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The business communication classroom vs reality: What should we teach today?
English for Specific Purposes, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 37-51, 1996 Copyright ¢ 1996 The Amerk.,~nUniversity Printed in Great Britain. All fights reserved 0889-4906/96 $15.00 + 0.00
Pergamon
0889-4906(95)00024-0
The Business Communication Classroom v s R e a l i t y : W h a t S h o u l d We T e a c h T o d a y ? Leena
Louhiala-Salminen
- - This article focuses on written business communication in the middle of the rapidly changing technological environment. Mailed letters have, to a large extent, been replaced by brief faxes and even e-mail messages, but the effects of the new media on the language used in the messages has not received much scholarly interest yet. In addition, it seems that many business communication courses need updating, as the basic concept, The Business Letter, is becoming very rare, if not extinct, in real business. This article describes the present workplace environment by presenting the results of an extensive questionnnaire and interview study conducted among Finnish business professionals on their English business communication; special emphasis is placed on the views of the informants on the recent developments of written communication: its organization, structure and language.
Abstract
Introduction Background to the Study The recent, very rapid, technological advance in the media of interpersonal business communication has profoundly changed the process of sending and receiving messages in business. The "fax revolution" started in the latter half of the 1980s: the machines proliferated in business enterprises and other institutions, and even individual people started buying them to be used at home. A somewhat similar trend can be found in the use of electronic mail for business purposes; the coverage is, however, not nearly as large as the fax's, and it seems that e-mail is still today used more for in-house communications in the company's own network than in communicating with customers or other outside parties through commercial networks. It is now evident that the computerised workplace is different from the old "telephone and typewriter" office, but very little is in fact known about the effects of the technological revolution on actual communication processes and the language used in communication. This article is based on a study conducted among Finnish business people on their English written communication. The starting point was pedagogical, the view of a business communication teacher who started to question her own teaching. It seemed that the world was changing so rapidly that we educators
Address correspondence to: Leena Louhiala-Salminen,Vuosikuja 4 as 7, 02200 Espoo, Finland.
57
L. Louhiala-Salminen
38
had trouble in keeping up with the developments; the students learned "business correspondence" and went through "specimen letters" and "model phrases" in their business communication courses, while those who worked in real-life business did not seem to write any letters but were "throwing brief faxes back and forth", thus achieving their aims and running their business. Also, in company training, there were more and more questions about, and demands for "fax models" - - Where can I find a handbook for faxes? What is the proper way to address somebody in a fax? What phrases can I use to close a fax? It seemed to me that we, i.e. educators, students, as well as the business people themselves, were all slightly lost, not knowing where we stood, when the basis for our concept of communication, The Letter, had suddenly almost disappeared, and we did not have anything to compensate the "store
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Business Communication Classroom vs Reality
,39
of phrases" which had been a suitable resource to draw on in most writing situations. The next two examples will, I hope, illustrate the problem. Example 1 is a specimen Order Letter from a text-book on business correspondence that has been used extensively in Finnish business colleges (Kansi & Malmiranta 1983:178) and Example 2 is originally an authentic fax message, but here taken from a more recently published text-book (Aims & Junkkari 1992:34). A more detailed study of the two examples is outside the scope of this article, but merely a quick look reveals that the two are totally different pieces of discourse. For a long time, written communication, at least in L2 contexts, has been regarded as a skill that can be learned through sample letters, translation exercises and set phrases, instead of focusing on improving the student's writing as a process, and taking the situation into account. The view of business communication studies in L1 is probably less "mechanistic"; therefore, it should be emphasized here that in the present study I look at the language (=English) from an L2 perspective. English is used very widely in businesses in Finland, and most business people have excellent skills, but still it is a foreign language for them, the mother tongue being Finnish (approx. 92% of the people) or Swedish (approx. 6% of the people).
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40
L. Louhiala-Salminen
Earlier Research English is constantly used all over the world for business purposes, and there is an abundance of BE (Business English) teaching material available everywhere; however, overall, the amount of serious research in the field is surprisingly small, although it would seem obvious that the advantages from that type of research could be easily measured, even in money terms - - which is the language that businesses above all should understand. Nigel Holden (1989: 43) assumed a wider view, considering the entire modem society, when he called for more research in language use in business contexts: .. we knowsurprisinglylittle about languageusage and performancein business contexts and in relationto companies'competitivequest for resourcesand strategic advantage. >...how peopleuse language in business contextsrepresentsone of the most potentialsocial influenceson modernlife.It is curious that this matter has been neglectedso long. The last few years have, however, seen an increase at least in some areas of business language study - - isn't the publication of this special issue one of the signs of growing interest! This is partly due to such multinational and multicultural political and economic developments as the strengthening of the European Union, the establishment of NAFTA, and the increasing importance of the Pacific Rim in world trade. Also, the important role that large multinational companies have in present-day global business has boosted research, especially around cross-cultural topics. The research traditions in the field of BE vary; in the United States the focus seems to be more on written business communication and rhetoric, and, naturally, they mostly look at the language from the L1 perspective. In Europe research in BE is conducted both in L1 and L2 environments, and the settings vary from traditional ESP studies on terminology, text types, and translation to research in various aspects of spoken discourse. One of the present trends is towards a holistic approach, which has been strongly called for by, for example, Britt-Louise Gunnarson (1993), and assumed by, for example, Alan Firth (1991), who looked at the negotiation activity involved in a business transaction as a whole, independent of the mode. It is interesting to note that the traditional distinction between spoken and written modes in BE seems to be fading, as sometimes in fact the L1/L2 categorisation also does. Much of the current research focuses on discourse in international business, where the common code could be categorised as BE, a language in its own right, which seems to be the view that many business people share. As mentioned above, business writing has been studied more extensively in the United States, less in Europe. However, a thorough account on written business communication in the form of letters has been given by Yli-Jokipii (1994). Her corpus consists of British, American and Finnish business letters, and she focuses on the linguistic realisations of requests. She does not, however, make any distinction between mailed letters and faxed letters in her
Business Communication Classroom vs Reality
41
material; she accepted both if they met her criteria for "a letter". Overall, the progress of electronic means of communication has been so rapid that very little research, or even scholarly discussion, can be found focusing on business communication by fax or e-mail. In the 1970s and 1980s, when telex was frequently used in business, there was also some interest towards the study of telex language, e.g. by Zak (1985). She has also included some faxes in her data, and concludes that "telex and fax differ only in their mode of transmission; the type of text produced by a writer is the same (Zak 1985:3)". A few years later Thompson (1991) studied the discourse features of fax messages in a Spanish advertising agency. He very clearly rejects the above claim of the sameness of telex and fax; he admits that almost anything can be, and is, sent through a fax machine, but, based on his corpus there is a "typical" fax that is a mixture between a business letter and the telex message, retaining "some of the richness of a Business Letter, but with the utility nature of the telex (speed, turnaround etc.)" (Thompson 1991: 14). Thompson's findings are in accordance with the results of the present study; messages sent by fax vary, but, adapting the famous line about birds (see Swales 1990: 51), "some faxes are faxier than others"; in other words it seems that certain typical features are characteristic of fax messages, and the writers and receivers have a certain "mental framework for faxes" within which faxes are exchanged. Method The main method for analysing the field of present English business communication was a questionnaire survey, which was conducted in the spring and summer of 1992. The quantitative results of the survey were complemented by qualitative data received from research interviews carried out in the spring of 1993. The aim of the questionnaire study was to cover a representative sample of Finnish business people in various organisational positions in different business sectors. Thus the sample consisted of three groups: business graduates, graduate engineers, and executive secretaries. The respondents were chosen at random from among the members of the following three associations, whose membership extensively covers the Finnish business community: 1. The Finnish Association of Graduates in Economics and Business Administration. 2. The Finnish Association of Graduate Engineers. 3. The Association of Executive Secretaries. The 7-page questionnaire consisted of 31 questions, out of which 26 were multiple choice and 5 open-ended. It was sent to 400 business graduates (SEFE-members), 400 engineering graduates (TEK-members), and 200 secretaries (SY-members), i.e. 1,000 people altogether.
