Volume 37, Issue 4 - Special Issue: Professional discourse in multilingual settings: policies and practices, Guest Editors: Sofie Decock, July De Wilde, Sarah Van Hoof, Ellen Van Praet and Bernard De Clerck

This conceptual paper advances the notion of “English as corporate language” in the multilingual reality of multinational companies (MNC) with novel insights from the English as lingua franca (ELF) paradigm of sociolinguistics. Inspired by Goffman, Erving. 1959. The presentation of self in everyday life . New York: Doubleday. dramaturgical metaphor of social life, we develop the notion of English as corporate language by making a distinction between the frontstage official language used in corporate communication and backstage working language used in interactions among MNC employees. We argue that the former approaches the notion of English as a native language and the latter represents ELF in the business domain (BELF); they are different in terms of understanding language competence, multilingualism and role of language in building legitimacy. Our conclusions imply first, that the frontstage English may not always be accessible to the backstage BELF users, due to which employees may feel disadvantaged or disempowered. Second, the use of formal language testing in recruitment and performance appraisal may transform into a gate-keeping mechanism that leads to power inequalities. In our recommendations, we call for an emancipatory language policy accepting different standards of English for different positions and adopting ideas of the Plain Language initiative to better reach all MNC employees.

Several studies on multilingualism in the workplace have emphasized the role of English as a lingua franca. Other studies have paid attention to the interaction between English and local languages in workplaces where global orientations and local languages co-occur. The present study focuses on internationally oriented workplaces in the bilingual Basque Autonomous Community (BAC). The study aims to analyze the use of the minority language Basque in the workplace and the challenges it faces in an emerging multilingual global context. The promotion and use of the minority language in internationally oriented workplaces is related to language policies of the regional government, the role of ‘new speakers’ of Basque, and the possible tensions between the efforts to revitalize Basque and the use of English as a global language, mediated by the position of Spanish as a strong international language. Our conclusion is that there is a need to establish new policies that are truly multilingual as well as to raise awareness in companies about the importance of adequate language management practices.

This paper addresses the challenges service providers are facing amidst growing ethnolinguistic diversity in a neoliberal climate. We focus on the public service provider Kind & Gezin (K&G), the agency that monitors the wellbeing of young children on behalf of the Flemish authorities in Belgium. We demonstrate that the organisation has taken various multilingual measures that go against the government’s preference for monolingual service provision. This is particularly the case for ‘bottom-up’ bilingual practices, where bilingual family support workers and medical staff developed bilingual routines in service provision, much in line with the ‘client-centered communication’ which K&G professes. Whereas these practices were initially endorsed by K&G’s management, a further diversification of K&G’s clientele, along with budgetary restrictions, prompted management to restrict these practices and explore alternative ways of providing multilingual services that do not require the recruitment of extra staff. Drawing on ethnographic data we explore the rationale underlying the organisation’s decision to restrict its multilingual policy and the way this decision is influenced by neoliberal principles which foreground effectiveness, efficiency, flexibility and entrepreneurialism. We conclude that the policy shift leads to ideological reconceptualisations of ‘language’ and ‘language difference’ that sit uncomfortably with the reality of language-discordant service encounters, as well as to redefinitions of the professional identity of bilingual family support workers.

Transnational mobility results in a diversification of languages and cultures in the workplace. A common means of managing this diversity is to introduce language policies that often privilege English or the locally dominant language(s). In contrast, managing their everyday working lives may require employees to draw on a range of multilingual and non-verbal resources. Such tensions between policy and practice in multilingual workplaces may impact structures and processes of inequality and power in the workplace. By looking at two sites within logistics and construction, this article offers a critical look at multilingual policies and practices and their consequences for speakers within the workplace. The article investigates how language is conceptualised in language policies and enacted in language practice. From this point of departure we discuss how the tensions between policies and practices impact on the daily working life and professional opportunities of the workers. Our findings suggest that even though multilingual practices are crucial for the flow of everyday work interactions on the floor, the language requirements within the workplace mirror the repertoires and practices of high-status employees, and therefore their competence is valued more highly than the more multilingual repertoires of their subordinates. A consequence of this unequal valorisation of the different linguistic repertoires is the maintenance of existing hierarchies in the workplace and the creation of new ones.