Language use
When I mentioned that one focus of my investigation was language use in the workplace in China, most managers stated that China differs from other countries in that Japanese and Mandarin,1 rather than English, are mostly used (cf. Nebashi 2007). As indicated below, the prevalent use of Japanese and Mandarin might be related to the proximity of the written systems and a legacy of Japanese colonialism. Some managers mentioned that the language depends on the nature of the work. Interviews with expatriates paralleled such comments; of the ten former and current expatriates, only three mentioned that English was the major language for work. The responses from other expatriates indicated that, although there were some individual and corporate differences, the major languages used between the expatriates and Chinese local employees or clients were Japanese and to an extent Mandarin in oral and written communication.
Language use is obviously influenced by one’s language proficiency. Although all expatriates used Mandarin with varied self-reported levels of proficiency, three (AF1, AF2, BF2) commented that their Mandarin proficiency was very limited. Of them, two (AF1, AF2) stated that they used English 70% to 80% of the time and Japanese for the rest, whereas one (BF2) said that Japanese was the main medium of communication. In contrast, three expatriates (BF1, BCSubX2, CF) learned Mandarin at a Chinese university for approximately a year (one had studied as an undergraduate student and two had been sent by their company) and considered themselves to be fluent in spoken and written Mandarin. Of the three, two used Mandarin as the major medium of workplace communication, whereas one commented that Japanese was used more often than Mandarin.
The remaining four expatriates (AF3, AC, BCSubX1, BCSubY) used Mandarin with varied frequency. One (AF3) commented that he used mostly Japanese in the beginning but toward the end of his stay, he was using about 40% Japanese and 60% Mandarin for oral communication, whereas he used Japanese and English for written communication. Another expatriate, who dealt with local sales agents (BCSubX1), said that he used mostly Japanese for oral communication in his office, whereas he handled Mandarin email messages sent directly from Chinese sales agents. Asked what he would do if he could not understand, he said, “I can understand from Chinese characters and [Arabic] numerals because the content is predictable.”2 An interpreter accompanies him on business trips within China, but he occasionally makes simple speeches in Mandarin. Another expatriate, who had previously lived in the United States (BCSubY), was surprised to find out that English was not used at all in his workplace in China. He began learning Mandarin seriously and became able to use it to some extent for email and spoken communication. Conversely, another current expatriate (AC) stated that although he was learning Mandarin, he used mostly English since his work involves sales clients outside of China.
Expatriates’ frequent use of Japanese is supported by the fact that many Chinese office employees, as much as perhaps 50%, had a varied range of Japanese proficiency. The subsidiaries actively hire Chinese workers with Japanese proficiency and they encourage Chinese employees to learn Japanese once they are hired. One former expatriate (BF1) explained that while he was in China, Chinese employees with English proficiency increasingly left for Western companies, making his workplace more bilingual in Japanese and Mandarin. Following the Japanese corporate tradition, which prioritizes employees’ on-the-job training for long-term employment, the company began to support Chinese employees’ Japanese language learning. This in turn reduced the necessity to compete with Western companies for recruiting workers with similar competencies. One Chinese interviewee (AL2) also mentioned that although English proficiency was deemed important for Chinese office employees and many already had functional English skills, knowing Japanese would provide them with a competitive edge in the current tough job market.
The Chinese interviewees obviously represent such a profile. All studied Japanese formally. Four interviewees (AL2, BLSubX1, BLSubY1, BLSubY2) studied in Japan in the 1980s and/or 1990s, when learning Japanese was popular. One interviewee (AL1) lived in Japan for 11 years; originally from Taiwan, he had moved to Japan as an adolescent, completed a master’s degree in engineering in Japan, and was hired by the current company in Japan. In contrast, another interviewee (BLSubX2), who was younger than the others, majored in Japanese in China. She had only traveled to Japan once on business. All of the Chinese interviewees used Japanese for oral and written communication. Of the six, the Taiwanese multilingual interviewee used English as well. He made a comment that represents one nature of communication that applied to Japanese expatriates as well:
Ryuko: Is Japanese currently a medium when you communicate with Japanese expatriates?
AL1: Yes, it is.
Ryuko: How about email?
AL1: That’s Japanese too. I use a different language depending on whom I communicate with. For example, I use Chinese with local employees, Japanese with expats, and English when I have inquiries from abroad.
Paralleling the above comment, bilingual or multilingual expatriates also used different languages depending on the interlocutors’ linguistic repertoire. Yet, the communication can be hybrid. For both expatriates and local employees who use their second language with varied levels of proficiency, language mix is a typical consequence. One former expatriate (AF2) reflected on the common practice of language mix which included Chinese employees’ use of Japanese slang and his mixing of Mandarin.