42
L. Louhiala-Salminen
A total of 395 forms were returned. The response rate, approx. 40%, was somewhat lower than expected; in the pilot study conducted prior to the final survey a response rate of over 60% was reached. The lower rate can be partly due to the more extensive questionnaire at the final phase, and also probably to the traditionally busy end of May- early June-season in Finnish businesses before the summer holidays. However, the response rate of 40% was regarded as satisfactory for the purposes of this study for two reasons: firstly, since the aim was to look for trends in the development of business communication, not for exact information on the distribution of the population's views, and secondly, because the quantitative data was later complemented by qualitative data from the interview study. Also, it was possible to note that in terms of their sex, age, place of residence and educational background the respondents well represented the memberships of the respective organizations. In addition, an even distribution can be found in the organisational status of the whole sample: senior executives 25%, middle management 20%, expert positions 23%, secretaries/ assistants 20%, other (self-employed, teachers etc.) 12%. The purpose of the questionnaire was to look at the target group's overall needs of Business English and study their views on their own written communication, its structure, the medium, and the kind of language required in various professional situations. Special emphasis was placed on the respondents' opinions of the changes in recent years; on the one hand, the changes in the concrete organisation of person-to-person communication (who sends what to whom, and how?) and, on the other hand, the changes in the kind of language used. All the answers received were coded and a statistical analysis carried out. The percentage distribution and mean values in the three groups were analysed and compared. Cross-tabulations were conducted between the variables that were found relevant for the research setting. Statistical significance was tested with chi-square test and the differences were considered highly significant if the p-value was under 0.001, significant if it was between 0.001 and 0.01, and almost significant if it was between 0.01 and 0.05. Ten out of the 395 respondents were interviewed in March-June 1993. The interviews were conducted in a semi-structured form, which meant that the interviewees were not given a prepared list of detailed questions, but certain relevant themes were chosen to serve as "umbrellas" for discussion. The purpose was to get more in-depth information on the target group's needs for English, and specifically, on their written communication. In addition, there was a need to look at the different concrete situations, the practical context, in which messages are exchanged and thus obtain more information on the "archive" of the discipline. The term "archive" is used by Fairclough (1992: 226) when he comments on the perspective of specialist disciplines: One can only make a sensible decision about the content and structure of a corpus in the light of adequate information on the "archive". (This term is used in a way which extends it beyond its historical usage, to refer to the totality of discursive practice, either recorded past practice or ongoing practice, that falls within the domain of the research project.)
Business Communication Classroom vs Reality
43
Results In this section, I will first deal with the overall use of English in business, second, present the findings specifically for written situations, and third, report on the respondents' opinions of changes in the language used in business messages.
Use of English in Business It was no news that English is frequently used by the Finnish business community: approx. 90% of the respondents needed it at work. But, the high proportion of those who reported that they use English constantly and regularly (50% of the users daily, 25% weekly or more often) was a somewhat unexpected result, from which we can conclude that a solid command of professional, "workplace" English seems to be an essential part of the professional competence of the target group. The informants were also asked to estimate the rough amounts of oral and written language skills they needed in their work. The result was a fifty-fifty situation, as can be seen in Table 1. The above information is interesting and relevant here, because it clearly contradicts the widespread claim that was presented fairly often at least a few years ago among business educators: "so much business is done today over the telephone and face-to-face that hardly any writing skills are necessary any more". Quite the opposite was expressed by many of the interviewees of the present study: the importance of writing has increased along with the introduction of the new electronic media; what was earlier communicated over the telephone, i s i n many cases more efficiently (saving time, producing a document) done by writing and sending a fax message. Moreover, the present study shows that today's business professionals mostly take care of their own "correspondence" themselves: 62% of the whole sample reported that the most common work procedure in sending out an English message is the situation where the sender himself/herself writes, and also sends off, the message; 7% thought that the most common procedure is the one where they do complete the writing themselves, but get help from somebody in the actual sending procedure. To further characterise the environment where English is used the respondents were asked firstly, to report on the type of overseas contacts their companies had, and secondly, consider what "type" of English is used. Approximately 40% of the companies were involved in traditional exporting, and 30% in
TABLE 1 Need of Oral a n d W r i t t e n Language Skills Total % Oral Written
49 51 i00
Business Graduates (%) 53 47 I00
Engineers (%) 51 49 i00
Secretaries (%) 43 57 I00
44
L. Louhiala-Salminen
importing. Business projects were mentioned by 34%, and purchasing by 28%. The most interesting finding, however, from the point of view of communication structure and channels, is the importance and large proportion of "inhouse" overseas contacts that the respondents reported: as many as 55% of the total sample mentioned connections within a corporate group, between parent companies and subsidiaries. This information certainly challenges the traditional "business transaction approach" of most textbooks, where business communication is seen to consist of the documents (inquiries, quotations, orders etc.) involved in one export/import transaction; the scope of in-house messages in English is bound to be considerably wider. As the informants estimated that only 38% of their English communication is conducted with native speakers of English, and 62% with non-natives, the following information about the "type" of English in which the informants receive messages seems logical. The term Euro-English was given in the questionnaire in quotation marks as one of the alternatives of different forms of English. It is a term that has cropped up in the discussion of the different varieties of English in recent years, referring to the mixture of "original" Englishes that is extensively used in European business by non-native speakers of English. It was actually surprising that very few of the respondents questioned the term, and the mean value of the percentages given was as high as 44%. This could be interpreted to represent the trend that the professional English used in business is increasingly seen as a combination of different elements, and even as a language in its own right. Comments by the interviewees seemed to strengthen the view of English as "the business lingua franca", a code system with which they were able to communicate, but which does not have any cultural basis, as in "It's 100% subject matter, the culture behind it cannot be seen" or "Cultureless, pure business; only the subject matter, the text is the same, wherever it comes from." Also, the category "other" in Table 2 below contained some interesting remarks. It was most often specified by the contact area ("Japanese English, African English, Australian English"), but also by the industry in question ("shipping English"), or even by the company ("Ericsson English"). The sender's language skills were also referred to, as in "bad English" or, indeed, "engineer's English" (which, given in Finnish anyway, has to be regarded as a comment on language skills!).
