ERIC Number: EJ1244168
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2020-Feb
Pages: 20
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0142-6001
EISSN: N/A
Translating Culture in the Global Workplace: Language, Communication, and Diversity Management
Park, Joseph Sung-Yul
Applied Linguistics, v41 n1 p109-128 Feb 2020
In the highly multicultural workplace of today's multinational corporations (MNCs), translating across different cultures becomes a crucial issue. But what precisely counts as culture in the global workplace of the MNC? What does it exactly mean to be able to translate across cultures under the regimes of evaluation adopted by MNCs? In this article, I consider these questions through a discussion of the corporate discourse of diversity management, in which the cultural diversity of the workforce is understood as a resource for maximizing profit. Based on a critical review of diversity management literature and a study on Korean managers working for non-Korean MNCs in Singapore, I first show how diversity management's claim of openness and inclusivity actually works to reproduce unequal relations in the workplace. I then argue that attention to the politics of translation, where the ideological nature of evaluations of cultural (in)commensurability is highlighted, is needed for applied linguists' engagement with language and communication in the multicultural workplace.
Descriptors: Cultural Pluralism, Work Environment, Corporations, International Trade, Cultural Differences, Discourse Analysis, Diversity, Administrator Attitudes, Ideology, Applied Linguistics, Intercultural Communication, Business Communication, Power Structure, Second Languages, Translation, Language Usage, Business Administration, Foreign Countries, Asians
Oxford University Press. Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, UK. Tel: +44-1865-353907; Fax: +44-1865-353485; e-mail: jnls.cust.serv@oxfordjournals.org; Web site: http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: South Korea; Singapore
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A