Keynote

ESP in the Classroom: Applying

Findings From Business-Discourse
Research Professional Contexts
Michael Handford
Institute for Innovation in International
Engineering Education, University of Tokyo
This paper is concerned with the difference between what is possible and what is probablein spoken business interactions. In other words, while speakers may have a range ofsemantically meaningful options when communicating, their choices are very much
constrained by the particular context. The first part of the paper will discuss the disconnect
between research into spoken business discourse, and the language that is taught in businesscourse books. The issue of “authentic materials” and the difference between “language doing
business” and “language about business” are raised here. The second part will give an outlineof some of the typical linguistic features in business English, with reference to recent
corpus-informed research. The collaborative, convergent nature of much business discourse
and the implications for learners will be discussed. I argue that the prescriptive language
in business English course books should draw on research from authentic situations, asotherwise learners may acquire language that is detrimental to their careers.

When thinking about language, a fascinating distinction concerns what people
can say compared to what people typically do say. In any given situation,interlocutors can potentially choose from a huge range of possible options,and yet recent corpus-based research into spoken contexts shows that although
speakers are often linguistically creative (Carter, 2004), much of our language inparticular contexts is repeated, and often made up of recurrent fixed and semifixed expressions (Sinclair, 2004; Handford, 2010). For learners and those who
use English as an international language in business, knowing the difference
between what is possible and what is probable in their workplace may directly
86ESP in the Classroom, OnCUE Journal, 9(2), pages 86-96

affect things like job prospects, promotion, achieving sales targets and making
friends.
Many workplaces nowadays are truly international and often intercultural, butissues of, on the one hand politeness and respect, and on the other clarity of
expression and mutual intelligibility are common to all workplaces. This paper
will explore some of the research that has been conducted into professional
discourse, and will argue that business language course books need to betterreflect such findings, as otherwise we may be endangering our learners’ chancesof achieving their transactional and interpersonal goals in their work. The paperdraws mainly on corpus-informed research, as corpora have helped revolutionise
the way we see language and provide attested instances of actual communication(Sinclair, 2004).

What Is the Gap Between Research andMaterials?

This section discusses the gap between the findings from research into
professional spoken discourse, and course books that are used to teachprofessional communication. One of the earliest papers exploring this gap
was Williams (1988), who compared the language used in authentic businessmeetings with that taught in textbooks of the time and found that the latter was
simplistic and inaccurate. If we fast forward to the last decade, we find that several
studies have reported similar findings. Nickerson (2005), in a survey of teachingmaterials for English for Specific Business Purposes, found few books that madereference to research into the field, as did Nelson (2000, 2006), Cheng andWarren (2010), Handford (2010), and Koester (2010). A common theme is thatcourse book language tends to be far more direct than actual business discourse,
and according to Koester (2010), the research gap is particularly pronounced for
spoken workplace genres (e.g. meetings, presentations, negotiations and so on).
A relevant distinction for this discussion, from Nelson (2000), is thedifference between language doing business and language about business.
Examples of the latter are interviews with business experts, articles in businessmagazines or newspapers such as The Financial Times, whereas examples of the87

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former are actual meetings or presentations in workplaces involving people doing
their jobs. As such, both types of language have been described as “authentic”.
This distinction is relevant for two reasons: the language and functions each
employ are different, and many textbooks claim to use authentic texts whendeveloping materials as a key selling point.
On the first point, corpus research comparing the language and functionsin the former and the latter categories show that professional interviews andarticles feature a far higher density of what we might consider “typical” businessnouns, such as industry, merger, or profit, whereas meetings feature far moreinterpersonal language, and repeated phrases with specific functions, for instance,
we need to occurs over 400 times in the million-word CANBEC (Cambridge andNottingham Business English Corpus1) corpus of business meetings (Handford,2010). Further examples will be outlined in the next section.
On the second point, I surveyed (Handford, 2010) over 20 best-sellingbusiness English textbooks from the major publishing companies and foundno lessons based around real spoken business interactions (e.g., telephone
conversations, meetings). Many of these books feature what are termed“authentic” texts, such as extracts from newspaper articles or interviews with realbusiness people, and some books feature case studies of real companies (althoughmany do not). But all of these texts are examples of language about business, notof people doing business. All of the books surveyed had lessons on meetings,
negotiations, telephoning, presenting, problem-solving and so on, yet none ofthese were based on recordings from real companies involving actual businesspeople doing their real jobs. The lessons were based on either simulations ofinteractions, or were seemingly created by the authors, and as such were examplesof creative writing. Given that many people involved in the writing of businesstextbooks do not have a background in doing business, they are breaking the firstrule of creative writing classes: write about something you have experienced. A
typical example, and the implications of this for learners, will be discussed below.

88ESP in the Classroom, OnCUE Journal, 9(2), pages 86-96

How Can We Describe Professional Discourse?