TABLE 2 The Sender's Type of English, Total Sample Sender's English
Total sample (%)
American English British English "Euro-English" Other
24 27 44 5 100
Business Communication Classroom vs Reality
45
Written Situations To study the work situations in which written language skills are involved the respondents were presented with seven different activities, and the category other, and asked to rank the three that were most important in their work. The adjective "important" was defined to refer to the frequency of the activity in question. Table 3 summarises the importance of the situations where writing or reading skills are needed. The three frequency categories have here been combined; thus the percentages indicate the proportions of the respondents who chose the category as one of the three most important. Quite distinctly, "exchange of written messages" was the most frequent activity in written communication. There were very few respondents who did not mention it as one of the three most important activities, and it was also ranked as number one by the clear majority in the total sample, and in the three subgroups as well. In order to examine what types of messages are exchanged, the respondents were presented with 13 message types, and the category "other", which at the coding phase expanded into three more types. Thus the replies covered 16 different message types, and still, 10% of the respondents picked the category "other". They were, again, asked to choose the three most frequntly occurring message types. Most of the categories (such as "requests for quotations", "quotations", "messages related to deliveries", "in-house notices", "monthly or other reports") got percentages between 15-23%, only two stood higher: "messages related to travel" 49%, and "various inquiries" 66%. The reason for "various inquiries" getting the highest frequency percentage is probably the vagueness of the concept; it was seen as an umbrella, under which anything where a question is asked could be placed. An inquiry may in fact refer to many different types of messages, from formal requests for quotation to routine TABLE 3
The Frequency of Various Written English Situations Category 1. Exchange of written messages (letters, faxes, telexes, e-mail) 2. Writing reports 3. Reading professional journals and other publications 4. Translating from Finnish into English 5. Translating from English into Finnish 6. Revising English text 7. Writing official documents (e.g. contracts) 8. Other
Total (%)
Business Graduates (%)
Engineers (%)
Secretaries (%)
96
94
96
99
40 60
39 68
60 75
15 33
27
19
10
59
19
18
15
25
19 17
16 17
8 23
38 10
2
2
2
2
46
L. Louhiala-Salminen
in-house questions about dates and times for appointments. From the above information, and from the reports of the interviewees, we can conclude that it is not always easy to categorise the messages that come and go. They are part of the whole process of business transactions, and often one message sent may serve many purposes at the same time; it could, for example, be a fax to a foreign parent company which contains information about the Finnish market situation, an outline for the next project meeting, and a price inquiry. In which category this message would be placed would depend on the total business context, and the person's focus on the matter. Pedagogically, the above results are interesting. In the teaching of written business communication the formal messages, which usually have a certain format, such as quotations, orders, and invoices, have clearly been emphasised, and other, less schematic writing has had a minor role. The present findings suggest that the roles are reversed in real life. The percentage distribution of the times each of the 16+1 categories was chosen (n total =892) shows that the "format-bound" categories combined get 23%, and the "non-format" categories 77%. Naturally, this information is not to be taken too categorically, as the extent to which the formats are followed certainly varies, but the distinctly bigger share of free writing is obvious. Now we have seen that plenty of various outgoing and in-house messages are being exchanged in English among the Finnish business community. The distribution of media used for transmitting the English language messages can be seen in Table 4. As could be expected, the most frequently used medium was the telefax; paper and electronic combined, it accounted for 54% of all messages. At the time of the questionnaire survey, Spring 1992, 9% of the respondents used electronic mail for their English messages. The interviews, which were conducted a year latex, gave reason to assume that the figure then would have been higher, and certainly distinctly higher today. (A recent study in Finland by Market Visio Oy shows that today 50% of the employees in large and medium-sized companies have access to e-mail, and about a third use it actively.)
TABLE 4 T h e Mean Values of the Percentages Given for the Different Types of Media Used in Sending English Language Messages Medium Mail Paper telefax Electronic telefax Telex In-house mail Courier companies e-mail Other
Total sample (%) 27 48 6 2 4 2 9 1 100
Business Communication Classroom vs Reality Change of Business
47
Language
One of the working hypotheses of the present study was the claim that the introduction of the telefax and e-mail, and their present extensive use, have changed the language in interpersonal business communication. In the questionnaire, reference was not, however, made directly to the new media, but to a time span of 10 years: "In your opinion, has the English language used in messages between businesses changed during the last 10 years (or the time you have used English at work, if it is less than 10 years)? If it has, how?" A total of 65% said "yes", 23% said "no", and 11% did not have an opinion. In statistically significant cross-tabulations of age by opinion about change it was evident that younger informants noticed less change than older informants. Therefore, we can argue that the share of those who thought that language has changed, and have worked long enough to take a stand, is actually higher than 65%; thus the argument for change in the language of business messages is clearly supported by the findings. Naturally, we have to bear in mind that the present study did not examine the text as it appears in the messages at all, but the conclusions drawn only reflect people's opinions, and attitudes towards language use. Table 5 summarises the answers to the how question. Three tendencies seem to arise from the information in Table 5: firstly, and most distinctly, the less formal, more straightforward language, and secondly, a divergent two-dimensional view of the level of language users' language skills. The first, and strongest, tendency towards a more informal, less conservative, and efficient language can be seen in Categories 1, 2 and 6. "Efficiency" was the key word that came up in the replies as well as in the interviews; it seems to be the main criterion for any message, and the informants implied that it is achieved by brief and concise language, which deals with the subject matter only, and avoids everything else. There were many comments that stated - - sometimes in a slightly apologetic manner - - that it is the message that matters, not the linguistic forms. The interviews gave me the impression that in the interviewees' opinion a more formal and wordy type of English, with
TABLE 5 Aspects of Language Change in Business Messages as Experienced by the Respondents. The Percentages Indicate How Many Percent of the Respondents Mentioned the Category in Question
Category 1. Less attentionto formalities 2. Moreeverydaylanguage,trend towards spoken language 3. Languagemore fluent 4. MoreAmericanEnglish 5. MoreEuro-Englishor other mixtures 6. Straightto the point, efficiency 7. Poorer language 8. Other
Total sample (%) 38 28 9
4 3 14 7 9
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L. Louhiala-Salminen
some polite phrases to hedge the message, would often be somehow preferable. At least they felt that they had to say so to a teacher of business English, and then add "but it's efficiency that counts, so this how I write...". In the same way, some interviewees seemed to feel slightly guilty for having abandoned the "pure British English". This is the second tendency that can be seen in Table 5 in categories 4 and 5, which can be regarded as two different views of the same issue. The third trend can be found in categories 3 and 7. At first, the claims look contradictory: the level of language skills seems to have risen on the one hand, and fallen on the other. But a closer look shows that we deal with two different levels here. The informants thought that the English that is used in businesses today is at a higher level and more fluent than earlier, because young people generally have a good command of English when they enter working life. The claims that refer to poorer language focus on the fact that all personnel now write messages, not only the secretaries who are language experts. The result is that the language is "oversimplified", "bad English" or - - again - "engineer's English".
