Author note: This article was written as an assessed essay for a sociology module. It’s being published here to archive it.

Multilingualism and cultural diversity can be powerful tools for a multinational corporation (MNC) to connect to diverse cultures and effectively build connections with clients. However, if not properly managed and understood, these cultural differences within a company can cause miscommunication and confusion.

This essay contains a discussion of the minutiae and broad-scale issues involving the operation of a large-scale, culturally diverse organisation, as well as the benefits that large-scale operations can offer corporations wishing to expand globally. Intercultural encounters are a necessary day-to-day aspect of work within a culturally diverse organisation, but they can be difficult; people of different cultures hold different social expectations and customs.

For example, in metropolitan France, it is customary in some social situations for one to faire la bise, to kiss someone on their cheeks, upon greeting people. The practice is not universal and difficult for non-French people to understand. The exact number of kisses to give also varies depending on the region of France one is from. Comparing this attitude to Chinese and Taiwanese greeting customs, where kissing someone is not socially acceptable and may make the other person uncomfortable (The Open University, 2018a, p. 46–47), we can see a lot of potential for error in communication.

When people of different cultures communicate in the same lingua franca, confusion like this can cause severe tension. Many European languages have what is referred to as a T–V distinction (hailing in name from the Latin tu and vos), whereby the word one uses for ‘you’ changes depending on the social circumstance. Such a split exists, for example, in French, Spanish, and German. The ‘T’ form is generally used for people one is closer with, and the ‘V’ form for those one wants to be more respectful to. The exact cultural nuances of who to address as ‘T’ and who to address as ‘V’ differ substantially depending on which language one speaks and which cultural group one belongs to, and using the incorrect form in the incorrect situation can, at best, be joked off and, at worst, be offensive (Greene, 2012, cited in The Open University, 2018a, p. 55–56).

However, multiculturalism is also an unavoidable part of our modern world, and companies that embrace it can access a much wider array of people and products than those that do not. In a comic entitled The globalisation of daily life, The Open University (2024) shows how interconnected industrialised societies have become, labelling everyday items with their countries of origin. Globalisation allows companies to benefit from lower manufacturing and general labour costs by outsourcing work to lower-income countries (National Geographic, 2024). Therefore, companies that can effectively communicate interculturally and embrace multiculturalism as part of their identity stand to gain much financially.

Multilingualism within an organisation can also pose problems. Different linguistic groups can develop different terms for the same concept, making communication slower when speaking outside of one’s own language. Michał Wilczewski (2019) interviewed six Poles working at a multinational in China: before being deployed to China, the Polish workers were in an environment where the lingua franca was French, so they learnt the company’s French terminology. However, the lingua franca at the Chinese branch of the company was English, so the workers had difficulties understanding others and being understood.

Also important to discuss are the differing attitudes between cultures that are important to be aware of when engaging in an intercultural discussion. For example, between Japanese and US American businesspeople, there are often difficulties involving the differing nuances of behaviour between the two heavily contrasting cultures. US American businesspeople may not fully grasp Japanese culture, which tends to be slower and more hierarchical in business, leading to frustration when approval is sought from higher-ups before a decision is made. Equally, Japanese businesspeople may not understand the US American focus on deadlines or know how to react to their frustration (Adachi, 2010).

In MNCs, multilingualism is, however, a necessity. Any company wishing to operate in China and thereby access China’s immense consumer market benefits immensely from hiring Mandarin-speaking staff; only between 10 and 70 million people in China regularly use English (Yang, 2006), equating to between 0.7% and 5.4% of the country’s population. China is by far not the only country where monolingualism is the norm, and to expand into these environments effectively, one must be willing to have a multilingual attitude.

As discussed up to this point, multilingualism and cultural diversity can be both a challenge and a benefit for internationally oriented corporations. How, then, should one ensure an environment where the challenges can be minimised and the benefits maximised? As discussed by Nigel White, a practical remedy is to instruct all intercultural interlocutors to “stop and start to think a little bit more before they speak”, keeping in mind the different ways in which different speakers will interpret metaphor and indirectness (The Open University, 2024b).

