Global English as International Business Language: The Importance of Mother Tongue on Speech, Reception, and Association. (Global English)

Abstract:

It is the overall goal of this project to test the linguistic relativity hypothesis by investigation how 25 business people from China, Japan, Russia, Denmark, and Spain (respectively) who do not have English as mother tongue produce requests, understand different small texts in english, and which associations the make upon hearing a certain English word. The results of these tests will be compared to similar tests on a British-English control group. If persons in individual groups make up a homogenous mass, and if the groups differentiate themselves from the others (also the control group), it can be concluded that the native language has significant influence, meaning that the linguistic relativity hypothesis is confirmed.