International business is increasingly conducted through the medium of English as a Business Lingua Franca (BELF). Yet, little is known about interactional strategies in BELF, specifically in internal written business communications. Our study turns to this hitherto less explored area and investigates one of the most important speech acts in the context of workplace communication, i.e. requests. The data under study come from a unique corpus of 398 authentic internal emails produced by the multilingual employees of an international insurance corporation. Using a combination of corpus-linguistic and discourse-analytical methods, we identify and classify request strategies formulated by BELF users with ten diverse first-language (L1) backgrounds, and assess how their choice of pragmatic strategies might be influenced by their lingua-cultural background as well as extralinguistic factors, notably the email senders’ power position within the corporate hierarchy and their gender. Across the corpus, the level of directness in request strategies was high, suggesting that most BELF users prioritised ‘getting the job done’. Yet, the directness of email senders’ request strategies was modulated by a complex interaction between lingua-cultural factors, power position and gender. The most crucial observation was that high-power employees chose more direct strategies than low-power employees, but this pattern was modulated by their lingua-cultural background and by gender.

中文翻译：

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礼貌不礼貌？权力、性别和语言背景如何影响企业电子邮件交流中英语作为商务通用语 (BELF) 的请求策略

国际商务越来越多地通过英语作为商务通用语言 (BELF) 进行。然而，人们对 BELF 中的交互策略知之甚少，特别是在内部书面业务通信中。我们的研究转向了这个迄今为止探索较少的领域，并调查了工作场所交流中最重要的言语行为之一，即请求。正在研究的数据来自一个独特的语料库，其中包含 398 封真实的内部电子邮件，这些电子邮件是由一家国际保险公司的多语种员工制作的。我们结合使用语料库语言学和话语分析方法，识别和分类由具有十种不同第一语言 (L1) 背景的 BELF 用户制定的请求策略，并评估他们对语用策略的选择如何受到他们的语言文化背景和语言外因素的影响，特别是电子邮件发件人在公司等级制度中的权力地位和他们的性别。在整个语料库中，请求策略的直接程度很高，这表明大多数 BELF 用户优先考虑“完成工作”。然而，电子邮件发件人请求策略的直接性受到语言文化因素、权力地位和性别之间复杂相互作用的调节。最关键的观察是，高权力员工比低权力员工选择更直接的策略，但这种模式受到他们的语言文化背景和性别的调节。在整个语料库中，请求策略的直接程度很高，这表明大多数 BELF 用户优先考虑“完成工作”。然而，电子邮件发件人请求策略的直接性受到语言文化因素、权力地位和性别之间复杂相互作用的调节。最关键的观察是，高权力员工比低权力员工选择更直接的策略，但这种模式受到他们的语言文化背景和性别的调节。在整个语料库中，请求策略的直接程度很高，这表明大多数 BELF 用户优先考虑“完成工作”。然而，电子邮件发件人请求策略的直接性受到语言文化因素、权力地位和性别之间复杂相互作用的调节。最关键的观察是，高权力员工比低权力员工选择更直接的策略，但这种模式受到他们的语言文化背景和性别的调节。