White raises indirectness, in particular, as a barrier to communication, noting that British English speakers tend to communicate in a very indirect manner, using phrases such as “I wonder if you could possibly” and “I’m afraid we can’t” (The Open University, 2024b). Phrases such as these may be misinterpreted by uninformed listeners from other cultures, being seen as confusing or peculiar. White says that “(language trainers need to) make learners aware of” these differences and be mindful of them themselves (The Open University, 2024b). We can, therefore, understand that, according to White, effective multilingualism is an inherently active process. There is no ‘magical’ passive process by which organisations can effectively function without direct intervention and conscious thought from all involved. Training on intercultural communication is essential to effective operations at a scale of this magnitude.

It is also likely that people who do not share a lingua franca will have to communicate at some point within these MNC megastructures. With interpreters, however, there is even more in the way of potential miscommunication. An interpreter needs to understand both the intent and tone of the origin language and translate those things interculturally in a way that conveys the speaker’s message accurately, all in real time. Gibbons and Grabau (referenced in The Open University, 2018b) discussed how small changes in how an interpreter chooses to convey a message can impact its perception and reception by a mock jury in a court of law—for example, an interpreter including an honorific in English where the original Hispanophone did not, or in the translation, omission, or introduction of filler words. It stands to reason that these decisions made by an interpreter would also affect the communication of the original speaker’s intent, potentially losing the speaker’s actual opinions in the process of interpreting.

Interpreters, therefore, play a very important and yet very fragile role in the ecosystem of any multilingual corporation, as their on-the-spot decisions can play a large role in mutual understanding. Yumi Adachi raises the issue of the same concept having different meanings in different cultures. For example, Adachi, in a 2010 article in Global Business Languages, explains that 難しい (muzukashii), while literally translating as “difficult”, means “out of the question”. An interpreter translating 難しい directly as “difficult” would potentially confuse a US American businessperson, as the word ‘difficult’ means “a hard bargain” (Adachi, 2010). An interpreter wishing to convey the Japanese speaker’s intention effectively must understand the cultural differences between the two cultures being connected.

In conclusion, multinational corporations have much to gain from multilingualism and cultural diversity, enabling them to spread across the globe and connect to customer- and client-bases that would otherwise be completely off-limits. However, there is much to keep in mind regarding intercultural interactions, miscommunication, operational difficulties, and effective organisation. All parties involved, from top to bottom, must make an active effort to keep a system on the scale of a multinational corporation running effectively: hiring interpreting staff, training employees on intercultural awareness, etc. Success in this can make an MNC; failure can break it.

Bibliography

Adachi, Y. (2010) ‘Business Negotiations between the Americans and the Japanese,’ Global Business Languages, 2, article number 4. Available at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/gbl/vol2/iss1/4

National Geographic (2024) Effects of Economic Globalisation. Available at: https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/effects-economic-globalization/ (Accessed: 21 May 2024).

The Open University (2024a) ‘Activity 10.1’, L161: Exploring languages and cultures. Available at: https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=2151516&section=1.2.1 (Accessed: 21 May 2024).

The Open University (2024b) ‘Activity 14.5’, L161: Exploring languages and cultures. Available at: https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=2151538§ion=1.3.2 (Accessed: 21 May 2024).

The Open University (2018a) L161: Exploring languages and cultures – Book 1: Language and culture. 3rd edn. Milton Keynes: The Open University.

The Open University (2018b) L161: Exploring languages and cultures – Book 3: Intercultural competence at work. 3rd edn. Milton Keynes: The Open University.

Wilczewski, M. (2019) Intercultural communication at work: Poles in China. Available at: https://www.languageonthemove.com/intercultural-communication-at-work-poles-in-china/ (Accessed: 21 May 2024).

Yang, J. (2006) ‘Learners and users of English in China,’ English Today, 22(2), pp. 3–10. doi:10.1017/S0266078406002021.