Philippine E-Journals

English language status and English communication in culturally diverse academic departments

Jan Selmer | Jakob Lauring

Discipline: Education

 

Abstract:

Communicating in a common language can function as a general frame of reference in culturally diverse organizations, providing that the status of the language permits its use. Based on a large-scale survey of 489 academic members of sixteen culturally diverse science departments at three universities, results showed that English fluency had a positive association with inter-individual communication and management communication, both in English, while linguistic distance only had a positive relationship with inter-individual communication in English. Implications of these findings are discussed in detail.