DISCOURSE-ORIENTED APPROACH TO BUSINESS ENGLISH: LINKING LANGUAGE IN USE AND BUSINESS CONTEXT

There is no doubt that English, being used as a first language for some, but also either as a lingua franca or as an international business language for millions of speakers, has taken the dominant position in the globalised world. As an international means of communication being taught all over the world, Business English represents certain challenges for its users; linguistic, but also cultural. Alongside the linguistic turn in the second half of the twentieth century, emerged Business Discourse Studies, a subfield of applied linguistics and discourse analysis, which tries to explain the link between language in use and business context. This paper will try to analyse the aspects of such a functionalist approach to ESP (English for Special Purposes), based on findings by acknowledged researchers in the field, like Catherine Nickerson and Francesca Bargiela – Chiappini, who regard language not as isolated object of study, but want to establish how written and spoken language reflect the social and organisational context in which they are used. This is especially meaningful for Business English, since it is the number one foreign language taught for business purposes within the European, and more specific, Croatian context