Discursive Change and Social Contexts The results of the present study fit well in the framework of discourse and change by Fairclough (1992), in which he outlines the two-dimensional relationship between discursive practices and social context. On the basis of the present results we can conclude that discursive practices and social context do affect one another in the business environment studied. The technological advances in communication media are changes in the context which have changed discursive practices from a "correspondence" model to "self-help message exchange", which again has changed the social context, leading to, for example, fewer language expert positions and new job qualifications with more emphasis on communication skills. Another relevant theoretical framework in which the present study can be looked at is Swales's (1990) genre analysis. Swales's point of departure, the view that in order to understand the nature of texts we need to study their use as instruments of communication, the roles texts play, and the way texts are related to their uses and users in special interest settings, can well serve as a solid basis for the present project. According to Swales, textual knowledge is insufficient for a full account of genre; to find the rationale it is necessary to go beyond the text by methods such as interviewing, participation, protocol analysis etc. This is exactly what the present study aimed at, examining the features of the actual environment where business messages are exchanged. The concept of "genre", as defined by Swales - - although first developed for academic discourse purposes - - is certainly very useful in the study of business discourse. According to him, the communicative purpose is the principal property of a genre, and "other properties, such as form, structure and audience expectations operate to identify the extent to which an exemplar is prototypical of a particular genre" (Swales 1990: 52). Swales says
Business Communication Classroom vs Reality
49
that the concepts of ~letter" or "business letter" cannot be defined in genre terms, as they refer to the means of communication, but lack sufficient indication of purpose. It could, however, be argued that although "letter" and "fax" as types of communication originate from the transmission method, and as such lack any indication of purpose, the situation changes if the names are preceded and defined by the word "business": a business letter, a business fax. We could find "a broadly agreed set of common public goals" in, for example, the basic discourse community unit of one company and its clientele. At first sight, the goals seem contradictory: the seller seeking the highest possible price for his products or services, and the buyer trying to get them as cheap as possible. However, this conflict reflects only the surface structure of a business transaction. Underneath the surface the seller and the buyer have a common goal: in normal circumstances, and certainly in the long run, they both aim at a balanced relationship, in which the exchange takes place in optimal conditions that guarantee satisfaction for both parties. This smooth and rewarding business transaction is the shared goal ("common goal"), and also shared knowledge ("public goal") by the seller and the buyer of a certain discourse community. Thus the concepts of "a business letter" and "a business fax", at least if we look at them in the buyer-seller context, could be regarded as overarching pre-genres, under which more specific genres, for example sales letters, or even more specifically, quotations placed within a certain discourse community, operate. Summary and Discussion When formulating the research setting for the present study the main problem areas were defined as follows: 1. What are the general characteristic features of the present environment where English business messages are exchanged? 2. What communications media are used? 3. What are the messages? 4. How do the users see the language? Have they noticed changes along with the more extensive use of the new electronic media? The areas were explored by means of a questionnaire survey, and related interviews to complement the quantitative results. To sum up, the major findings of the present study were (in no particular order of importance): 1. the emergence of the concept of Euro-English (a mixture of "different Englishes" for business purposes); 2. that written skills are needed as much as spoken skills; 3. that the "exchange of messages" is the most important situation requiring written skills in English; larger proportion of free writing; 4. the extensive amount of in-house communication; 5. that fax is the dominating medium;
50
L. Louhiala-Salminen
6. that messages are written and handled most often by the sender alone intermediaries are used rarely; 7. that the language has changed; for example it is less formal, more to the point and more speech-like. Finally, I think it is now high time, and only fair to the reader (who, I hope, has not given up hope yet!) to discuss the question posed in the title of this article, and confess that I do not (yet - - I hope!) have the right answer, but have certainly developed ideas of what, and what not, to do. First of all, in course design, business communication should not be treated as something separate from the real business, not as a skill separate from other professional skills, not as a store of phrases and idioms, but rather as a thread which is interwoven in everything that happens in businesses. The thread ties the various activities, or social practices, together, but has no value of its own, independent of the business context. Thus the studies of business communication should not, not even in an L2 context, focus on assignments, such as "translate the following order into English" or "learn the following phrases for finishing a letter". It seems to me now that a case-based approach, where the students are presented with - - as much as possible - - real communication problems, is the most suitable means for learning about communication in business. Using the case method involves the students themselves considering what, and how, they should communicate in the particular situation, and then come up with the linguistic outcome. They decide themselves about the tone and wording of the message, which can then be discussed and developed in class. On the basis of the present results we can further conclude that in teaching, more attention should be paid to the writing process in general, and the students should be made aware of the significance of genre analysis in business discourse communities. However, it is also evident that there is a "mechanical" element in business communication; the study showed that although the major part of message writing fell outside any formats or patterns, it is a fact that quotations, orders, contracts, and other formal documents are also written. It was obvious that the writers felt a need to have adequate knowledge of the basic document types involved in a business transaction. Business writers put "efficiency" in the first place - - many of the respondents did so with capital letters and exclamation marks. We could naturally speculate about the definition of "efficiency", but we cannot overlook its importance, and we should see that it is in fact defined by the context in question: sometimes it means writing briefly and fast, sometimes producing longer, well argumented messages; it can also, for example, refer to an ability to write under pressure, and to tolerate less accurate language - - from others, or from yourself!. (As one of the interviewees put it: "the language doesn't matter, I only want my point through!") As business communication educators we should be humble enough to face reality and admit that it is sometimes totally possible to achieve good results with linguistically poor messages, but - - fortunately there still remains plenty that can be done to improve efficiency in business writing.
-
-
Business CommunicationClassroom vs Reality
5 1
REFERENCES Airas, P., & Junkkari, T. (1992). Business Friend 2. Vantaa: Weilin & G6os. Fairclough, N. (1992). lhscourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Firth, A. (1991). lhscourse at work: Negotiating by telex, fax, and "phone. Aalborg:. Department of Languages and Intercultural Studies, Aalborg University. Gunnarsson, B.-L. (1993). Studies of language for specific purposes - - a biased view on a rich reality. Keynote address at the AILA World Congress, Amsterdam, August 9-13, 1993. Holden, N. (1989). The gulf between language studies and management studies: introducing communication competence as an interfacing concept. In P. Silcock, fed.), Language learning in business education. Proceedings from the 1st ENCoDe Conference, (pp. 33-46) Barcelona. Kansi, R.-L., & Malmiranta, I. (1983). All set for Business English. Helsinki: Otava. Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thompson, R. (1991). The richness of a letter and the utility of telex: Discourse features of business faxes. Unpublished dissertation for MSc in teaching English. Aston University. Yli-Jokipii, H. (1994). Requests in professional discourse. A cross-cultural study of British, American and Finnish business writing. Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae Dissertationes Humanarum Litterarum 71. Helsinki: Suomalainen tiedeakatemia. Zak, H. (1985). Business correspondence by telex: An analysis of the discourse structure and features of word abbreviation and omission. Unpublished Master's Thesis in Applied English Linguistics. University of Birmingham.
Leena Louhiala-Salminen works as a lecturer and researcher of Business English in the Department of Languages and Business Communication at the Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration in Finland. She has also worked as a consultant and trainer in several Finnish companies and published a Finnish-English-Finnish banking and finance dictionary.
