Josef Williamson
Daito Bunka University
Josef Williamson is a lecturer in business English at Daito Bunka University and the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo, Japan. In addition, he has been a corporate communications trainer in Japan for over 14 years working with employees from some of the country’s largest corporations. His research interests are BELF and intercultural pragmatics in the Japanese context. Josef Williamson is a loyal member of the Pragmatics SIG and an officer in the Business Communication special interest group of JALT where he served as Chair of Publications for three years.
Sessions
Pragmatics & Business Communication SIG Forum
Pragmatics issues in ELF/BELF: Views from a Business English perspective. Business English training in Japan has traditionally been pragmatics-oriented compared with ELT (English Language Teaching) at university and especially in secondary education which has often remained language-focused and accuracy-obsessed. This reflects a BE (Business English) training priority on communicative effectiveness demanded by human resource departments and employees with real work needs. However, like language in other ELT contexts, the pragmatics of BE training has been dominated by native speaker norms. The recent interest in ELF/BELF challenges this dominance. What might it mean for BE pragmatics if BE loses the native speaker orientation? Whose pragmatics should be taught instead? The speakers in this forum will draw on their history of teaching BE in both company training and in university classes and will discuss the issues and possibilities. The audience will be encouraged to join in the discussion.