English as the official corporate language in Finland

The ideology of English as the language of corporate enterprise has strengthened the perception of English as the lingua franca of international business. The importance of English as the language of global commerce has led many non-English companies, including a few in Finland, to adopt English as their official operating language (Louhiala-Salminen 1999). Translations from a language to another bring extra costs and take a lot of time: this is one of the reasons why English prevails in business world. The fact that English is the global lingua franca is commonplace. Global business communication most often takes place in English or more correctly, ELF or international English. In many sectors, the professional terminology is in English anyway, making the language the natural choice for everyday written communication. Emails are often written in English from the beginning to make it possible to involve colleagues or partners in other countries, and annual reports are published in English for international readability. English is attractive also because of its international pervasiveness, and its (suggested) grammatical simplicity. It has been suggested that there is a linguistic inter-culture created by the interlocutors in communities of practice of this kind. (Meierkord 1996, Firth 1996.)

However, having a common corporate language that is not one’s own L1 is not without problems. Welch et al. (2001) studied how peoples’ perceptions of language alter information flow in intercultural situations. The findings showed that adopting a common corporate language might hinder or change information flows and communication within companies, because the employees have to face the challenge of using a non-native language in internal communication. This is one of the interests in my present study.

Several studies have been carried out in Finland about the Finns’ use of English at their work or at their studies (e.g. Bergroth 2007). In general, non-native speakers working for multinational companies with English as the official language are not opposed to the choice of language. However, they still seem to struggle to some extent with motivation and attitude problems, proficiency problems and some specific linguistic problems. It will be interesting to hear how the English as a lingua franca approach fits in this context and whether these people can be said to have an ELF speaker identity

Most often, these people work through the medium of a language which is still being learned, under construction so to say. In Alan Firth’s (2008) words they ‘learn as they go’. Speaking focuses on ‘fluency’, not always grammatical accuracy. Learners develop this fluency by using English to communicate for a variety of purposes. It is more like language acquisition, not enforced learning. Perhaps we should ask whether the focus is on understanding, clarity and mutual intelligibility partly because other goals are too hard to reach? There must be situations in business negotiations, for example, when the NNSs would actually benefit from greater fluency in English to be fully able to participate in discussions. This might be a challenging issue to study as it is difficult to see the signifance of something one does not have.

The linguistic exchanges in business context often have certain common features. These speech events can be said to normally provide the speakers with a lot of contextual information, the speakers often have the same frame of reference, and they know what they are going to talk about (cf. Björkman 2008). All this lowers the risk of miscommunication or other disturbance in communication.

According to Vollstedt (2002) difficulties in language use can have several consequences. First of all, there are the financial costs caused by the impaired flow of information, which can mean delayed, incorrect or inexact information, misunderstandings and poor cooperation among co-workers. Second, establishing social relationships among the employees suffers if one does not have a good command of the language. Third, Vollstedt argues that employees who are forced to use a foreign language at work are often unsure of themselves because “they are lacking those verbal tools of expression available to native speakers”.

As for the situation in Finland, it could be claimed that ELF, as spoken here, is just “The English dictionary meets the Finnish grammar”, or a window to the Finnish mind – in English. A Finn recognizes a Finn even in English, as they have a common knowledge of what they sound like in English and the L1 almost always makes its imprints on their English as well. For a foreigner, however, the Finnishness might not be that clear. It may sound as any ELF.

Hülmbauer (2007:6) claims, quite surprisingly, that:

What differentiates ELF from EFL (English as a foreign language) so substantially is that its users neither aim at communicating with, nor like NSs of the language, or only to a very limited extent.

I find it hard to apply this to the Finnish context, at least. Most Finnish ELF users today have a history of being learners of English (EFL learners) at school and, most probably, thought they were going to speak English with NSs as well aswith NNSs, probably even more so with NSs. Some even aspire to speak like them. This raises the question of whether the ELF speaker concept includes all types of speakers of lingua franca English, or is a certain kind of language learning history required? My question is: With a background of being an EFL learner (in Finland), can one really become an ELF speaker in one’s own mind (in the sense the ELF scholars use it)? As argued before, ELF and EFL are said to be far from each other: “ELF is not the same as EFL, nor is it failed ENL” (Jenkins 2006).

At first glance, it seems obvious that a lot of everyone’s energy would be saved if the Finnish speaker of English could be told not to worry too much about the native-like intonation or other ‘non-core’ features of the NS accent. They could then spend the extra energy on accurate and content-rich language or on more attentive listening. It sometimes seems that those with a lesser language learning background find it easier to accept a more relaxed attitude. They focus on getting their message through and are happy if they succeed. However, those with a deeper knowledge of the language easily hesitate and feel self-conscious about their pronunciation – without any need to do so if ELF scholars are to be believed. “Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do”, said Edgar Degas a long time ago. This issue was brought up by Hülmbauer (2007):

Irrespective of their explicit claims about its usefulness, the speakers share the opinion that the kind of English they produce is ‘flat’ and thus deficient in nature. This attitude seems symptomatic.

Jenkins (2007) describes this phenomenon as ‘linguistic schizophrenia’ and explains that although the learners’ rational mind says yes to ELF and the appropriation of English for their own purposes, they keep searching for arguments to hold on to ENL.