Pergamon
0889-4906(95)00024-0
The Business Communication Classroom v s R e a l i t y : W h a t S h o u l d We T e a c h T o d a y ? Leena
Louhiala-Salminen
- - This article focuses on written business communication in the middle of the rapidly changing technological environment. Mailed letters have, to a large extent, been replaced by brief faxes and even e-mail messages, but the effects of the new media on the language used in the messages has not received much scholarly interest yet. In addition, it seems that many business communication courses need updating, as the basic concept, The Business Letter, is becoming very rare, if not extinct, in real business. This article describes the present workplace environment by presenting the results of an extensive questionnnaire and interview study conducted among Finnish business professionals on their English business communication; special emphasis is placed on the views of the informants on the recent developments of written communication: its organization, structure and language.
Abstract
Introduction Background to the Study The recent, very rapid, technological advance in the media of interpersonal business communication has profoundly changed the process of sending and receiving messages in business. The "fax revolution" started in the latter half of the 1980s: the machines proliferated in business enterprises and other institutions, and even individual people started buying them to be used at home. A somewhat similar trend can be found in the use of electronic mail for business purposes; the coverage is, however, not nearly as large as the fax's, and it seems that e-mail is still today used more for in-house communications in the company's own network than in communicating with customers or other outside parties through commercial networks. It is now evident that the computerised workplace is different from the old "telephone and typewriter" office, but very little is in fact known about the effects of the technological revolution on actual communication processes and the language used in communication. This article is based on a study conducted among Finnish business people on their English written communication. The starting point was pedagogical, the view of a business communication teacher who started to question her own teaching. It seemed that the world was changing so rapidly that we educators
Address correspondence to: Leena Louhiala-Salminen,Vuosikuja 4 as 7, 02200 Espoo, Finland.
57
L. Louhiala-Salminen
38
had trouble in keeping up with the developments; the students learned "business correspondence" and went through "specimen letters" and "model phrases" in their business communication courses, while those who worked in real-life business did not seem to write any letters but were "throwing brief faxes back and forth", thus achieving their aims and running their business. Also, in company training, there were more and more questions about, and demands for "fax models" - - Where can I find a handbook for faxes? What is the proper way to address somebody in a fax? What phrases can I use to close a fax? It seemed to me that we, i.e. educators, students, as well as the business people themselves, were all slightly lost, not knowing where we stood, when the basis for our concept of communication, The Letter, had suddenly almost disappeared, and we did not have anything to compensate the "store
Example 1. I° Sencl~r 3. Type 2. Department Dice $. PSl~ & Adcl~.~ 7. Atzn line
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ORDER
PUKU OY KtrJoketu 2 $F-18100 HEINOLA 10 O t e e e Oopt L e i n e / n n
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18 K i n g S t r e e t BATH ENGLAND GB-BA6 2NQ
WOOLLEN HATERIALS
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T h i n k you Pot y o u r q u o t a t i o n o f 1~ A p r l 2 for the patterns of woollen meteriele.
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our Order No 123 f o r
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Pekke L e t h e Buyer
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end o l e o
Chamber Or Commerce
not
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Business Communication Classroom vs Reality
,39
of phrases" which had been a suitable resource to draw on in most writing situations. The next two examples will, I hope, illustrate the problem. Example 1 is a specimen Order Letter from a text-book on business correspondence that has been used extensively in Finnish business colleges (Kansi & Malmiranta 1983:178) and Example 2 is originally an authentic fax message, but here taken from a more recently published text-book (Aims & Junkkari 1992:34). A more detailed study of the two examples is outside the scope of this article, but merely a quick look reveals that the two are totally different pieces of discourse. For a long time, written communication, at least in L2 contexts, has been regarded as a skill that can be learned through sample letters, translation exercises and set phrases, instead of focusing on improving the student's writing as a process, and taking the situation into account. The view of business communication studies in L1 is probably less "mechanistic"; therefore, it should be emphasized here that in the present study I look at the language (=English) from an L2 perspective. English is used very widely in businesses in Finland, and most business people have excellent skills, but still it is a foreign language for them, the mother tongue being Finnish (approx. 92% of the people) or Swedish (approx. 6% of the people).
Example 2.
. . . . .
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40
L. Louhiala-Salminen
Earlier Research English is constantly used all over the world for business purposes, and there is an abundance of BE (Business English) teaching material available everywhere; however, overall, the amount of serious research in the field is surprisingly small, although it would seem obvious that the advantages from that type of research could be easily measured, even in money terms - - which is the language that businesses above all should understand. Nigel Holden (1989: 43) assumed a wider view, considering the entire modem society, when he called for more research in language use in business contexts: .. we knowsurprisinglylittle about languageusage and performancein business contexts and in relationto companies'competitivequest for resourcesand strategic advantage. >...how peopleuse language in business contextsrepresentsone of the most potentialsocial influenceson modernlife.It is curious that this matter has been neglectedso long. The last few years have, however, seen an increase at least in some areas of business language study - - isn't the publication of this special issue one of the signs of growing interest! This is partly due to such multinational and multicultural political and economic developments as the strengthening of the European Union, the establishment of NAFTA, and the increasing importance of the Pacific Rim in world trade. Also, the important role that large multinational companies have in present-day global business has boosted research, especially around cross-cultural topics. The research traditions in the field of BE vary; in the United States the focus seems to be more on written business communication and rhetoric, and, naturally, they mostly look at the language from the L1 perspective. In Europe research in BE is conducted both in L1 and L2 environments, and the settings vary from traditional ESP studies on terminology, text types, and translation to research in various aspects of spoken discourse. One of the present trends is towards a holistic approach, which has been strongly called for by, for example, Britt-Louise Gunnarson (1993), and assumed by, for example, Alan Firth (1991), who looked at the negotiation activity involved in a business transaction as a whole, independent of the mode. It is interesting to note that the traditional distinction between spoken and written modes in BE seems to be fading, as sometimes in fact the L1/L2 categorisation also does. Much of the current research focuses on discourse in international business, where the common code could be categorised as BE, a language in its own right, which seems to be the view that many business people share. As mentioned above, business writing has been studied more extensively in the United States, less in Europe. However, a thorough account on written business communication in the form of letters has been given by Yli-Jokipii (1994). Her corpus consists of British, American and Finnish business letters, and she focuses on the linguistic realisations of requests. She does not, however, make any distinction between mailed letters and faxed letters in her
Business Communication Classroom vs Reality
41
material; she accepted both if they met her criteria for "a letter". Overall, the progress of electronic means of communication has been so rapid that very little research, or even scholarly discussion, can be found focusing on business communication by fax or e-mail. In the 1970s and 1980s, when telex was frequently used in business, there was also some interest towards the study of telex language, e.g. by Zak (1985). She has also included some faxes in her data, and concludes that "telex and fax differ only in their mode of transmission; the type of text produced by a writer is the same (Zak 1985:3)". A few years later Thompson (1991) studied the discourse features of fax messages in a Spanish advertising agency. He very clearly rejects the above claim of the sameness of telex and fax; he admits that almost anything can be, and is, sent through a fax machine, but, based on his corpus there is a "typical" fax that is a mixture between a business letter and the telex message, retaining "some of the richness of a Business Letter, but with the utility nature of the telex (speed, turnaround etc.)" (Thompson 1991: 14). Thompson's findings are in accordance with the results of the present study; messages sent by fax vary, but, adapting the famous line about birds (see Swales 1990: 51), "some faxes are faxier than others"; in other words it seems that certain typical features are characteristic of fax messages, and the writers and receivers have a certain "mental framework for faxes" within which faxes are exchanged. Method The main method for analysing the field of present English business communication was a questionnaire survey, which was conducted in the spring and summer of 1992. The quantitative results of the survey were complemented by qualitative data received from research interviews carried out in the spring of 1993. The aim of the questionnaire study was to cover a representative sample of Finnish business people in various organisational positions in different business sectors. Thus the sample consisted of three groups: business graduates, graduate engineers, and executive secretaries. The respondents were chosen at random from among the members of the following three associations, whose membership extensively covers the Finnish business community: 1. The Finnish Association of Graduates in Economics and Business Administration. 2. The Finnish Association of Graduate Engineers. 3. The Association of Executive Secretaries. The 7-page questionnaire consisted of 31 questions, out of which 26 were multiple choice and 5 open-ended. It was sent to 400 business graduates (SEFE-members), 400 engineering graduates (TEK-members), and 200 secretaries (SY-members), i.e. 1,000 people altogether.