Written communication did not completely overlap oral communication. According to the expatriates, their email communication with Japanese colleagues or clients was in Japanese. When email communication involved multiple recipients, a message was sometimes translated into or dictated in Mandarin, depending on the message’s importance and the recipients. Conversely, expatriates handled routine or non-critical email communication in Mandarin by using such strategies as guessing the meaning from the Chinese characters and numerals or writing in Japanese by using as many Chinese characters as possible, although the effectiveness of especially the latter strategy is unclear. These strategies are made possible because Japanese and Mandarin share logographs, though their forms or meanings are not always identical.
The three expatriates who used English as a major medium of oral communication also used English for email communication. One current expatriate (AC), manager of a sales coordination department whose work mostly involved sales-related business outside of China, commented that he encouraged Chinese employees to use English in order to make communication transparent to him and other Japanese employees. Another former expatriate (AF3), who shifted from Japanese to Mandarin in oral communication during his stay, commented that email communication was mostly conducted in English.
It seems that the language choice and use depends on the nature of the work, the linguistic repertoire of the interlocutors, individual linguistic subjectivity, and possibly the culture of each workplace. As previously mentioned, when the work involves communicating with people outside of China or English-speaking Chinese, English tends to be used. Within the office, depending on the linguistic repertoire of the participants, the language of a meeting can be Japanese, Mandarin, or English. Furthermore, many interviewees agreed with the following statement of a former expatriate:
The closer you get to the worksite where our machines operate, the more necessary the local language becomes. (BF1)
For one current expatriate, an engineer who works for the product support department and often travels to solve technical problems, speaking Mandarin is essential. For the production floor, most workers are not Japanese or English speakers; they tend to use their local language, dialect of Chinese. For Japanese engineers to communicate with production floor workers, they need Mandarin proficiency or an interpreter. During a brief factory tour, I saw a Japanese engineer instructing a group of Chinese workers via a Chinese interpreter. All the bulletin boards were mostly displayed in Mandarin with some Japanese, indicating that some of the posters (e.g., safety information) were translated from Japanese originals.
The choice of language also depends on the nature of the task. If the task does not require sophisticated language, a second language can be used. Conversely, if the task is complicated, translation and interpretation comes into play. As one manager (FM) explained, technical work like presenting new technology to local workers and clients typically does not involve complicated negotiation and thus minimum language proficiency usually suffices. Conversely, detailed communication requires a translator or interpreter, usually local Chinese employees or Japanese employees who are proficient in Mandarin and hired locally. However, language specialists per se are few—they might initially be hired for communication purposes but they are trained to acquire other work skills. This echoes the career requirement that typically goes beyond being a “pure “linguist”” (Bloch 1995). Overall, many expatriates are compelled to use language(s) other than Japanese with varied levels of sophistication. This raises a set of questions posed by one former expatriate (BF1):
When we say someone can speak a language, like English, what does it mean? At which level, from a professional point of view, someone is proficient? … When I’m asked “Do you speak Mandarin?” I say “Yes,” but I wonder what it takes to say I can speak it. Is it being able to serve as an interpreter? Or is it being able to say greetings and interact?
These questions seem to signify truncated repertoires that are partial and specialized and yet functional in a workplace (Blommaert 2010; Blommaert et al. 2005). The blurred definition of language proficiency for business purposes calls into question the appropriateness of conventional goals for teaching foreign languages.
One interesting issue is a possible link between language choice and workplace-specific practice or individual subjectivity. The four expatriates who used mostly English for email communication worked for the same company (AF1, AF2, AF3, AC). Language choice and use might be part of corporate practices unique to each workplace, although choosing a common language is often an emergent process (Piekkari 2009). It is also worth noting that two of these four expatriates used to work in a subsidiary in Singapore where English was predominantly used. One former expatriate (AF2) stated that he had few opportunities to use Mandarin in his workplace because his local co-workers spoke English or Japanese. His following comment was followed up by a manager:
AF2: … It [language choice] depends on the section or environment. For example, in the production department, people don’t speak English, so they have to communicate in Mandarin … If you happen to speak some English, you try to use it. But if you can’t speak English well, you’d try to communicate in Mandarin from the get-go and you become good at it quickly—I was the former case.
AM3: Being able to speak English can be good or bad in the Chinese context. People naturally rely on English, so … if a [Japanese] worker who can only speak Japanese is sent there, then what to be learned is Mandarin. These people tend to make better progress in learning Mandarin.
Some expatriates with English-speaker subjectivity apparently shun learning the local language in an ELF environment.
In sum, Japanese and, to some extent, Mandarin are major common lingua franca in the office space for Japanese expatriates but English is also used for work involving overseas clients and English-speaking Chinese clients or mainly for written communication. The orthographical proximity between Japanese and Mandarin allows written communication in both languages. The closer the work is related to the local contexts, the more the local language is used. Overall, language choice depends on the linguistic repertoires of the interlocutors, the nature of work, and perhaps individual subjectivity.