers. In general,
business pragmatics can be defined as the study of language use in business interactions.
1.6.1 A brief account of research findings of professional communication
in other countries
Bargiela-Chiappini & Harris (1996) discuss possible linguistic variations in business
correspondence containing requests which are attributable to the influence of the
interpersonal variables of power, social distance, imposition and, in particular, status. Jung
(2005) explores how power affects the appropriateness of politeness strategies used by
Korean business professionals in business correspondence. For instance, positive
politeness (solidarity enforcement strategies) is typically used (i.e. in 82% of cases) when
the writer’s power is greater than the reader’s. However, social distance is not the only
relevant factor, but is simply one among many. Variation in language use cannot therefore
be accounted for solely by factors pertaining to the interlocutors, such as social distance
and power (Vine 2009). Other factors may include cultural factors, situational factors such
as purpose of interaction, meeting type etc.
Bilbow (2002) concludes that two factors (participants’ cultural predispositions and
meeting-type) appear to significantly affect how and when commissive speech acts are
used in business meetings. Jung (2005) investigates how national culture always affects
the choice of politeness strategies by Korean business professionals in business settings.
Moreover, those contextual factors work together to determine language use on most
42
occasions. Nickerson (2000) investigates contextual factors affecting the use of written
English and written communication patterns within British subsidiaries in the Netherlands,
including factors related to corporate culture (cultural differences) and factors related to
corporate activity (type of company, departmental activity) to find, for instance, that the
relationship the subsidiary has with its Head Office in Britain clearly influences the
amount and type of written English required.
Vine (2009) explored the frequency and expression of directives in data from three
managers working in two New Zealand government departments based on the following
contextual factors: purpose of interaction, participant status and social distance, potential
gender differences. Some findings are that the purpose of interaction influences the
frequency and density of directives, with directives being much more frequent in problem-
solving and task-allocation meeting, and that the male manager, who uses a larger
percentage of imperatives (the most forceful form) to express his directives than the
female managers, comes across as more forceful and direct.
In professional practice, participants should be competent enough to manage
uncertainty and risk in turbulent contexts, and to create and maintain trust through
interaction (Candlin, 2009) for the sake of success. Managing risk, trust and success,
situated and context-dependent, is discursively constructed, i.e. a discursive process of
mediating meaning. The same is true for business interactions. Therefore, two
assumptions are formulated as follows:
(1) Successful business interactions are discursively constructed in business contexts.
(2) To guarantee successful professional interactions, professionals need to be
pragmatically competent. In order to explore the two assumptions and resulting concepts
essential to business pragmatics, i.e. business context and business pragmatic competence,
43
which are stepping-stones to approaching business pragmatics, this study draws on
insights from Leech’s (1983) pragmatics and Kecskes’ (2008) dynamic model of meaning
on the one hand, and on the other hand, Bhatia’s (2004) concept of discursive competence
in professional practice and Varner’s (2007) conceptual model of intercultural business
communication. According to Kecskes’ (2008) dynamic model of meaning, meaning is the
result of interplay between the speaker’s private context and the hearer’s private context in
the actual situational context as understood by the interlocutors. Therefore, the first
priority is to understand context and its roles in professional interactions.
Business people have to be aware of their own and others’ roles in the current
situation, such as employers or subordinates in the company; and of the purpose of
interaction, like problem-solving or task-assignment. In general, the actual situation
context plays a selective role in meaning construction. It will help interlocutors to
determine appropriate strategies and interpret online meanings used in professional
interactions. According to M.A.K. Halliday (1989), “Spontaneous speech is unlike written
text. It contains many mistakes, sentences are usually brief and indeed the whole fabric of
verbal expression is riddled with hesitations and silences.” It also reflects a person’s
responsiveness as it is like a mirror of developmental thinking, and it is only
understandable at the time when the conversation is being made.
The first impression of pragmatics on us tends to be that it is really quite easy
because pragmatic data is composed of daily utterances which are approachable to our life,
just the way we talk every day. However, as time goes by, there has been an increasing
awareness that the underlying ideas in pragmatics are really different from their literal
meanings. (Grundy, 2000).