42
L. Louhiala-Salminen
A total of 395 forms were returned. The response rate, approx. 40%, was somewhat lower than expected; in the pilot study conducted prior to the final survey a response rate of over 60% was reached. The lower rate can be partly due to the more extensive questionnaire at the final phase, and also probably to the traditionally busy end of May- early June-season in Finnish businesses before the summer holidays. However, the response rate of 40% was regarded as satisfactory for the purposes of this study for two reasons: firstly, since the aim was to look for trends in the development of business communication, not for exact information on the distribution of the population's views, and secondly, because the quantitative data was later complemented by qualitative data from the interview study. Also, it was possible to note that in terms of their sex, age, place of residence and educational background the respondents well represented the memberships of the respective organizations. In addition, an even distribution can be found in the organisational status of the whole sample: senior executives 25%, middle management 20%, expert positions 23%, secretaries/ assistants 20%, other (self-employed, teachers etc.) 12%. The purpose of the questionnaire was to look at the target group's overall needs of Business English and study their views on their own written communication, its structure, the medium, and the kind of language required in various professional situations. Special emphasis was placed on the respondents' opinions of the changes in recent years; on the one hand, the changes in the concrete organisation of person-to-person communication (who sends what to whom, and how?) and, on the other hand, the changes in the kind of language used. All the answers received were coded and a statistical analysis carried out. The percentage distribution and mean values in the three groups were analysed and compared. Cross-tabulations were conducted between the variables that were found relevant for the research setting. Statistical significance was tested with chi-square test and the differences were considered highly significant if the p-value was under 0.001, significant if it was between 0.001 and 0.01, and almost significant if it was between 0.01 and 0.05. Ten out of the 395 respondents were interviewed in March-June 1993. The interviews were conducted in a semi-structured form, which meant that the interviewees were not given a prepared list of detailed questions, but certain relevant themes were chosen to serve as "umbrellas" for discussion. The purpose was to get more in-depth information on the target group's needs for English, and specifically, on their written communication. In addition, there was a need to look at the different concrete situations, the practical context, in which messages are exchanged and thus obtain more information on the "archive" of the discipline. The term "archive" is used by Fairclough (1992: 226) when he comments on the perspective of specialist disciplines: One can only make a sensible decision about the content and structure of a corpus in the light of adequate information on the "archive". (This term is used in a way which extends it beyond its historical usage, to refer to the totality of discursive practice, either recorded past practice or ongoing practice, that falls within the domain of the research project.)
Business Communication Classroom vs Reality
43
Results In this section, I will first deal with the overall use of English in business, second, present the findings specifically for written situations, and third, report on the respondents' opinions of changes in the language used in business messages.
Use of English in Business It was no news that English is frequently used by the Finnish business community: approx. 90% of the respondents needed it at work. But, the high proportion of those who reported that they use English constantly and regularly (50% of the users daily, 25% weekly or more often) was a somewhat unexpected result, from which we can conclude that a solid command of professional, "workplace" English seems to be an essential part of the professional competence of the target group. The informants were also asked to estimate the rough amounts of oral and written language skills they needed in their work. The result was a fifty-fifty situation, as can be seen in Table 1. The above information is interesting and relevant here, because it clearly contradicts the widespread claim that was presented fairly often at least a few years ago among business educators: "so much business is done today over the telephone and face-to-face that hardly any writing skills are necessary any more". Quite the opposite was expressed by many of the interviewees of the present study: the importance of writing has increased along with the introduction of the new electronic media; what was earlier communicated over the telephone, i s i n many cases more efficiently (saving time, producing a document) done by writing and sending a fax message. Moreover, the present study shows that today's business professionals mostly take care of their own "correspondence" themselves: 62% of the whole sample reported that the most common work procedure in sending out an English message is the situation where the sender himself/herself writes, and also sends off, the message; 7% thought that the most common procedure is the one where they do complete the writing themselves, but get help from somebody in the actual sending procedure. To further characterise the environment where English is used the respondents were asked firstly, to report on the type of overseas contacts their companies had, and secondly, consider what "type" of English is used. Approximately 40% of the companies were involved in traditional exporting, and 30% in
TABLE 1 Need of Oral a n d W r i t t e n Language Skills Total % Oral Written
49 51 i00
Business Graduates (%) 53 47 I00
Engineers (%) 51 49 i00
Secretaries (%) 43 57 I00
44
L. Louhiala-Salminen
importing. Business projects were mentioned by 34%, and purchasing by 28%. The most interesting finding, however, from the point of view of communication structure and channels, is the importance and large proportion of "inhouse" overseas contacts that the respondents reported: as many as 55% of the total sample mentioned connections within a corporate group, between parent companies and subsidiaries. This information certainly challenges the traditional "business transaction approach" of most textbooks, where business communication is seen to consist of the documents (inquiries, quotations, orders etc.) involved in one export/import transaction; the scope of in-house messages in English is bound to be considerably wider. As the informants estimated that only 38% of their English communication is conducted with native speakers of English, and 62% with non-natives, the following information about the "type" of English in which the informants receive messages seems logical. The term Euro-English was given in the questionnaire in quotation marks as one of the alternatives of different forms of English. It is a term that has cropped up in the discussion of the different varieties of English in recent years, referring to the mixture of "original" Englishes that is extensively used in European business by non-native speakers of English. It was actually surprising that very few of the respondents questioned the term, and the mean value of the percentages given was as high as 44%. This could be interpreted to represent the trend that the professional English used in business is increasingly seen as a combination of different elements, and even as a language in its own right. Comments by the interviewees seemed to strengthen the view of English as "the business lingua franca", a code system with which they were able to communicate, but which does not have any cultural basis, as in "It's 100% subject matter, the culture behind it cannot be seen" or "Cultureless, pure business; only the subject matter, the text is the same, wherever it comes from." Also, the category "other" in Table 2 below contained some interesting remarks. It was most often specified by the contact area ("Japanese English, African English, Australian English"), but also by the industry in question ("shipping English"), or even by the company ("Ericsson English"). The sender's language skills were also referred to, as in "bad English" or, indeed, "engineer's English" (which, given in Finnish anyway, has to be regarded as a comment on language skills!).
