36 research outputs found
Employees’ Reception of Corporate Language Policies
Corporate language policies and particularly the use of English as a corporate language have
been studied in MNCs for almost two decades now. Despite these volumes of research, very
little has been written about the implementation of new language policies. Few studies have
examined resistance to or the process of implementing a corporate language, and even fewer
have investigated the employee perspective empirically. The present study uses observational
and focus group data to investigate reactions to a new corporate language policy in one
Danish MNC. The study draws on sociolinguistic stancetaking theory and ethnographic
methods and seeks to understand what contextual factors influence employees’ stances
towards the introduction of English as a corporate language. English language competence,
the local linguistic context and different temporal perspectives are found to be key factors.
The paper aims to bring the fields of language in international business and linguistic
anthropology together in a study of the barriers experienced in companies implementing a
new language policy. The paper contributes to the field of language in international business
by exploring when and why corporate language policies encounter resistance. As such the
results will shed light on the implementation phase of language policy-making
Normering eller normer? Sprogpolitik og sprogvalg i en dansk virksomhed med engelsk som koncernsprog
[Se engelsk abstract