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1.6.2 USA – the socially diverse country and its view on education
America has always been socially diverse, drawing its citizens from countries all
over the world. In the new millennium, social diversity is even more a fact of life in the
United States. In July 2006 (Collins, 2007; this is the latest date for which statistics are
available), the total population of the United States was 299 million. Here is the
breakdown and the change in just one year:
American Indians and Alaska Natives 4.5 million, up 1% from 2005, Asians 14.9 million,
up 3.2% from 2005, Blacks 40.2 million, up 1.3% from 2005, Hispanics 44.3 million, up
3.4% from 2005, Non-Hispanic Whites 199 million, up .3% from 2005. More and more
people are convinced that a key function of higher education is to prepare people to
function effectively and comfortably in a diverse society. Two-thirds of Americans polled
by the Ford Foundation (1998) say it is very important for colleges and universities to
prepare students to live and work in a society marked by diversity. Fully 94% of
Americans polled said it is more important now than ever before for all of us to
understand people who are different from us. Interestingly, strong support for weaving
diversity into education was not tied to political stands. Fifty-one percent of respondents
said they were either conservative or very conservative politically. Still, the majority of
those polled believed that every college student should be required to study different
cultures and social groups in order to graduate.
1.7 Defining Pragmatics and its Relation to Speech Act Theory–in Simple Terms
Philosophers like Austin (1962), Grice (1957), and Searle (1965, 1969, 1975) offered
basic insight into this new theory of linguistic communication based on the assumption
that “the minimal units of human communication are not linguistic expressions, but rather
45
the performance of certain kinds of acts, such as making statements, asking questions,
giving directions, apologizing, thanking, and so on” (Blum-Kulka, House, & Kasper,
1989). Austin (1962) defines the performance of uttering words with a consequential
purpose as “the performance of a locutionary act, and the study of utterances thus far and
in these respects the study of locutions or of the full units of speech”. These units of
speech are not tokens of the symbol or word or sentence but rather a unit of linguistic
communication and it is “the production of the token in the performance of the speech act
that constitutes the basic unit of linguistic communication” (Searle, 1965). According to
Austin’s theory, these functional units of communication have prepositional or locutionary
meaning (the literal meaning of the utterance), illocutionary meaning (the social function
of the utterance), and perlocutionary force (the effect produced by the utterance in a given
context) (Cohen, 1996).
Pragmatics studies show how utterances have meaning in speech situations or the
ability to use language effectively so as to fulfil intentions and goals. Speakers and writers
plan and fulfil goals as they use language, which is a matter of choice. They choose their
goals and they choose appropriate language for their goals, and the outcome of the effort
of processing this particular ‘language’ (whether expressed linguistically, or non-
linguistically) will enlighten the addressee with regard to the message intended by the
author through the relationship between the protagonists. Some speech acts, however, are
not primarily acts of communication and have the function not of communicating but of
affecting institutional states of affairs. They can do so in either of two ways. Some
officially judge something to be the case, and others actually make something the case.
Those of the first kind include judges' rulings, referees' calls and assessors' appraisals, and
the latter include sentencing, bequeathing and appointing. Acts of both kinds can be
46
performed only in certain ways under certain circumstances by those in certain
institutional or social positions. Speech acts deal with acts of communication that are an
integral part of pragmatics.
Pragmatics, generally defined as the study of language in use, is characterized by the
study of linguistic choices, context, and language users’ intention with the purpose of
making sense of language use in different types of context. In this sense, “pragmatics is a
very useful tool in business / professional discourse research because business discourse is
a site of communication where language plays a subtle role in negotiating human
relationships, and hence, the outcomes of a transaction” (Kong, 2009).
Pragmatics is commonly defined as the study of particular kinds of meaning, such
as “speaker meaning,” “contextual meaning” (Yule, 1996), “meaning in use,” and
“meaning in context” (Thomas, 1995), while the notion of meaning itself remains
unexplicated. Bilmes (1986) distinguishes four approaches to a theory of meaning:
meaning as speaker’s intention, convention, use, and response, where the first two notions
of meaning combine in the commonsense understanding of meaning.
“The most common definitions of pragmatics are : meaning in use or meaning in
context.” (Thomas, 1995). Words do more with the particular contexts. To some extent,
pragmatics is “the study of speaker”, “contextual meaning”, “how more gets
communicated than is said” and “the expression of relative distance”. (Yule, 1996).
Another interesting saying is that, to study pragmatics is to “study the relationships
between linguistic forms and the users of those forms” (Yule, 1996). Pragmatics plays an
important role in our social life as it shows us how human beings communicate,
understand each other and all in all, how they make use of language (Mey, 2001).
“Communication in society happens chiefly by means of language” (Mey,2001).