TABLE 2 The Sender's Type of English, Total Sample Sender's English
Total sample (%)
American English British English "Euro-English" Other
24 27 44 5 100
Business Communication Classroom vs Reality
45
Written Situations To study the work situations in which written language skills are involved the respondents were presented with seven different activities, and the category other, and asked to rank the three that were most important in their work. The adjective "important" was defined to refer to the frequency of the activity in question. Table 3 summarises the importance of the situations where writing or reading skills are needed. The three frequency categories have here been combined; thus the percentages indicate the proportions of the respondents who chose the category as one of the three most important. Quite distinctly, "exchange of written messages" was the most frequent activity in written communication. There were very few respondents who did not mention it as one of the three most important activities, and it was also ranked as number one by the clear majority in the total sample, and in the three subgroups as well. In order to examine what types of messages are exchanged, the respondents were presented with 13 message types, and the category "other", which at the coding phase expanded into three more types. Thus the replies covered 16 different message types, and still, 10% of the respondents picked the category "other". They were, again, asked to choose the three most frequntly occurring message types. Most of the categories (such as "requests for quotations", "quotations", "messages related to deliveries", "in-house notices", "monthly or other reports") got percentages between 15-23%, only two stood higher: "messages related to travel" 49%, and "various inquiries" 66%. The reason for "various inquiries" getting the highest frequency percentage is probably the vagueness of the concept; it was seen as an umbrella, under which anything where a question is asked could be placed. An inquiry may in fact refer to many different types of messages, from formal requests for quotation to routine TABLE 3
The Frequency of Various Written English Situations Category 1. Exchange of written messages (letters, faxes, telexes, e-mail) 2. Writing reports 3. Reading professional journals and other publications 4. Translating from Finnish into English 5. Translating from English into Finnish 6. Revising English text 7. Writing official documents (e.g. contracts) 8. Other
Total (%)
Business Graduates (%)
Engineers (%)
Secretaries (%)
96
94
96
99
40 60
39 68
60 75
15 33
27
19
10
59
19
18
15
25
19 17
16 17
8 23
38 10
2
2
2
2
46
L. Louhiala-Salminen
in-house questions about dates and times for appointments. From the above information, and from the reports of the interviewees, we can conclude that it is not always easy to categorise the messages that come and go. They are part of the whole process of business transactions, and often one message sent may serve many purposes at the same time; it could, for example, be a fax to a foreign parent company which contains information about the Finnish market situation, an outline for the next project meeting, and a price inquiry. In which category this message would be placed would depend on the total business context, and the person's focus on the matter. Pedagogically, the above results are interesting. In the teaching of written business communication the formal messages, which usually have a certain format, such as quotations, orders, and invoices, have clearly been emphasised, and other, less schematic writing has had a minor role. The present findings suggest that the roles are reversed in real life. The percentage distribution of the times each of the 16+1 categories was chosen (n total =892) shows that the "format-bound" categories combined get 23%, and the "non-format" categories 77%. Naturally, this information is not to be taken too categorically, as the extent to which the formats are followed certainly varies, but the distinctly bigger share of free writing is obvious. Now we have seen that plenty of various outgoing and in-house messages are being exchanged in English among the Finnish business community. The distribution of media used for transmitting the English language messages can be seen in Table 4. As could be expected, the most frequently used medium was the telefax; paper and electronic combined, it accounted for 54% of all messages. At the time of the questionnaire survey, Spring 1992, 9% of the respondents used electronic mail for their English messages. The interviews, which were conducted a year latex, gave reason to assume that the figure then would have been higher, and certainly distinctly higher today. (A recent study in Finland by Market Visio Oy shows that today 50% of the employees in large and medium-sized companies have access to e-mail, and about a third use it actively.)
TABLE 4 T h e Mean Values of the Percentages Given for the Different Types of Media Used in Sending English Language Messages Medium Mail Paper telefax Electronic telefax Telex In-house mail Courier companies e-mail Other
Total sample (%) 27 48 6 2 4 2 9 1 100
Business Communication Classroom vs Reality Change of Business
47
Language
One of the working hypotheses of the present study was the claim that the introduction of the telefax and e-mail, and their present extensive use, have changed the language in interpersonal business communication. In the questionnaire, reference was not, however, made directly to the new media, but to a time span of 10 years: "In your opinion, has the English language used in messages between businesses changed during the last 10 years (or the time you have used English at work, if it is less than 10 years)? If it has, how?" A total of 65% said "yes", 23% said "no", and 11% did not have an opinion. In statistically significant cross-tabulations of age by opinion about change it was evident that younger informants noticed less change than older informants. Therefore, we can argue that the share of those who thought that language has changed, and have worked long enough to take a stand, is actually higher than 65%; thus the argument for change in the language of business messages is clearly supported by the findings. Naturally, we have to bear in mind that the present study did not examine the text as it appears in the messages at all, but the conclusions drawn only reflect people's opinions, and attitudes towards language use. Table 5 summarises the answers to the how question. Three tendencies seem to arise from the information in Table 5: firstly, and most distinctly, the less formal, more straightforward language, and secondly, a divergent two-dimensional view of the level of language users' language skills. The first, and strongest, tendency towards a more informal, less conservative, and efficient language can be seen in Categories 1, 2 and 6. "Efficiency" was the key word that came up in the replies as well as in the interviews; it seems to be the main criterion for any message, and the informants implied that it is achieved by brief and concise language, which deals with the subject matter only, and avoids everything else. There were many comments that stated - - sometimes in a slightly apologetic manner - - that it is the message that matters, not the linguistic forms. The interviews gave me the impression that in the interviewees' opinion a more formal and wordy type of English, with
TABLE 5 Aspects of Language Change in Business Messages as Experienced by the Respondents. The Percentages Indicate How Many Percent of the Respondents Mentioned the Category in Question
Category 1. Less attentionto formalities 2. Moreeverydaylanguage,trend towards spoken language 3. Languagemore fluent 4. MoreAmericanEnglish 5. MoreEuro-Englishor other mixtures 6. Straightto the point, efficiency 7. Poorer language 8. Other
Total sample (%) 38 28 9
4 3 14 7 9
48
L. Louhiala-Salminen
some polite phrases to hedge the message, would often be somehow preferable. At least they felt that they had to say so to a teacher of business English, and then add "but it's efficiency that counts, so this how I write...". In the same way, some interviewees seemed to feel slightly guilty for having abandoned the "pure British English". This is the second tendency that can be seen in Table 5 in categories 4 and 5, which can be regarded as two different views of the same issue. The third trend can be found in categories 3 and 7. At first, the claims look contradictory: the level of language skills seems to have risen on the one hand, and fallen on the other. But a closer look shows that we deal with two different levels here. The informants thought that the English that is used in businesses today is at a higher level and more fluent than earlier, because young people generally have a good command of English when they enter working life. The claims that refer to poorer language focus on the fact that all personnel now write messages, not only the secretaries who are language experts. The result is that the language is "oversimplified", "bad English" or - - again - "engineer's English".
