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Business English in the Swedish Pharmaceutical Sector: A study of the needs of speakers of Business English when used as a Lingua Franca.
Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of English.
2011 (English)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

Multinational corporations operating in Sweden often use English as their official corporate language. The employees are expected to communicate using English both internally and with external business contacts. English used for communication between people with different mother tongues is commonly referred to as ELF, English as a Lingua Franca, and when used in business contexts it is referred to as Business English or BELF, Business English as a Lingua Franca. This study was conducted to explore how Business English is used in the pharmaceutical sector in Sweden and what elements of Business English are challenging or necessary for successful communication. In the study five informants were interviewed about their experiences. The study showed that the informants use Business English for all types of communication and are comfortable with English as a lingua franca yet often switch over to Swedish if there are only Swedish speakers present. It was also found that clear, somewhat simplified English with focus on content and getting business done was preferred over grammatically correct and native sounding English. The respondents viewed an industry specific vocabulary as highly important bordering to a pre-requisite. The findings of this study support previous research in the field indicating that there is little difference when it comes to Business English for the pharmaceutical industry compared to other industries.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2011. , p. 30
Keywords [en]
Business English, BELF, Business English as a Lingua Franca, English as a Lingua Franca.
National Category
General Language Studies and Linguistics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-79652OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-79652DiVA, id: diva2:550901
Uppsok
Humanities, Theology
Supervisors
Examiners
Available from: 2012-12-13 Created: 2012-09-09 Last updated: 2018-01-12Bibliographically approved

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CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

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Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf