BELF (business English as a lingua franca) and intercultural issues: rapport management in consulting and training encounters in international and local settings

The subject is the de facto diffusion of BELF (Business English as a Lingua Franca) and its impact on globalized business. It is, however, viewed through the lens of interculturality and the perspectives of IIBC (Intercultural and International Business Communication), where global and local scenarios operate in synchronicity, in this case within ABD, Asian Business Discourses. The study is an analysis of a three-day workshop held by a large American multi-national organization-consulting group for human resources professionals in Malaysia, how the situation is managed, affectively and relationally, and how interpersonal dynamics are construed through discourse. Language plays a key role in adjusting the relative power and social distance positioning of the interactants, in enacting face, and more specifically, in performing trust-work, given the communication difficulties encountered in the events. Interculturality and identity issues emerge. Perhaps, the appropriateness and acceptability of North American business cultural and managerial practices, related to access to and the distribution of knowledge, are being challenged in a global context? The approach is blended and multi-layered, using corpus linguistics instruments, the analytical tools of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, and indispensable ethnographic feedback.