The Role of Culture in Teaching English for Business Purposes

As English is becoming more and more the language of the global market, the teaching/ learning of English for business purposes is at risk of separating the language from its culture. However, cultural sensitivity is an integral part of the interaction between languages and thoughts in the business domain, especially in the field of international trade, which plays a vital role in the understanding of the way other people think, behave, act, and react accordingly. This paper aims at underscoring the essential role played by culture in both teaching and learning of English for commercial aims since the cultural context could not be divorced from its language. Hence, showing the extent to which language skills are tightly linked to the cultural paradigm is of paramount importance. Moreover, emphasizing the inseparability of language and culture would be demonstrated through the critical role played by culture in business and commerce classes, as well as how discarding culture could be an obstacle for the teaching and the learning of the language. Keywords— Language and Culture; Teaching English for Business Purposes; Role of Culture. In todays’ world, English language is becoming the primary communication source of business globally, as well as many other social sectors. Subsequently, the main reason behind holding the title of the international language, is that English acquisition is a linguistic competence which would favour its learner over learning any other languages for the simple fact that he is going to communicate with different people worldwide not only English-speaking ones.Hence, the learning of English is a quite essential process in regards of the educational as well as the professional levels. Schools, universities, enterprises, companies, and many other international institutions opt for teaching and learning English, simply because it is the most commonly used foreign language. In business, English is again the dominant language in the global market place. Thus, for work opportunities and more advantages for those who are interested in entering the work force whether be a student of business and commerce, a businessperson, or an entrepreneur, they all should apply for English courses. However, the teaching of English for business purposes in Algerian vocational, private schools, and even universities are predominantly preoccupied with providing the learners with well-condensed language courses that are purely linguistic and have nothing to do with teaching the language within its context.In other words, teaching English in in a contextualized situation and in relation to its culture is given less importance and attention. This paper tackles the problem of teaching and learning English language out of its cultural context for business purposes in specific. Not with standing the challenges of teaching culture for business students who are ostensibly more concerned with the vocabulary used in business situations like negotiating, business meetings, telephoning, writing business letters. Therefore, this research tries to advance some strategies of using culture as a context for teaching Business English in order to make the learning of English both enjoyable and fruitful, besides rising the cultural awareness and openness of future business people to others’ culture. The demand over the teaching and learning of English for business purposes has been noticeably increasing over the last two decades. This remarkable need in acquiring English was due to the growing interest in the international business and commerce worldwide (Boyd, 1991).Yet, this newly initiated sub-discipline of English for specific purposes (ESP), or ESP-B, has recently started being widely recognized in the field of teaching English. It is eminently important to know about the underscored goals of teaching English for Business purposes. In fact, the studying of English in Business classes, in general, is heavily based on the communicative skills more than any other skill. Therefore, the main target in language acquisition for different business settings is to work more on the communicative competence that includes language skills as discourse and sociolinguistic competence. However, these oral skills are needed not International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences, 5(5) Sep-Oct 2020 | Available online: https://ijels.com/ ISSN: 2456-7620 https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.55.43 1627 only for an effective performance in business, but also in academic settings as well (Boyd,1991). Culture is a concept that has different definitions and covers various societal aspects. Culture extends participating in the construction of a given history, arts, and traditions of a given group within a given society, to being the core of a certain people’s mind-set (Marer, n.d.). The latter, which is our main interest in the process of teaching, is based on the way problems are solved, people are acting and reacting, thoughts are perceived and interpreted, etc. In this respect, the Dutch scholar, Fons Trompenaars (1993), relates culture to “the way in which a group of people solves problems” (p. 07). Yet, other scholars perceive culture as a much broader concept, apart from being a mere problem-solving key. Ned Seelye (1978), for example, stresses on the fact that culture “emerges as a very broad concept embracing all aspects of human life” (p. 13). The broadness of this concept is handicapping the pedagogical operation to choose adequately the optimal scopes under which the teaching and the learning processes would be useful, beneficial, and effective all at once. Furthermore, culture is so vast that teachers could not cover in their courses all aspects of a given culture with its limitless themes, nor could their lectures be fruitful to deal with some unimportant facets of particular cultural components. According to Robert C. Lafayette (1978:1), the depiction of appropriate elements of culture to be part of a curriculum is not an easy job. He states that, Because culture can be defined so broadly, it is often difficult for teachers to select those aspects that should be included in the curriculum at various levels of instruction. The choice ranges from supplying students with clearly identifiable cognitive facts about a culture to bringing about very subtle affective changes in their desire or ability to value people who think, dress, or act differently from themselves. Thevariety and richness that dwell any culture leave the teacher confused upon what cultural knowledge would fit into his class, and meet his students’ needs. Not with standing, the selection of the cultural subjects should initially deal with the observable cultural phenomena that are visible and knowable; moving to the conception of understanding and respecting the cultural differences, or moving from the explicit culture to the implicit one as Paul Marer best describes it. According to him, the explicit culture stands for the seen and observed cultural facts as certain peoples’ rituals, behaviours, common habits, and etiquettes that we should know about. The implicit culture, however, is the hidden part that we should investigate for ensuring mutual respect and shared understanding. It contains the beliefs and values of cross-cultural matters in general. Hence, introducing cultural matters in any pedagogical setting requires a deep thinking of what would be suitable for the aim set by the teacher. Accordingly, the key point in understanding, learning, and teaching any culture in a very effective way, is to get into its different layers, and get closer to its various levels. In his book Riding the Waves of Culture, Fons Tropenaars(1993) pinpoints different layers of culture in a very elucidative manner. He contends, “Culture comes in layers, like an onion, to understand it you have to unpeel it layer by layer” (p. 06). As explained by Tropenaars, the first layer or outer layer represents the explicit or the seen particulars of a given culture. This includes language, architect, art, music, traditions. Middle layer, however, is mainly concerned with the norms found in any society, as what is accepted and refused, what is right and wrong, what is good and bad, etc. The third layer that is referred to as the core of a culture deals merely with the being and existence. The levels of culture, however, has another categorization. Again, Tropenaars(1993) states that there are three levels in every culture: the national, corporate (or organisational) and professional level. Furthermore, those levels are predominantly needed and found in business and work place, as they focus on nation states, organizations, and corporations. The cultural factsat the professional level, for example, differ from one nation to another. This is to say that every country has its own national identity that was shaped due to a set of conventions. As it is well illustrated by Maurer in his description of the Japanese and Americans’ cultural differences in business affairs. Americans are more individualistic compared to the Japanese who tend to be more collectivistic. Accordingly, Americans always aim at being universalist, that is to say that, in business situations, laws, rules and the framework come before relationships. However, the Japanese are more particularistic, giving more importance to relationships than rules. Culture and language are two faces of the same coin. They could never be separated. Indeed, the only way of articulating culture properly is through language that constitutes a great part of culture construction. In pedagogy, the inseparability of language from culture is highly recommended in ESL and EFL classes due to the fact that language, in essence, is a cultural phenomenon that cannot be taught or learnt apart from the cultural International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences, 5(5) Sep-Oct 2020 | Available online: https://ijels.com/ ISSN: 2456-7620 https://dx.doi