Globalisation Today Throughout The Modern World English Language Essay

Globalisation means the extending the relationship and broadening interdependence amongst different people from different parts of the world (Daniels et.al, 2007: 6). In today’s world the process of globalization has developed to such an extent, that it is argued that there are few companies that operate solely in their domestic market (Kotabe and Helsen, 2008:20). To support the above statement According to Whettingsteel (1999:19) has estimated that 70% of UK companies have business partners outside the domestic market. Apart from that do not actively sell abroad, still face foreign competitors in their own domestic markets. Whereas many domestic oriented companies get there raw materials, components, or labour from abroad (Worthington and Britton, 2006: 368). Further on In business operation management, Manager has to manage conflicts within the organisation but these conflicts are heightened in the management of international operations due to the different national culture of workforce. Manager as well as marketer requires the understanding of the consequences or effects of cultural differences of language, religion, value, system, customs, and education in the cross cultural organisation while working or marketing a product. And cultural factors are least tangible but in some ways the most important of the factor which should be taken into account while doing international business (Forrester). According to Czinkota et.al (1996: 298) defines Culture, “……… it is an integrated system of learned behaviour pattern that are characteristic of the member of any given society”. Whereas it include certain elements such as language, religion, value, attitude, manner and customs, aesthetics, education and social institutions. According to Lee and Carter (2005: 424) agrees and says that ‘…… trust, commitment and communication’ are a required pre-requisites for the development and maintenance of good relationship. Where communication is majorly an indicative of spoken language which is established factors in cross cultural business interaction where language is considered as important key element or factor because other factors such as trust, commitment, cultural affinity, experience etc are accessed through the use of language. According to Swift “……culture is the door to a market and language is the key to that door”. The above statement is supported by Holden (1989: 9-10), “…..Whereas marketers have accepted that language is a facet of culture, they come to find it more productive to see culture as a facet of language”. Whereas according to World’s foremost linguists and literacy scholar George Steiner (1975), “…….the application of the concept of exact science to the study of language is an idealized simile” (Holden, 2002: 230). And language provides a bonding to whole process of relationship development of business (Swift, 2000). Due to which it can be said that ‘Foreign language competence’ is a major component of successful cross-cultural relationship development through which companies are looking for development of international relationship (Swift, 2008: 3). High level foreign language competences can advantage an likely to build up in terms of acquiring a better understanding of foreign business culture which may confer some benefit in selling and negotiation (Clarke, 1997:80). Whereas international business literature on one hand and linguistic literature on the other appears to say very little on the importance of particular language in relation to the international activities of firms and the economic, political, and technological power associated with individual languages (Nigel 1989: 1). Language also has a vital role in process for communicaton.

The process of Communication:

Model of communication process comes in many forms such as verbal, non-verbal and mathematical. On the other hand regardless of other models forms it share three basic element such as sender, message and receiver (Delozier, 1976: 2). Where sources (Sender) is a person or group of people having a thought to share with some other person or group. For e.g. group of people who are viewed as singular sender or receivers are the United States governments, the internal revenue service. After that Encoding, this is process of putting through into symbolic form which is controlled by sender for e.g. printed or spoken words such as in marketing, a magazine advertisement and television commercials. The next element is channel; it is a way in which messages moves from sender to receiver such as media, Television etc. According to Lasswell (1971: 84), is also known as ‘media analysis’. After Channel, Decoding is a next element which is Vice versa of encoding where receiver has to send the transforming message symbol back into thought. And at last the receiver where person or group with whom the sender share his thoughts for e.g. In marketing, the receives are known as the prospective and present consumers of the firm’s product (Delozier, 1976: 3).

Sources: model of communication process

But in the above process of communication the key element of effective communication is encoding and decoding which is very important to understand (Swift, 2008). Because sometimes if the message is not decoded or translate properly to a receiver or if receiver unable to understand the language of the sender then It is not of any use. For e.g. Rural areas in India where any company advertising their produce in English language and most of the rural population is not able to decode it properly then there is a no use of such advertising. Company would directly incur a loss. According to Miller (1963: 7) says that, “………..if the people communicating are unfamiliar with the code or if they are unable to distinguish amongst the symbols, errors become likely”. Sometimes within the same language the same thing can occur such as technical and professional jargon, where language is understood by people working in the industry but appearing meaningless to an outsider, even if the outsider is speaking the same language. So it is clear that encoding and decoding process must work within same culture context or frame work (Swift, 2008). So In the process of communication language plays a vital role in market which includes Verbal communication as well as Non Verbal communication. Where verbal language is divided into written or spoken language in four main areas such as: Syntax (rules of sentence formation), semantics (System of meaning), phonology (systems of sound patterns) and word morphology (word formation) (Keegan and Green, 2005: 126). And Non Verbal communication is an oldest method of communication where no oral or written language and body language was the sole means of communication (Bolton, 1979:78). It includes Kinesics (gestures, touching, liking, conviction, emotions etc) and Proxemics (personal space and territory) (Swift, 2008: 45). It is communication process plays a vital role in marketing such as while informing, persuading and negotiation.

