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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

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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,

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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

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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,

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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,

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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

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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

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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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