Being a native English speaker in a multinational today is an advantage, but is it against diversity of opinion? The answer is yes, but HR can help counteract the downside of this 'unearned' advantage.

"Half the languages of the world are likely to die out in the next 100 years - and if this happens it would be a true intellectual disaster. The world is a mosaic of visions, expressed through language. If even one language is lost, it is awful."

David Crystal, author of English as a Global Language.

When faced with the microphone non-native speakers tend to hang back

One of the cornerstone principles of diversity is that of unearned, unacknowledged privilege – if you are benefiting from the rules you are blissfully unaware that others are disadvantaged by them.

You enjoy a privileged position, and, because of this you continue to advance and receive benefit while others fall further behind. Likely you are completely oblivious to this privilege, and would deny its existence if confronted.

Australian sociologist Professor Bob Pease says that given that the flipside of oppression and social exclusion is privilege, the lack of critical interrogation of the position of privilege allows those receiving the most benefit to reinforce their dominance. In other words – when you hold all the cards, you don't have to cut anyone else in on the deal.

Think this doesn't happen, or only happens to other people? What's your mother tongue? Chances are if it is English - and in particular if you are working in one of today's multinational firms - you are enjoying the unearned and unacknowledged privilege described above. And your non-native English-speaking peers are falling further and further behind.

How did this dominance develop? According to prominent linguist David Crystal's research, the present-day world status of English is primarily the result of the expansion of British colonial power, which peaked towards the end of the nineteenth century, and the emergence of the United States as the leading economic power of the twentieth century.

The 'privileged position' of the US combined with rapidly expanding internet use continues to drive English linguistic dominance today.

English is the third most common first language in the world—after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish—spoken by around 400 million people world wide, and a whopping 600 million more speak it as a second language. 

One in five of the world's population speaks English with a good level of competence and presently 250 million Chinese - almost the population of the US - are learning English on TV.

How does linguistic privilege manifest itself? Sometimes it's overt as a German executive in a British multinational firm, who was part of a 10-person European task force reports. The language of the meetings was English, and discussions were invariably dominated by the two team members from the United Kingdom (the group's only native English speakers). When she asked one of them to speak a little more slowly, she was told 'it is assumed if you are at this meeting that you have a language level sufficient to follow the discussions. If not perhaps you should not be here'.

This same arrogance is observed at international conferences. The microphones are disproportionately claimed by native English speakers, as those for whom it is a second—or often third, fourth or fifth—language hang back, embarrassed to reveal their linguistic shortcomings in a group of their peers. This often results in a skewed, Anglo-Saxon view of the world and its challenges, and prevents any real diversity of opinion.

Rapidly expanding internet contributes to English language dominance

The same effect is observed online – chat groups and forums are overwhelmingly conducted in English (60 percent of web pages today are in English, as are 60 percent of all Google enquiries) which in no way reflects the fact that fewer than 10 percent of the world's 6.5 billion people speak English as their native tongue.

One area where the inability to accommodate speakers of other languages is costing real money is in the field of knowledge management. Company intranets, educational journals, global think-tanks and multilateral agencies all use English as their main, or often sole, language.

According to Konosuke Matsushita, Founder of electronics giant Matsushita Electric, "Business is now so complex and difficult, the survival of firms so hazardous in an environment increasingly unpredictable, and fraught with danger, that their continued existence depends on the day-to-day mobilisation of every ounce of intelligence."

If this is true, what about all the intelligence that we can't even begin to access, because of our insistence it is communicated in English?

 In an article on innovation collaboration in this month's Harvard Business Review, authors Brown and Hagel recommended focusing on people, prototypes and pattern recognition, emphasising in particular the importance of establishing trust and communication. The key here may be in pattern recognition - since language plays such a critical role in human interaction, how much innovation is being lost because of English language dominancy? 

According to Dr David Hill of the World Innovation Foundation - www.thewif.org.uk - over 99.8 percent of the world's population are excluded from any involvement with scientific and technological research, and less than one-twentieth of one percent of the world's population are engaged in the planet's leading edge research effort. This comes at incalculable cost to mankind.

HR can play a leading role in helping to develop talent within firms by helping to teach those benefiting from English language privilege to acknowledge their advantages, creating an atmosphere of inclusion that will allow diversity in ideas to flourish.

Some soul-searching questions for HR and employees alike:

1. Make a list of those who seem to be well-favoured within the company, including 'high potentials'. Break the list down by different characteristics, such as country of origin, native language, gender, age, status, or any other group traits. Do patterns emerge?

2. Define for yourself what prevents your subordinators or co-workers from achieving at high level, or getting ahead, and look once again for patterns.  Is mastery of the English language one of the 'fixed' criteria?

3. If you work in an almost exclusively native English-speaking environment, list the forces that maintain this status quo. What privileges do English speakers get? Think of things like invitations to attend conferences (internal or external), to contribute to intranets, newsletters, reports, attention received from mentors, fast-track programmes, promotions. Are you receiving such benefits as well? What happens to non-native English speakers? Do they leave the company?

4. Track your own attitudes and behaviours – if a non-native English speaker speaks up at a meeting or congress, do you feel irritated? Do you let your impatience show? Is this shared by the other native English speakers around you? How do you think this makes the non-native English speakers feel?

5. What is your attitude to email? If you receive an email from a non-native English speaker, are you highly critical of spelling and syntax errors? Do you, consciously or unconsciously, assume the person is less educated or intelligent because of this?

It is important to eliminate 'unearned advantage' at all levels if you want to capitalise on the wealth of resources, talents and abilities within your workforce. Reducing unearned advantage at the personal level starts with becoming aware.

29 March 2005

Mary van der Boon is founder and principal of global tmc international management training & consulting based in the Netherlands (www.globaltmc.com), specialising in international HR, intercultural management and diversity. She is a native English speaker.

Subject: Staff diversity and language