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1.7.1 Linguistics and Pragmatics
Linguistics is related to the meaning of words and sentences while pragmatics is
related to the meaning of utterances, or speaker meaning. (Jaszczolt, 2002) “In other
words, both linguistics and pragmatics concern meaning- meaning of linguistic
expressions but pragmatics takes the interlocutors - the speaker and the hearer, as the
focus of attention, whereas linguistics focuses on the structural expression.” (Jaszczolt,
2002) In linguistics, attention is paid to the literal meaning of a word whereas the true
meaning of a phrase or a sentence is determined by the context, namely the conditions
under which a speaker says or expresses something, which is what pragmatics does.
For example…... IT IS VERY DARK.
Literally, maybe the sentence means that:-
1. It is getting dark or it is twilight and darkness will soon cover the earth.
2. Some object is dark in color as a black or a brown.
These are the semantics meanings of the sentence.
Supposing there are different backgrounds of the sentence:
IT IS VERY DARK.
1. (A customer complaining to the sales assistant about the color of the dress in a
clothes shop)
Hidden meaning: It does not fit me. Shall I try another one? Or I just don’t like it. I want
to go to another shop.
2. (Father asks his son who has been playing outside with his friends from sunrise
to sunset)
Hidden meaning: You shall come back home since you have played for a long time.
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3. (Husband who is not willing to go to the supermarket with his wife in the evening
because of an exciting football match)
Hidden meaning: We can go shopping tomorrow morning.
Here is another example that explains the difference between semantics and
pragmatics further.
THAT’S SO COOL.
In semantics, the meaning seems to be that:
1. The weather is pleasant or
2. A task is accomplished with the right response expected.
However, when it comes into pragmatics, it should vary with each unique context.
1. (A kid asking his mother for an outing on a lovely, cloudy but not a rainy day)
Hidden meaning: It is really a good idea which just fits with me.
2. (Girls coming across boys playing basketball excellently.)
Hidden meaning: It is so attractive when they and the ball are flying to the basket.
3. (Everyone is talking about the person who is dressing in a funny style just like
Govinda the Indian actor, known for his weird sense of dressing, at a formal party)
Hidden meaning: He is too strange to understand. Is there anything wrong with him?
Supposing that there is no background to the dialogue, many people may regard the
sentence as a compliment.
From the above two examples, it is quite clear that the pragmatic meaning is determined
by context. This then leads us to the crucial questions of this thesis.
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1.8 The Crucial Questions of the Study
There are three major questions that this study asks and analyses. They are:-
1. What are the spoken strategies students employ in the classroom and does that
prepare them for the workplace communication?
2. Are the students aware of the strategies they employ, if they so do?
3. What are the pedagogical implications of pragmatics and speech acts? What can
teachers bring to the classroom in order to make the students adapt well to
professional interactions and become adept at it?
1.9 Conclusion
From the discussions and findings of pragmatics studies done in organisations it is clear
that ‘pragmatics’ is the relationship between what is said in communication (that is, the
concepts and meanings which are communicated by the speaker's choice of particular
words and structures) and what is done in communication (that is, the effects the
speaker's utterance has on the hearer, such as to persuade, inform, amuse, etc.). It is a
two-way system of interaction. The concept of speech acts, which, following Austin
(1962), is concerned with the acts that we perform through speaking, has been studied
extensively in recent years, and has constituted a topical focus for scholars from a greater
number of disciplines. Speech Act theory has been central to the work of researchers in
conversational analysis, discourse analysis and semantics.
An act of speech is not a mere set of words capable of being repeated on a number
of separate occasions, but a particular, transient occurrence involving definite individuals
and tied down to a special time and place.The history of interaction between people forms
the pattern of relationships and the sense of individual behavior which we refer to as self-
50
concept. Interpersonal communication modifies these as time passes. The dialogue which
is created when two or more people interact is unique in many ways. While using a
common language and underlying structure, the participants collaborate to produce an
infinite number of different dialogues throughout their lifetimes.
We communicate to achieve purposes, whether or not we are conscious of these
purposes. If we are to succeed in the professional sphere, we need to reflect the learning
that students engage in, on the instruction of the facilitators. As a teacher – researcher, this
study is a tool to measure our competencies and our ability to impart adequate training, so
as to make our students proficient and self-reliant in employing the strategies taught.
