ABSTRACT
All languages are constantly developing and changing but the globalisation of the English language is an unprecedented fact in the history of languages’ evolution. The widespread of the English language has reached all society contexts. There is no doubt that English is the global language used by millions of people in very different contexts such as the academic, the scientific, the technological, the business, the mass media, the entertainment, the international students’ context, etc. The number of non-native speakers of English already outnumbers the native speakers. The existence of other varieties of English is a verified fact by the numerous studies carried out about the varieties of the English language in South East Asia, in Africa, in Europe, etc. These different varieties have flourished along the years due to the coexistence of English and the local languages in multicultural contexts. These varieties show different linguistic and socio-cultural features which reflect their speakers’ cultural background. The oral and written variations that non-native speakers produce are subject of analysis as well. Consequently these two facts together cause the present situation of the English language to be exceptional.
The new digital written genres like the e-mail are a tool to spread the English globally, especially in the global business and trade world. The virtual context offers to its participants the opportunity to experiment in the language use changing the traditional linguistic conventions, writing in a more immediate and faster way, using a more direct style, and giving priority to the instant communication over the grammatical correctness. Therefore there is more spelling and grammar flexibility.
The present thesis carries out in depth a contrastive study about the linguistic and cultural variations produced by non-native speakers form the South and East of Asia in their computer mediated communication within the business context. The analysis has been divided in four levels: grammatical, lexical, textual and level of communicative purposes. The main objective is to detect the linguistic and cultural variations in the business English used as a lingua franca by non-native speakers in the trade and commerce context. Further objectives are to find out and determine the causes of these variations and how they affect the international communication.