Teaching Intercultural Business Communication Strategies in an Increasingly Globalized World

The issue of including intercultural communication teaching in foreign language teaching is a vital element in an increasingly multinational, multilingual and multicultural world. Nowadays, globalization and regionalization go hand in hand - while the growing tendency among government representatives is to communicate in their native languages, international companies are increasingly advertising and communicating in foreign languages. The term “globalization” typically refers to economic phenomena, but the impact of globalization is much wider socially, culturally and linguistically. Globalization is obviously a much more complex phenomenon which brings about changes in all spheres of people’s activities. The fact that globalization has led to the spread of a global language, English, which has officially become the world’s Lingua Franca, signifies deep changes taking place at all strata of modern societies. However, one common language does not imply one common culture as also re-iterated by the EU motto: Unity in Diversity. From a pedagogical point of view, language learners should be aware of the fact that English has become the premier global language and its spread is related to the recent trends in economic globalization. As such, it allows its users to participate actively in the global economy. This ‘active participation’, however, is successfully achieved when people develop a good level of intercultural competence which is fundamental to achieving successful communication. If it is true that communication problems may arise even in monolingual groups because there may be twists and turns it is, then, perfectly understandable to expect communication failures in international contexts where a lingua franca is used. As language teachers we all know that the best way to acquire successful communication skills is stressing the importance of the purpose of interaction rather than focusing exclusively on the lexical and grammatical means of the language