Jane Kassis-Henderson – ESCP Europe
Linda Cohen – GEM&L
Keywords
interpersonal interaction, voice, language repertoires, interculturality, complexity
Abstract
Research streams in critical cultural studies have shown the shortcomings of the essentialised view of cultural identity. This rigid and static approach of one country/one culture/one language is not an adequate tool to further the understanding of the mobile and fluid communities of individuals in today’s societies. In the same vein, critical intercultural communication scholars have also moved beyond this limited essentialist approach and view intercultural interaction through a more complex and dynamic lens. However, one fundamental component of intercultural communication – the language factor – most often remains rooted in the essentialist paradigm, especially in its representation within the Ivory Tower. Maintaining the status-quo in this way feeds into the ‘prison identities’ referred to in this CFP and tends to silence aspects of an individual’s identity. This in turn has a negative impact on status and power and may interfere in communication by, for example, limiting the way the other(s) are perceived in the sense-making process in a given interaction.It follows that communication and intercultural competence should no longer be measured solely in terms of an idealized native-speaker in a national context conforming to the precepts of the dominant and uniform cultural model. On the contrary, as sociolinguists studying the complexity of language usage in multicultural/multilingual societies have shown, what matters in interaction is the capacity of individuals to draw on dynamic and mobile resources as they perform the multiple roles which correspond to the multiple facets of their identity as they play out in various contexts of interaction. Just as multiple languages co-exist within societies and organisations today, multiple voices – distinct languages or ways of speaking – co-exist within each individual and become salient according to context.Organisations tend to view the underlying complexity stemming from this linguistic and cultural diversity negatively and rely on ‘solutions,’ most often based on the assumptions of essentialism, that on the surface simplify interactions. However, such solutions, for example imposing a lingua franca to facilitate communication and reinforce the construction of a uniform corporate identity, overlooks the empirical data which point to the gap between the workplace reality in a multilingual environment and the limitations of this type of corporate language policy. Various scholars have identified multilingual practices that in fact enhance interpersonal interaction and increase performance. Despite these positive findings, the dominant essentialist model continues to thrive, partly due to the difficulty of incorporating these practices and their related competencies into assessment tools and criteria. Indeed, language assessment, both within the educational system as well as within the workplace (with both having an incidence on recruitment practices) is often determined by standardized testing based on the essentialised model. This has reinforced the dictum of ‘correct’ accent and speech which has contributed to marginalizing or side-lining ‘other’ voices. We show that organizations, and in particular HRM (in recruitment, promotion, overseas postings and training), do not recognize the ‘different’ language competencies, ‘identities,’ or ‘profiles’ as they do not fit into normative assessment criteria or certification charts. Management seeks to ascertain proficiency levels in dominant world languages and ways of speaking (or in the official corporate language) which leaves many members of the workforce who possess partial – and often non-standard – language repertoires with no boxes to tick. Yet studies show that these multicultural/multilingual individuals possess competencies identified as indispensable for the workplace. These competencies, which also convey the values of interculturality, have been defined as “a set of dynamic interacting dimensions consisting of knowledge, cross-cultural abilities, behavioural adaptability and cross-cultural communication skills, linked by cultural frame switching and cultural metacognition” (Mughan, 2015: 109). Such competencies are indeed crucial to succeed in, and for the success of, the global and multicultural workplace. It is therefore as crucial for these competencies to be more fully recognized as an object of study and disseminated in education.
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