1.10 Objectives of the Present Study
Thus, this study attempts the following:-
to identify the special functions of language that are needed to meet the expected
outcomes for professional growth keeping the diversity that exists in organizations
in mind
to provide classroom instruction and teaching activities to bridge the gap
to analyze speech acts used in a professional sphere where English is used by
interlocutors for whom English is not a native language
to recommend a model syllabus appropriate to the level of engineering students
The teaching-learning process is thus required to take into account learners’ aptitudes and
interests which are to be based on the principles of life-long learning. The learning
environment should foster thinking skills such as problem-solving, critical and creative
thinking and analytical skills. These skills are essentially preferred by potential employers.
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Pragmatics encompasses the language characteristics that aid in improving
communication at the professional sphere, namely, the speech act theory, conversational
implicatures, talk in interaction and other approaches to language behavior in philosophy,
sociology, and linguistics. It studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on
the linguistic knowledge (e.g. grammar, lexicon etc.) of the speaker and listener, but also
on the context of the utterance, knowledge about the status of those involved, the inferred
intent of the speaker, and so on. In this respect, pragmatics explains how language users
are able to overcome apparent ambiguity, since meaning relies on the manner, place, time
etc. of an utterance. The ability to understand another speaker's intended meaning is called
pragmatic competence. Pragmatic awareness is regarded as one of the most challenging
aspects of language learning, and comes only with appropriate training and experience.
One pragmatic theory called the speech act theory (Searle & Vanderveken, 1985),
allows us precisely to define the communicative context and to link the forms and the
functions of communication. The theory of speech acts aims to do justice to the fact that
even though words (phrases, sentences) encode information, people do more things with
words than convey information and that when people do convey information, they often
convey more than their words encode. The focus of speech act theory has been on
utterances, especially those made in conversational and other face-to-face situations, the
phrase 'speech act' should be taken as a generic term for any sort of language use, oral or
paraverbal.
Communication competence and communication skills have at times been used
interchangeably as though to mean the same. So, a distinction between competence and
skill has to be made. According to Spitzberg and Cupach (2002), ‘an individual’s
interpersonal skills, along with his or her knowledge and motivation, enable the
52
occurrence of certain outcomes that are judged interpersonally competent, in a particular
interactional context”. Likewise, McCroskey and Beatty (1998) assert that competence
lies “within the cognitive domain” while skill is demonstrated “within the psychomotor
domain” claiming that skill is still necessary in competence (McCroskey, 1984). In this
respect, competence has both knowledge and skills component. The difference, then,
between competence and skill is that competence is the use of knowledge and the
appropriate application of that knowledge in adapting to a situation; while skill is a
specific behavior in a particular situation.
Therefore, communication competence resides in the human cognitive domain, but
both the process and product are demonstrated through the use of skills in the expression
of verbal and nonverbal communication. Cognitive intelligence would be the internal
processing mechanism of ‘communication’ messages while the communicative behaviors
would take these messages beyond the confinement of the cognitive domain. Narrowing
the concept of communication competence, Spitzberg (1983) suggests that relational
competence involves five assumptions: that are contextual, appropriate and effective,
judged as a continuum of effectiveness and appropriateness, functional, and an
interpersonal impression formed between the communicators. In another examination of
the competence criteria, Spitzberg and Capuch (2002) delineate six qualities that they
found related to interpersonal relations: fidelity, satisfaction, efficiency, effectiveness,
appropriateness, and ethics. Of these, appropriateness and effectiveness are the most
common hybrid (Spitzberg & Capuch, 2002). These propositions suggest that both
appropriate communicative behavior and relationship maintenance require an individual to
utilize his or her reasoning ability and to be able to demonstrate the chosen skills for
effective interactions.
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Based on the viewpoints and expositions of these concepts, four elements largely
emerge: knowledge, skill, adaptation, and appropriateness. Furthermore, we can say that
communication competence refers to one’s adaptation of a communication situation by
demonstrating skills in appropriating knowledge relevant to the communication situation
and context. In other words, to be competent, one has to have communication knowledge
in order to develop the appropriate skills that can be used to adapt to situational demands.
One area of language study where pragmatics is more or less unavoidable is any kind of
study of spoken language in social interactions (and written forms like e-mail or computer
chat that approximate to speech).
In 1974, Argyris and Schön published ‘Theory in Practice: Increasing Professional
Effectiveness’, the first of a series of books that were to become deeply influential through
the insights they provided into individual and organisational learning. In this first book,
they argue that people’s behaviour is guided by and can be explained by their “theories of
action”. They theorize that people can learn better by making explicit their understanding,
and critically evaluating the components of theories of action in relationship to a particular
problem of practice. This idea underpins many of the communication and relationship
practices advocated for professional learning today. Argyris and Schön describe two types
of theories of action. An individual’s theories of action consist of their “espoused
theories” i.e. what they believe they would do in a certain situation and their “theories-in-
use” i.e. what they actually do. This is important in understanding: people’s actions are
often governed by theories-in-use of which they are unaware of and which differ from the
values and beliefs to which they aspire. Theories of action that are derived from people’s
descriptions of how they act, or have acted in the past, and from the explanations they give
for such actions are called espoused theories. Theories of action that are derived from
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firsthand observations are called theories-in-use. Because people are not always aware of
what causes their actions, the theories that people claim to be using and the theories that
are actually determining their behavior may not be the same.
There are three elements to a theory of action:
• Governing variables: Those variables that people try to keep within an acceptable
range. They include the values, assumptions, theories, beliefs, concepts, rules,
attitudes, routines, policies, practices, norms, or skills that underlie people’s
actions. Any action is likely to impact upon a number of such variables, and so any
situation can trigger a trade-off among governing variables.
• Action strategies: The actions people take to keep their governing variables
within the acceptable range.
• Consequences: What happens as a result of an action? These can be both intended
(often expressed as goals or objectives) and unintended.
The following example illustrates how this works:
A person may have a governing variable of suppressing conflict, and one of being
competent. In any given situation, the person will design action strategies to keep both
these governing variables within acceptable limits. For instance, in a conflict situation she
might avoid the discussion of the conflict situation and say as little as possible. This
avoidance may suppress the conflict, yet allow the person to appear competent because
s/he at least hasn’t said anything wrong. This strategy will have various consequences
both for the person and the others involved. An intended consequence might be that the
other parties will eventually give up the discussion, thereby successfully suppressing the
conflict. As s/he has said little, s/he may feel s/he has not left himself/herself open to
55
being seen as incompetent. An unintended consequence might be that s/he thinks the
situation has been left unresolved and therefore likely to recur, and feels dissatisfied.
Shaw (2001) introduces the term “prescriptive business pragmatics”, which
describes how various transactions should be carried out, teaching people how to perform
functions like giving presentations, negotiating, taking turns when speaking and serving
customers. In general, business pragmatics can be defined as the study of language use in
professional interactions. Successful business interactions involve, among other things,
favorable relationship and organizational goodwill, i.e. the attainment of professional and
interpersonal goals. To establish a strong business relationship, business people should
relate to each other in three important ways: positively, personally, and professionally.
Some of the ways the sender can do this include the following: stressing the receiver’s
interests and benefits; using positive wording; doing more than is expected (Krizan,
Merrier, Logan & Williams, 2007). In business interactions, favorable relationships can be
characterized by concord and solidarity, good impression, effective leadership, to name
but a few. Professionals may exploit pragmatic strategies to attain interpersonal goals.
Holmes’ (2000) research on language in the workplace shows that leaders in companies
tend to use many different strategies to achieve low imposition when giving directives,
including using the pronoun we instead of you to soften the impact of the directive; using
hedged structures to make the statement less strong; using modals to soften the strength of
the directive.
Successful business communication aims at not only favorable relationships but also
organizational goodwill, which means stressing benefit to the organization. Business
people do so by ensuring that their communications reflect positively on the quality of the
company’s products or services (Krizan, Merrier, Logan & Williams, 2007). The more
56
goodwill a company has, the more successful it can be. It all depends on how one uses
language appropriately and effectively; in other words, it all depends on the pragmatic
aspects of language. In the succeeding chapters the researcher will attempt to give a
deeper understanding of pragmatics and speech acts, which will be further emphasized by
questionnaires and interviews with professionals in the field.
1.11 A Summary of the Chapters
Chapter II : discusses the body of concepts, the theory of pragmatics and the theory of
speech-acts and their relevance in professional interactions.
Chapter III: in this chapter we will look at the data tools and the processes of
administering the tools. It includes the description of the field work undertaken.
Chapter IV: in this chapter the first two central questions of the study is examined vis-a-
vis the data. The questions are: -
1. What are the spoken strategies students employ in the classroom and does that
prepare them for the workplace communication?
2. Are the students aware of the strategies they employ, if they so do?
Chapter V: - the third central question of the study, ‘What are the pedagogical
implications of pragmatics and speech acts? What can teachers bring to the classroom in
order to make the students adept at professional interactions?’ is examined. This
completes the analysis of the data. A model syllabus is designed that encapsulates the
essence of pragmatics and the features of speech acts, which any professional should be
good at, in order to succeed at the workplace.
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