Abstract Increasing numbers of corporations are now operating across national borders as a result of globalization. The “language barrier” is the first and foremost challenge they encounter when starting a business in a foreign market, and many companies are trying to solve the problem by adopting a common corporate language. Using English as an official corporate language is the most common solution for those corporations. The present study explored the impacts of English as a corporate official language policy implemented at a company, a rapidly developed high profile IT Company with 20,000 employees, in Japan, a country often perceived to be relatively monolingual and monocultural. When I started studying the company, I first found that the company’s motive to use English as the official corporate language was different from other instances of corporate language policy making I had come across. In previous studies (e.g., Feely & Harzing 2003; Marschan-Piekkari, Welch, & Welch 1999), the companies implemented common corporate language to solve problems caused by language barriers between employees with diverse linguistic backgrounds. However, the company in this study implemented the corporate language policy to prepare for globalization and recruit talents globally. When the company introduced the English-only language policy, most of the employees of the company were Japanese. Therefore, at the time of implementing the language policy, there was no compelling reason for them to use English. The language policy did not work effectively except for a few departments with non-Japanese employees who spoke different first languages. English functioned as a lingua franca in those departments with multinational employees. The findings indicate that for NNESs (non-native English speakers) to communicate with each other in English, the environment has to be more multilingual, less dominated by a single first language. Although almost all Japanese citizens are required to take intensive English courses in compulsory schoolings, the average level of English proficiency is considered to be relatively low in the advanced economies. The present study indicates that it is not for linguistic competence but a lack of interaction with other ELF speakers. Therefore, for learners of ELF in an intensely monolingual society such as Japan to become competent communicators in ELF, providing multilingual learning environments would be more effective than the prevailing teaching practices of classroom learning in L1 Japanese speaker only environments.

中文翻译：

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英语作为企业官方语言政策的影响和意义：以日本为例

摘要 由于全球化，越来越多的公司现在跨国界运营。“语言障碍”是他们在国外市场创业时遇到的首要挑战，很多企业都试图通过采用通用的企业语言来解决这个问题。使用英语作为官方公司语言是这些公司最常见的解决方案。本研究探讨了英语作为公司官方语言政策在一家公司实施的影响，该公司是一家快速发展的知名 IT 公司，拥有 20,000 名员工，在日本，一个通常被认为是相对单一语言和单一文化的国家。当我开始研究这家公司时，我首先发现公司使用英语作为官方企业语言的动机与我遇到的其他企业语言政策制定实例不同。在之前的研究中（例如，Feely & Harzing 2003；Marschan-Piekkari、Welch 和 Welch 1999），公司实施了通用的企业语言来解决因具有不同语言背景的员工之间的语言障碍而引起的问题。然而，本次调研的公司实施了企业语言政策，为全球化做好准备，在全球范围内招聘人才。公司推行只限英文语言政策时，公司大部分员工都是日本人。因此，在实施语言政策时，他们没有令人信服的理由使用英语。语言政策并没有有效地发挥作用，只有少数部门的非日本员工说不同的第一语言。在那些有跨国员工的部门中，英语是通用语言。研究结果表明，对于 NNES（非英语母语者）用英语相互交流，环境必须更多地使用多种语言，而不是由单一的第一语言主导。尽管几乎所有日本公民在义务教育阶段都需要参加强化英语课程，但在发达经济体中，平均英语水平被认为相对较低。目前的研究表明，这不是为了语言能力，而是缺乏与其他 ELF 说话者的互动。所以，