Students, professionals and teachers often ask, “How is business English different
from everyday English?” This is an important question because in general bothlearners and teachers are initially more proficient in everyday English than in
the use of “secondary registers” like business discourse; it is the former that is
acquired first in the home or in the language classroom. According to Koester(2010) there are five main areas where business discourse differs from everyday
language:
1. The use and frequency of lexis, collocation and phraseology is distinctive.
2. It is goal-oriented and often involves differences in power/status.
3. It is structured and carried out through genre-based activities, such as
meetings.
4. Though largely transactional, relational concerns (e.g., solidarity, power,
identity) are expressed/negotiated in discourse, such as through relational
talk and politeness features.
5. Problem-solving is a key activity in the workplace, and this is reflected in
the discourse.
In respect to the first point, which is the main focus of this paper and caninform an understanding of the other four points, “distinctive” can mean theuse of different words and phrases, and the different use of the same words andphrases. Corpus studies, for example, have shown that there is some overlap
between the language used in everyday settings and in “doing-business” settings(Nelson, 2000; Handford, 2010; Koester, 2010), but that the latter setting
features a constrained usage. In other words, the same words may be used inboth situations, but in the business context the meanings and applications are
restricted.
For instance, in everyday situations the word partner can have a wide
range of meanings, such as the other person in an intimate and committed
relationship, someone you play sports with, or someone you dance with, but in abusiness context it almost always means someone you are involved in a business
relationship with. While the other uses are possible, they are statistically lessprobable; in other words, it is not down to chance, and this can be shown using
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Table 1
Top 30 Keywords in CANBEC
1 We

2 Okay3 We’re

4 Hmm

5 The

6 Customer

7 Need8 Order

9 Meeting

10 Sales11 Thousand

12 Hundred

13 Orders

14 If

15 Which

16 Will

17 Customers

18 Per19 Price

20 Mail

21 Business

22 Is

23 Month

24 Stock

25 Issue

26 Product27 Following

28 Cent

29 Problem

30 So

corpus software such as Wordsmith Tools (Scott, 1999) or the free software
AntConc Tools (Anthony, 2014).
In a comparison of the CANBEC corpus of business meetings, and a larger
corpus of everyday English (Handford, 2010) using the keyword tool (Scott,1999), the words that are phrases statistically more likely to occur in meetings
were pinpointed. Table 1 shows the top 30 keywords, although the complete list
is over 500 words.
While some of the items might be expected, for instance, meeting or sales,
several are perhaps less so. For instance, the top keyword was we; it is used
more than twice as frequently in meetings than it is in everyday settings. I
recently published a 9,000-word article on we (Handford, 2014) and feel thatthe paper barely scratched the surface of its use in business meetings. What isarguably most interesting about we is that it can both reflect and constitute thecollaborative element of workplace interactions, both on the local linguistic level
and the wider sociocultural level. Not only do people need to collaborate to getwork done, they need to create the impression that they are collaborating.
This preference for cooperation is evident in everyday discourse too.
As Heritage (1984) states: “There is a ‘bias intrinsic to many aspects of theorganisation of talk which is generally favourable to the maintenance of bonds ofsolidarity between actors and which promotes the avoidance of conflict” (p. 265).
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In other words, the communicative practices we are socialized to follow makeit easier for us to agree and cooperate than to disagree. Disagreement is usuallymore linguistically demanding than agreement, and in business, converging
towards agreement is the norm (Bhatia, 2004). In an early groundbreaking
study of authentic workplace discourse, Boden (1994) argues, “Deferring
disagreement or debate is not a casual or random matter; it is central… to thesmooth and practical everyday enactment of the organisation” (p. 155). Boden
here is not suggesting people do not disagree, but instead is making the point,
supported in subsequent studies (Holmes and Stubbe, 2003; Koester, 2006) that
disagreement is often indirect and postponed to a later date.
One of the most frequently used items that allows businesspeople to create
this sense of solidarity and to defer disagreement is we. In the training room andthe classroom, encouraging learners to choose we instead of you or I or passive
forms can help them achieve these important communicative practices.
This brings us back to the language found in textbooks. Many bestselling
textbooks do not draw on corpora or other sources of authentic interactions
to validate the language they prescribe for doing business, but instead seem todraw on what the authors and editors think “sounds good”. Probably the mostsuccessful business textbook series is Market Leader. In the Intermediate unit
on decision-making, for instance, the phrases taught for disagreeing are I totallydisagree and I don’t agree with that at all (Cotton, Falvey, & Kent, 2005; p. 105).
A search through CANBEC shows that neither phrase occurs at all, whereas
Yes, but or Yeah, but occurs 236 times. The Market Leader language, while
being semantically meaningful, is pragmatically inappropriate in most business
contexts. In other words, it is possible but not probable.
Use of emphatic items like totally or at all are often used to reflect or create
a conflictual situation (Koester, 2006; Handford and Koester, 2010), whereas
expressions like Yes, but suggest disagreement in an indirect, face-protecting
way. And it is the importance of maintaining the “bonds of solidarity” in typicalbusiness contexts that explains this difference in frequency of use. By prescribing
I totally disagree and other such pragmatically inappropriate forms as model
language for doing business, teachers put learners in danger of inadvertently
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damaging relationships with colleagues and clients. Given the importance ofrelationships and power in business, the implications of this could be very serious
for the individual’s career if used with a gatekeeper or powerful person at work.
It should also be noted that this preference for agreement, and concern withpotential face-threats, is evident in both L1 communication and lingua franca
business contexts (Holmes and Stubbe, 2003; Handford, 2010; Handford andMatous, 2011, 2015; Poncini, 2004; Tsuchiya and Handford, 2014).
Returning to the corpus findings, also unexpected among the top keywords
was if. The item if has many functions in spoken business contexts, such aspoliteness (e.g., if you look at the screen, meaning look at the screen), but it occurs
most typically in problem-solving discourse when interlocutors are hypothesizing
about possible solutions. This reflects the importance of problem-solving in all
workplaces. Table 2 shows some of the most frequent 2- and 3-word phrases
found in problem-solving encounters in CANBEC (Handford, 2010), and once
again they reflect the importance of interpersonal attention in professionalsettings.
Problem-solving often follows a linear pattern, although more complex
problems may require a more circular approach (Holmes and Stubbe, 2003;
Handford and Matous, 2015). Table 3 shows the most typical stages of problemsolving in a linear pattern (pinpoint problem, generate ideas, decide best
option), the most typical functions that constitute each stage, and some frequentlanguage that can invoke the functions. As can be seen, it is at the second stage
that if tends to occur.
Table 2
Typical Problem-solving Phrases
I don’t know