Discursive Change and Social Contexts The results of the present study fit well in the framework of discourse and change by Fairclough (1992), in which he outlines the two-dimensional relationship between discursive practices and social context. On the basis of the present results we can conclude that discursive practices and social context do affect one another in the business environment studied. The technological advances in communication media are changes in the context which have changed discursive practices from a "correspondence" model to "self-help message exchange", which again has changed the social context, leading to, for example, fewer language expert positions and new job qualifications with more emphasis on communication skills. Another relevant theoretical framework in which the present study can be looked at is Swales's (1990) genre analysis. Swales's point of departure, the view that in order to understand the nature of texts we need to study their use as instruments of communication, the roles texts play, and the way texts are related to their uses and users in special interest settings, can well serve as a solid basis for the present project. According to Swales, textual knowledge is insufficient for a full account of genre; to find the rationale it is necessary to go beyond the text by methods such as interviewing, participation, protocol analysis etc. This is exactly what the present study aimed at, examining the features of the actual environment where business messages are exchanged. The concept of "genre", as defined by Swales - - although first developed for academic discourse purposes - - is certainly very useful in the study of business discourse. According to him, the communicative purpose is the principal property of a genre, and "other properties, such as form, structure and audience expectations operate to identify the extent to which an exemplar is prototypical of a particular genre" (Swales 1990: 52). Swales says
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that the concepts of ~letter" or "business letter" cannot be defined in genre terms, as they refer to the means of communication, but lack sufficient indication of purpose. It could, however, be argued that although "letter" and "fax" as types of communication originate from the transmission method, and as such lack any indication of purpose, the situation changes if the names are preceded and defined by the word "business": a business letter, a business fax. We could find "a broadly agreed set of common public goals" in, for example, the basic discourse community unit of one company and its clientele. At first sight, the goals seem contradictory: the seller seeking the highest possible price for his products or services, and the buyer trying to get them as cheap as possible. However, this conflict reflects only the surface structure of a business transaction. Underneath the surface the seller and the buyer have a common goal: in normal circumstances, and certainly in the long run, they both aim at a balanced relationship, in which the exchange takes place in optimal conditions that guarantee satisfaction for both parties. This smooth and rewarding business transaction is the shared goal ("common goal"), and also shared knowledge ("public goal") by the seller and the buyer of a certain discourse community. Thus the concepts of "a business letter" and "a business fax", at least if we look at them in the buyer-seller context, could be regarded as overarching pre-genres, under which more specific genres, for example sales letters, or even more specifically, quotations placed within a certain discourse community, operate. Summary and Discussion When formulating the research setting for the present study the main problem areas were defined as follows: 1. What are the general characteristic features of the present environment where English business messages are exchanged? 2. What communications media are used? 3. What are the messages? 4. How do the users see the language? Have they noticed changes along with the more extensive use of the new electronic media? The areas were explored by means of a questionnaire survey, and related interviews to complement the quantitative results. To sum up, the major findings of the present study were (in no particular order of importance): 1. the emergence of the concept of Euro-English (a mixture of "different Englishes" for business purposes); 2. that written skills are needed as much as spoken skills; 3. that the "exchange of messages" is the most important situation requiring written skills in English; larger proportion of free writing; 4. the extensive amount of in-house communication; 5. that fax is the dominating medium;
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6. that messages are written and handled most often by the sender alone intermediaries are used rarely; 7. that the language has changed; for example it is less formal, more to the point and more speech-like. Finally, I think it is now high time, and only fair to the reader (who, I hope, has not given up hope yet!) to discuss the question posed in the title of this article, and confess that I do not (yet - - I hope!) have the right answer, but have certainly developed ideas of what, and what not, to do. First of all, in course design, business communication should not be treated as something separate from the real business, not as a skill separate from other professional skills, not as a store of phrases and idioms, but rather as a thread which is interwoven in everything that happens in businesses. The thread ties the various activities, or social practices, together, but has no value of its own, independent of the business context. Thus the studies of business communication should not, not even in an L2 context, focus on assignments, such as "translate the following order into English" or "learn the following phrases for finishing a letter". It seems to me now that a case-based approach, where the students are presented with - - as much as possible - - real communication problems, is the most suitable means for learning about communication in business. Using the case method involves the students themselves considering what, and how, they should communicate in the particular situation, and then come up with the linguistic outcome. They decide themselves about the tone and wording of the message, which can then be discussed and developed in class. On the basis of the present results we can further conclude that in teaching, more attention should be paid to the writing process in general, and the students should be made aware of the significance of genre analysis in business discourse communities. However, it is also evident that there is a "mechanical" element in business communication; the study showed that although the major part of message writing fell outside any formats or patterns, it is a fact that quotations, orders, contracts, and other formal documents are also written. It was obvious that the writers felt a need to have adequate knowledge of the basic document types involved in a business transaction. Business writers put "efficiency" in the first place - - many of the respondents did so with capital letters and exclamation marks. We could naturally speculate about the definition of "efficiency", but we cannot overlook its importance, and we should see that it is in fact defined by the context in question: sometimes it means writing briefly and fast, sometimes producing longer, well argumented messages; it can also, for example, refer to an ability to write under pressure, and to tolerate less accurate language - - from others, or from yourself!. (As one of the interviewees put it: "the language doesn't matter, I only want my point through!") As business communication educators we should be humble enough to face reality and admit that it is sometimes totally possible to achieve good results with linguistically poor messages, but - - fortunately there still remains plenty that can be done to improve efficiency in business writing.
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REFERENCES Airas, P., & Junkkari, T. (1992). Business Friend 2. Vantaa: Weilin & G6os. Fairclough, N. (1992). lhscourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Firth, A. (1991). lhscourse at work: Negotiating by telex, fax, and "phone. Aalborg:. Department of Languages and Intercultural Studies, Aalborg University. Gunnarsson, B.-L. (1993). Studies of language for specific purposes - - a biased view on a rich reality. Keynote address at the AILA World Congress, Amsterdam, August 9-13, 1993. Holden, N. (1989). The gulf between language studies and management studies: introducing communication competence as an interfacing concept. In P. Silcock, fed.), Language learning in business education. Proceedings from the 1st ENCoDe Conference, (pp. 33-46) Barcelona. Kansi, R.-L., & Malmiranta, I. (1983). All set for Business English. Helsinki: Otava. Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thompson, R. (1991). The richness of a letter and the utility of telex: Discourse features of business faxes. Unpublished dissertation for MSc in teaching English. Aston University. Yli-Jokipii, H. (1994). Requests in professional discourse. A cross-cultural study of British, American and Finnish business writing. Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae Dissertationes Humanarum Litterarum 71. Helsinki: Suomalainen tiedeakatemia. Zak, H. (1985). Business correspondence by telex: An analysis of the discourse structure and features of word abbreviation and omission. Unpublished Master's Thesis in Applied English Linguistics. University of Birmingham.
Leena Louhiala-Salminen works as a lecturer and researcher of Business English in the Department of Languages and Business Communication at the Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration in Finland. She has also worked as a consultant and trainer in several Finnish companies and published a Finnish-English-Finnish banking and finance dictionary.