Publication details
The intercultural and international aspects of Business English textbooks: What is the world like?
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2011 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The teaching of Business English (BE) as one of the principal varieties of English for Specific Purposes conveys, apart from its lexical, grammatical, communicative and subject-specific (business) content, also a great deal of information about the world. As English has long been a lingua franca of world trade, finance and politics, and as learners and users of English recruit from all corners of the world, the reality presented in Business English textbooks has a truly global dimension, not being restricted by its provenance to English-speaking countries. The presentation explores the intercultural aspects as they are reflected in the most common British BE textbooks and tries to establish the ratio between reference to the reality of English-speaking and non-English-speaking countries, comparing it with an analogous ratio of cultural references in General English (GE) textbooks. It also looks into possible preferences, taboos, stereotypes and distortions related to the intercultural dimension incorporated into BE and GE textbooks. |