English for Business

Abstract

There are many millions of business people across the globe who speak or write English on a daily basis, and hundreds and thousands of business transactions are initiated, negotiated, and completed using English. Outside of contexts where English is used as a first language, it is often also used in business within national borders in countries where it is one of the language choices available because of a country's colonial past, and it may also be chosen for pragmatic reasons because there is an extensive expatriate business community who are unfamiliar with the local language. Because of its widespread use, English has been analyzed more than any other business language. Researchers interested in English for business have looked at a variety of different forms of workplace communication, including business meetings, negotiations, presentations, sales letters, application letters, e‐mail, annual reports, audit reports, advertising texts, various forms of computer‐mediated communication, and corporate home pages. They have also studied the consequences of using business English across the globe, particularly for those people who do not speak it as a first language, and they have looked at the response of readers to promotional texts in English when they are used in contexts outside of the English‐speaking world. Research into English for business has largely been data driven. As a result, it has been characterized by reference to a variety of different research approaches, including sociolinguistics, intercultural communication, discourse analysis, business communication, management studies, English as a lingua franca, and English for specific purposes.