Mediating between Local and Global Practices: the Use of English as the Lingua Franca for Internal Company Communications

The worldwide spread of English is just one of the many different developments subsumed under the general phenomenon of globalisation. Since the term itself refers to various processes, a universal definition does not exist. Indeed, while it can be argued that globalisation processes already started much earlier and are generally connected to global economy and global communication systems – especially the Internet, it was not until the 1970s that the term really appeared on the scene. Globalisation is furthermore associated with boundless mobility and, of course, with English, as the language of globalisation (Gnutzmann, Intemann, 2008: 9). Therefore, nowadays more and more companies are choosing English as the lingua franca for internal and international communications instead of the headquarters’ language. By adopting the English language, companies also adapt it, giving rise to localized forms, both because of transfer from local languages and because of the new cultural environment and communicative needs (Saghal 1991: 300). The present study focuses on two corpora of e-mails exchanged among the Italian, Chinese and Japanese employees of a highly networked, internationally operating company, which has chosen English as the lingua franca for company communication. A qualitative analysis will be carried out, focusing on the most relied-upon and successfully employed grammatical constructions and lexical choices, in the attempt to establish whether systematic features of the language used can be identified, as well as the extent to which they reflect the adoption of global vs local language practices.