Exploring the Rhetoric of International Professional Communication

An Agenda for Teachers and Researchers

Carl Lovitt, Dixie Goswami, Carl R. Lovitt, Dixie Goswami, Carl Lovitt, Carl R. Lovitt, Dixie Goswami

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781351844444
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Professional Development

Presents a collection of fourteen essays that responds to the need for a more rhetorical conception of professional communication as an international discipline. This book challenges the adequacy of relying on preconceived notions about the factors that determine discourse in international professional settings.

PART ONE:
Professional Communication in the Global Workplace

CHAPTER 1

Communicating in a Global, Multicultural Corporation: Other Metaphors and Strategies

JANE M. PERKINS

Typically professional communicators and professional communication teachers think of international communication in terms of accommodating understanding between distinct language users; even more inclusively, when communication is considered contextually and socially, we think of intercultural communication¹ Consequently, our research and teaching usually focus on boundaries and obstacles—like check-points at border crossings, or immigration gates, or natural divisions like oceans or mountains, or artificial ones of barb-wire or lines on maps—and we aim to understand differences in languages and cultures emphasized by these separations. Aware of geographic separations and of distinct cultures, we attempt to understand others’ languages and habits, to communicate in spite of diversities, to bridge differences, to cross borders, and to transcend boundaries. To those ends we have learned and taught hints for communicating that accommodate non-native speakers and cultural others. Professional communication has and will continue to benefit from “inter” research that helps us understand what confuses and what offends—verbally, visually, proxemically, socially, and so forth. Although this imagery of units (nations, cultures, or corporations) with defined borders and boundaries is useful for professional communication, it isn’t the only way of thinking.

¹Social perspectives of understanding (for example, [1, 2]) connect language, culture, and knowing.

Today’s global and multicultural corporations suggest new metaphors. And, in fact, many who study and write about current corporate changes, and reciprocally influence those changes, are suggesting new metaphors or guiding concepts: Peters, “carnival” [3]; Toffler, “pulsating organization” [4]; Savage, “jazz combos” [5]; and Schein, “harmonies of dissimilar elements or controlled diversity” [6]. These new metaphors emphasize the fluidity and indeterminacy of corporate boundaries, both internally and externally. Especially relevant for international or intercultural communication are announcements from Wriston that “borders are not boundaries” [7, p. 129] or from Ohmae that current corporate management and communication take place in “a borderless world” [8, p. 152]. Professional communication teachers and researchers need to consider additional metaphors, new ways of thinking about international communication; we can begin from an understanding of some current changes in corporations—changes toward borderless, yet multicultural, professional communication.

In the ten years since Faigley introduced a “social perspective” for the study of workplace writing in Odell and Goswami’s Writing in Nonacademic Settings [2], professional communicators have increasingly understood the importance of studying communication in professional contexts. In particular, that research goal has been supported by ethnographic research of communication in workplace settings. Although we have learned a great deal, for example, about the dynamics of writing and decision-making in an emerging corporation [9], about corporate politics and the structuring of documents [10], about the role of communication in technology transfers [11], about collaborative writing teams [12, 13], and about conflict and inefficiencies in the writing process of an annual report [14], none of these ethnographic studies focuses on international communication, nor do they consider influences of current changes in corporate structures on communication. Professional communication researchers such as Freed [15], Gatien [16], Rogers and Allbritton [17], Sopensky and Modrey [18], and Tebeaux [19] do write about current corporate changes and implications for professional communication; however, their work does not provide in-depth discussion of these corporate and communication changes for international, intercultural, or global communication. Moreover, even if researchers start from assumptions about businesses’ growing international markets and, therefore, increased employee communication with international customers, most professional communication researchers/teachers discuss these changes from an “inter” metaphor of boundaries (such as Boiarsky [20]). As a result, most research of international communication continues to offer only hints and suggestions based on language and cultural differences.

Generally, current corporate changes still need to be argued into professional communication to dislodge received assumptions of the mechanized and depersonalized Modern Corporation, which dominates teaching of most professional communication courses. A few researchers, however, are beginning to connect corporate changes with professional communication pedagogy, and in the process, they are supplanting the boundary metaphor of reified borders and static homogeneous cultures. This chapter is not the place for me to argue out the substantive impact of current corporate changes or the lack thereof—of the ways in which management theories, technology, and communication interact and affect societies at large or balances of social and political power or the end results on social structures or the environment. I’m not suggesting that we can separate our professional communication teaching or our research from issues such as these; much valuable writing has argued for this kind of ethical questioning and responsibility in our work (see, for example, Jacobi [21], Katz [22], Miller [23], Perkins [24]). Neither, however, can we ignore specific workplace contexts.

