It’s a Multilingual Reality

Business communication becomes less about correcting people and more about connecting systems.

When communication breaks down in international teams, English often takes the blame. “Their English isn’t good enough.” “They misunderstood the tone.” “They’re too indirect.” But in truth, most business communication failures aren’t linguistic errors at all. They’re pragmatic misalignments—tiny mismatches in tone, intention, and expectation that arise when multiple cultures share one language but not the same communication code.

The Linguistic vs. Pragmatic Breakdown

A linguistic breakdown happens when words themselves fail—grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation. A pragmatic breakdown runs deeper: the words are fine, but the social meaning behind them collides.

Linguist Anna Wierzbicka has long shown that speech acts—requests, refusals, apologies—carry different cultural scripts. What sounds polite in one language can sound evasive or even rude in another.

• English requests tend to use modals and hedging: Could you possibly send this by Friday?”

• Direct translations of this from other languages might drop the softening entirely: “Send by Friday.”

• Conversely, a refusal framed as “That might be difficult” in Japanese signals “no,” while an English speaker might hear “maybe.”
  

The grammar is fine. The pragmatic intent isn’t shared.

Directness, Hedging, and Silence

Three elements trip up multilingual teams more than any vocabulary list ever could:

1. Directness – valued in low-context cultures (Dutch, German, US).

2. Hedging – a politeness buffer in high-context settings (Japan, UK, much of Asia).

3. Silence – respect, reflection, or dissent, depending on where you sit on the map.
   

When these collide, meaning fragments. A blunt “This is not possible” reads as decisive to one ear, aggressive to another. A polite “We’ll consider it” can mask refusal. Silence can be a yes, a no, or just processing time.

This isn’t misbehaviour. It’s cross-cultural pragmatics in motion—the invisible grammar of relationships.

The Meta Layer: How We Judge Communication

Above the linguistic and pragmatic layers sits what we might call the meta layer—our beliefs about what “good English” or “good communication” sounds like.

Native speakers often mistake fluency for competence and accent for intelligence. Non-native speakers internalise the same bias, trying to sound “native” instead of “clear.” Meanwhile, global Englishes — Indian, Nigerian, Singaporean, Scandinavian — evolve their own perfectly valid norms.

When companies insist on a single native standard, they create a subtle hierarchy of voices: whose English counts as professional, and whose doesn’t?

English as a Shared Tool, Not a Benchmark

In global business, English is a lingua franca, not an identity marker. It’s the medium, not the message. Expecting every conversation to follow British or American pragmatic norms is like expecting every violinist to play the same style of music.

When a Dutch manager says “This is not possible,” a Japanese colleague says “It may be difficult,” and a Brazilian adds “We’ll find a way,” none of them are wrong. They’re using English through the logic of their own languages. The system — not the speaker — is the problem.

From Blame to Design

Global companies can reduce miscommunication by redesigning how they use English, not how employees speak it:

• Teach pragmatic awareness, not accent reduction.

• Normalize clarification: “Is that tentative or confirmed?”

• Reward clarity and transparency over “native-like” polish.

• Encourage leaders to listen for intent, not surface tone.
  

In the End

It’s not an English problem. It’s a systemic multilingual reality—and when we treat it as such, business communication becomes less about correcting people and more about connecting systems.