According to Clarke and Wilson (2009), says that language is considered as an important tool for marketer on the bases of three different factors which are explained in detail as follow:

Informing:

For a Marketer it is important to keep in mind while informing about the product in particular country should use a local language or translate. There is an good example based on informing and selling of product said by Germany, s ex- chancellor, Willy Brandt: “When I come to sell to you in England, then I will speak in English but when you come to sell to me in Germany then you must speak German” (Weber, 1989: 159). An example of information provided on the bases of language such as marketing done in India where information are provided in form of verbal language and non verbal language of communication such as a TATA product i.e. Tata sky DTH and Airtel product i.e. dish TV. In their following advertisement such as In Tata sky DTH advertisement are based on the informing about the product in technical ways by using the brand ambassador of Bollywood actor Aamir Khan who is known as a perfectionist in the entire bollywood industry. His advertisement is based on verbal communication were the words spoken from an actor indicating directly about the product. The punch line is ‘Isko laga dala toh life Jhinga la la’ where as Airtel product i.e. Dish TV advertisement are based on emotional factors while informing the people about the product by using emotional guesters such as old couple love story. Their brand ambassador ‘Shahrukh Khan’ who is known as the King of Emotional Drama in entire industry of enterainment. Where in his advertisement the emotional factor, body language, guesters etc were use to indicate about the product to people. And the punch line of Dish TV is ‘ghar aayi zindagi’ which means it bought new life to your house it indicates emotions. So as he know India has an High context Culture factor where the emotional part such as gestures compare to Low context culture for countries such as America where clear communication modes (Kotabe and Helsen, 2007: 127).But sometimes while informing about the product the marketer need to keep in mind about the use of proper language such as In United Kingdom the snickers bars were sold under the brand name of Marathon because they felt the name was too close to the English idiom for female Lingerie (Knickers) (Kotabe and Helsen, 2007:115). Whereas in Middle East countries, are male dominated countries where if any gestures used while informing about the product should be respectful because mixing men and women in focus group is prohibited in Saudi Arabia and if the advertisement are related to women they should be shown with total respect on television cameras . Where in China, marketer should keep in mind while informing about product to the people such ‘Book’ which pronounced as Shu which sounds as ‘I hope you loose’ and the word ‘Clock’ pronounced as Zhong which sounds as ‘death’.

Persuasion:

According to Austin, Persuasion is the communication act that carries out both these goals such as an audience that has been persuaded has understood an expression or utterance and other one believes its message (Tailard, 2000:145). Persuading someone is like performing an act (roughly that of affecting someone’s belief or desires) using some form of communication usually language (Tailard, 2000: 146). And the word ‘To persuade’ is typically given as one of the first example of Perlocutionary by speech act theorists for e.g.

– Locutionary act: which means saying something such as young woman holds up a bottle of ‘Coca-Cola’ and shouts “Coke is the real thing” in front of Television camera.

– Illocutionary act: are performed in saying something such as a young woman is shouting “Coke is a real thing” where she asserted that a product called ‘Coke’ is the real thing.

– Perlocutionary act: are performed by saying something such as a young woman shouting ‘Coke’ is the real thing where she is persuaded millions of television viewers around the world that drinking coke is a worldwide experience (Austin, 1962:102).

According to (ibid: 101) says that “At the end the effect of Perlocutionary acts as major effect upon the feeling, thoughts, or act of the audience or of the people or of the speaker which is an comes under non-verbal communication”. Where there should be proper use of language consider the market of particular country while advertising about the product.