Beginning with “a world of interlinked economies and communication net-works” [25, p. 407], Weiss writes about the increasing important roles of professional communicators as translators in a “Borderless World” [25, p. 407]. Based on his personal international experiences and on interviews with Moroccan professors, Weiss recognizes the changing needs of professional communication students in a “more complex world of international information exchange” [25, p. 419]. His research in translation and my ethnographic research of a global, multicultural spin-off software development corporation (VisionCorps)² both emphasize new approaches for teaching and working from a global communication perspective. We both believe the boundary metaphor has the potential of reinforcing cultural stereotypes. Alternatively, Weiss suggests focusing on the individual; I argue for an understanding of “culture” as fluid, layered, over-lapping—distinguishable not by boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, but by prototypical features. Weiss concludes that we need

to address the individual in international contexts, rather than the categorical Chinese, Japanese, or Arab audience. The generalizations and stereotypes about cultures are good to know, but finally it is the individual whom we address and that individual abroad will be just as complex and unpredictable as any individual in our own country [25, p. 422].

I, too, attempt to dislodge the boundary metaphor with my ethnographic stories about the global and multicultural communication of VisionCorps. But first, I want to add to the mix of this discussion some relevant ideas of current corporate theorists and of interpretive ethnographers. Do not read the following section as a theoretical framework of direct correspondence to claims I make of VisionCorps’ global, multicultural communication. Rather, think of these theorists’ discussions as included within, and yet at the same time comprising, a cultural milieu—as anthropologists say—or as within the heteroglossia in which we teach and research, perhaps a heteroglossia of global scale.³ Peters [3], Drucker [26, 27], Ohmae [8], and Wriston [7] explain that global influences—and therefore global communication—are integral to current corporate changes in management theories, organizational structuring, and technology. Many anthropologists, including Dubinskas [28] and Rosaldo [29, 30], also suggest important theoretical perspectives of multicultural communication. All of these theorists problematize concepts of static cultures of determinate boundaries and cultural stereotypes.

²VisionCorps is a pseudonym for the software development corporation that was the site of my more than three-year ethnographic research; the names of employees are also pseudonyms, but the stories are of actual people, places, and happenings.

THEORISTS OF CORPORATE CHANGE AND CULTURAL KNOWING

Corporate theorists, such as Peters [3] and Drucker [26, 27], write about new global markets and increased global marketing competition as integral to current corporate changes. Peters gathers bits and pieces to tell stories of corporate innovations; many of his success stories are of international corporations, more specifically, of multinationals. A global perspective is inherent in Peters’ proselytizing; for example, he predicts that “only a fickle, decentralized operation will survive in a fickle, decentralized global economy” [3, p. 9]. He cites for support the shift in information technologies; although originally geared primarily for United States’ markets, they now have markets that are 80 percent non-U.S. [3, p. 271].⁴ Drucker glosses in more prophetic overviews the causes and implications of a global economy: “Money going transnational outflanks the nation-state by nullifying national economic policy. Information going transnational outflanks the nation-state by undermining (in fact, destroying) the identification of ‘national’ with ‘cultural’ identity” [27, p. 145].

Besides explaining causes of the globalization that has and is occurring, both Peters and Drucker also write about what could be seen as a paradox of globalization; they argue that, although people and cultures are in closer contact than ever before, cultural assimilation—a homogenizing consequence—is not occurring. Peters contends that the homogenization of differences is exactly counter to current corporate endeavors; diversity is necessary and, therefore, encouraged for the kind of innovative thinking and creative problem solving that must fuel his vision of “liberation management” [3, p. 414]. Peters summarizes: “The message … is fashion. Translation: diversity. The globe is shrinking. But as it shrinks, oddly enough, it is becoming more diverse, not less—no matter where you look” [3, p. 667]. Drucker too believes that globalization, while de-emphasizing national borders and cultures, does not result in monoculturalism or the disappearance of unique and valued cultural differenc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgments
• Table of Contents
• Introduction Rethinking the Role of Culture in International Professional Communication
• Part One: Professional Communication in the Global Workplace
• Part Two: Rhetorical Strategies for the Global Workplace
• Part Three: Teaching and Research in International Professional Communication
• Contributors
• Index