We need to

Not an issue

I don’t know if

We have to

Not a problem

I don’t know, but

You have to

The problem is

If we canI meanA problem with

If youI don’t think

An issue is

If you say

So I think(move forward)

We might

So we canAt the end of the day

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Table 3
Stages, Functions and Language of Problem-solving
Stage

Example functions

Example language

1. Pinpoint
problemClarifying
Identifying(evaluating)that’s not a problem…this is the problem.
the issue is…

2. Generate
ideas

Hypothesizing
Supporting(evaluating)If we can…
If you…
So if…
We can…

3. Decide best
optionRejectingDirecting
Evaluating(metaphors and idioms)…the best way forward…
We need to…

Another keyword is need, as a semi-modal verb, for instance, we need to
do this. As mentioned above, we need to occurs over 400 times in CANBEC
meetings, making it one of the most frequent 3-word units. As can be seen in
Table 2, such modal forms often occur in problem-solving, although they also
appear in other business contexts as well, such as negotiations and appraisals.
Traditionally, certain modal forms have been described as synonymous,
such as have to and must. Once again, the difference between what is possible
and what is probable is crucial here. While have to, need to, should and must
may belong to the same semantic category and have overlapping denotational
meaning, in terms of their behaviour in actual contexts of use, we find there are
big differences in frequency which reflect contrasting connotational meanings.
Figure 1 shows the frequency of such items in CANBEC: while need to, haveto and should all occur very frequently, must is hardly used at all. To explain thisdifference, once again issues of face and politeness are relevant. Whereas needto or have to connote a sense of organisational obligation or something that isrequired, must has a stronger personal sense and implies a strong face-threat whenused in spoken contexts. Such differences are of clear importance to learners, andencouraging them to treat such items as pragmatically the same could endanger
their success at work.

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Figure 1. Frequency of deontic modal verbs in CANBEC.

Conclusion

This short article has explored the gap that exists between the research that has
been conducted on authentic business interactions, and what is often taught
in business course books. While there are challenges with applying authentic
materials in the classroom, in a context like business where the stakes are often
high, such applications are necessary. Otherwise, we may be teaching our students
language and functions that are not merely useless, but actively detrimental totheir professional well-being. Mike Nelson, writing in The Guardian newspaperin 2003, asked the following question, which is no less pertinent today: “Nexttime someone tries to sell you a BE [business English] book, you are entitled to
ask them, ‘How do you know it is business English?’”Notes

1. CANBEC (Cambridge and Nottingham Business English Corpus) is a one1 million word corpus of authentic spoken business discourse. It contains 64
meetings from 26 companies, amongst other interactions. Project Directors
Profs Ronald Carter and Michael McCarthy. I was the researcher responsible forcreating the corpus. Copyright Cambridge University Press.
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ESP in the Classroom, OnCUE Journal, 9(2), pages 86-96

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Author bio

Michael Handford is Professor of the Institute for Innovation in International
Engineering Education at the University of Tokyo, where he lectures graduates on
professional discourse analysis and professional intercultural communication. He is
the author of The Language of Business Meetings, and co-author of the course bookseries, Business Advantage, with Cambridge University Press. He is co-editor of the
Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis. mike@civil.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Received: November 14, 2014
Accepted: December 6, 201596