Negotiation:

A process through which parties move from their initially divergent positions to a point where agreement may be reached (Steele and Beasor, 2007:3). Whereas According to Cellich et.al (2004: 25), the concept of negotiation is interpreted differently from one culture to another for e.g. In U.S. negotiation is a mechanical exercise of offers and counter offers that leads to a deal which is cut and dry method of arriving at an agreement whereas in Japan, negotiation is sharing information and developing a relationship that may lead to deal. Sometimes negotiation style used so effectively that domestically it can be inappropriate while dealing with people from other cultural background. Indeed it can be more harmful than gaining (Gulbro and Herbid, 1995: 4). In some countries such as Greek sees contract as a formal statement, announcing the intention to build a business for the future and the negotiation is completed on when work is accomplished. Where as In China, approach is rather to establish a negotiating process based on human relationship and often dependent on nature and concern of creating a bonding of friendship (Drew and Herbig, 1997: 20). According to Petcher (1992: 47) says that, there are four aspects of culture are especially important in negotiating well such as spoken language, body language, attitude towards time and attitude towards contracts. There is an example based on above statement which negotiation between American and Japanese , where the same spoken word can have three different meanings and direct refusal are considered as impolite. Sometimes words used by Japanese are does not have the same thing to an American or European such as words like difficult and it will take some time means no. and not even the body language is same such as in Japanese audibly sucking air through their teeth means they are feeling pressured and where as hearty handshake convey the sincerity in New York and London which make Asian Uncomfortable (Cellieh et.al, 2004: 12). According to Turnbull and Welham says that the ability of communicate with a buyer in his own language leads to a lowering of the psycho social barrier to interaction. Whereas a Psychological disadvantage to the buyer of having to negotiate in foreign language which can be barrier to an socialization. And native language use can reduce the feeling of isolation and encourage developing more positive attitude towards foreign negotiator (Swift, 1991:44). To support this above statement there is an example given by Swift (1991:44), where an export sales executive working in Spanish market where he experienced the psychological disadvantage. He explained ‘I am aware that sometimes they (Spanish people or suppliers) revert to their own language just to get an idea and while negotiating in English they talk between themselves in their native language’.

Role of Foreign Language in market:

For achieving the success in foreign market it is necessary to communicate effectively with foreign customers or business partners (Swift, 2008: 81). And also for an marketer it’s an importance thing to understand or to speak according to local language due to which people can understand the language of marketer For e.g. In India today also 72% of Indian population lives in rural areas (Haub and Sharma, 2006).where they are not able to understand business language but it’s necessary for an marketer to speak in local language or national language of India to promote or want to sell their product to customer. It’s like a marketer has to ‘Think locally and act globally’. And also according to Swift (1991: 36), one should accept to speak in customer’s language to do well in international market. To support the statement of Swift there is an example such as ”British companies will still need to speak the language of consumers in the countries where they trade.” (Hurn, 2009: 303). And there is one more example such as at time difficulties faced by foreigners while doing the business with Italy when they assume that italian business culture is similar to France or Germany. But there culture is greatly dependent on contract fo which knowledge of the language is so vital for an marketer (Swift, 1991:43).

English is considered as international business language for communication in any part of the world (MacDonald and Cook, 1998: 216). And According to Britannica World Data Book, (1992) it is said that 69 countries designated English as an official language. whereas in many Multinational companies in Europe such as Nestle , Erickson etc have considered English as their common business language for their internal communication (Kameda, 2000: 204) and also there is an example of internal communication where it was considered strictly by company called Asea Brown Boveri Group an Swiss multinational company where they made English as an official language for high level meeting, send letters to colleagues who stays in Sweden written in English said by CEO and Chairman Mr. Barnevic ( Taylor, 1991: 92). Apart from English, Other language should also be given importance in foreign market while entering into a business with particular country because According to European Commission (2005) says that, “Language Skills will be important in achieving European policy goals, particularly against a background of increasing global competition”. Due to which some companies are making their staff to learn different types of languages which is most commonly used in market. There is an e.g. (ELAN) where Top 10 languages in which firms are training in their staff from last three year. There is a diagram which indicates that how much other language is given importance (ELAN report, 2006:1-2).

From the above pie Chart indicate the top 10 languages in which firms have trained there staff in last 3 years. Where English (25%) have been an major Language which id followed by Germany, French, Italian, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, Portuguese, Danish, Estonia and other Language (ELAN Report, 2006). There is an example why companies are giving importance to other language as well such an Irish Exporter where two-third (62.5%) of Irish export are sold to customers who’s native language is not English and it important that ability to communicate effectively in language other English should be a concern to Irish companies (Clarke, 1997:82).

Language barrier:

Holder (1989: 3), suggested that lack of understanding of the social and cognitive dimensions of language can be as important as the inability to understand the formal linguistic system.