Within the field of business language training there have also been attempts, albeit limited, to describe and teach some form of ‘international English’ for business learners.
One example of this is ‘Offshore English’, a term coined by the Canning training company to describe the type of English which they suggest native English speakers need to use to be more readily understandable by non-native English users. Similarly, Hollqvist (1984) reports how the Swedish telecoms giant, Ericsson, tried to create its own version of international English, referred to as ‘Ericsson English’, which aimed to provide a restricted range of vocabulary and language structures without loss of accuracy.
There are, of course, other examples of restricted varieties of English which have been created for very specific international purposes, such as ‘Airspeak’ (for Air Traffic Control) and ‘Policespeak’ (for binational police and emergency service cooperation at the Channel Tunnel) but these were created to serve very limited communicative purposes unlike the breadth and flexibility of functions required of a business lingua franca or international language.
Within linguistics, there has also been increasing interest in the role of language and culture in international business communication. However, despite the range of uses of English across Europe and its undisputable spread, in particular, for international business purposes, there seems, as Seidlhofer (2004) states, little corpus-based analysis of how English is actually used for international business communication in Europe. Nor is there much information on how business Europeans feel about its use. It is with these issues in mind that the current research study is framed, aiming to shed further light on the use of English as a common language of international business in Europe.