Transcript A short history of business communication: from ancient

A short history of business
communication: from ancient culture to
e-mail and other technologies
Professor Nigel Holden
Overview of presentation
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Business development in the Ancient World (Near
East and Mediterranean)
Some facts on, and deductions about, business
language and communication in those times
The essence of business communication
Aspects of business communication 15th to 20th
centuries
E-mail; hackers, Netspeak
In the beginning...
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‘The oldest records of human civilisation
itself, dating from 3200 BC if not earlier,
evoke the crude and primitive business
transactions of the very ancient
communities just north of what was then
the swampy coastline of the Arabian Gulf’
(Moore and Lewis, 1999)
And markets predate the oldest records
The early cities
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The Urban Revolution of the Bronze Age (31002900 BC) gave rise to politics, diplomacy, war
and business ‘which, if different from our own,
are, for the first time, recognisable’ (Moore and
Lewis, 1999)
Cities are hubs of commerce, centres of wealth,
political and military power
Cities are resource-seeking (as we would say
today); they stimulate long-distance trade
The Ancient Near East, 30002000 BC
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A history of ‘expanding trade and
commerce, growing social inequality, and
the rise and fall of a centralised
bureaucratic government’
Mesopotamia
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Businessmen could write
They had to master the bureaucratic language of
temple and palace transactions (priesthoods were
heavily involved in business)
They appeared to use language in personal,
informal ways among themselves
Business relations with trading neighbours were
‘correct and cordial’
Ancient Near East 2000-1000 BC
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Expansion of trade routes
Improvements in military technology
meant that routes could be protected
The first business empires (Assyria)
The world’s first multicultural workforce in
Anatolia (Turkey) in 1900 BC?
The Mediterranean World 1000
BC- 1 AD
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The Phoenicians (the world’s first
exemplars of foreign direct investment?)
The Greeks (colonies and culture)
The Romans (the first managers in the
modern sense of the word, independent
suppliers of bricks and military equipment)
The emergence of commercial languages
Business has a long-standing reputation
for being vulgar
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‘To win the people, always cook them
some savoury dish which pleases them.
Besides, you possess all the attributes of a
demagogue: a screeching, horrible voice, a
perverse, coarse-grained nature and the
language of the market-place’
(Demosthenes, Athenian soldier, d. 413
BC)
Business communication the Ancient
World
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Businessmen kept written records and did
calculations
They probably simplified cumbersome writing
systems for the sake of speed and secrecy
They knew how to speak to customers (kings,
priests, dictators, officials, etc)
They established lines of communication with
suppliers; they networked!
Business would be conducted with ritual
behaviour (businessmen are actors!)
The essence of business
communication
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The transaction is based on ‘obligation and
economic self-interest’ (Mauss, 1954)
Exchange is accompanied by gifts (signs of
respect, fear, hope for more favour)
The behaviour is ‘formal pretence and
social deception’ (Mauss, 1954)
In other words
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The businessmen of the Ancient World
communicated and used language in strikingly
similar ways to their modern counterparts
They made a clear distinction between spoken
and written language
They dissembled, used hype, did ‘clever’ things
to written language – just like now!
In what ways does modern business
communication differ from the Ancient
World? (1)
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Speed (instantaneousness) and global
reach; variety of media and multiple
possibilities for information storage,
retrieval, dissemination and modification.
The ever-expanding lexis of business and
management
Legal protection (copyright, liability,
contractual arrangements, etc)
In what ways does modern business
communication differ from the Ancient
World? (2)
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The emergence of a form of writing (email) which has conversational
characteristics and a tendency to introduce
informality into business exchanges
In 5,000 years of recorded human
business activity, this is something new!
Between the ancient world and e-mail:
the great invention of printing
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Printing as an agent of change:
Created a lay (‘non-priestly’) intelligentsia
Stimulated literacy, comparative
scholarship and even children's books
Laid the foundation of translation as a
profession
Transformed the Christian church
Transformed reading
The impact of printing and
commerce over many centuries
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Laid the foundation for mass communication
Made records of transactions ‘permanent’
Made advertising and company brochures
possible
Enshrined until the late 20th century the formal
language of commerce
But we had better know the difference between
speech and writing
Writing is
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Objective, a monologue, durable
Scannable
Planned
Highly structured and syntactically complex
Concerned with past and future
Formal
Expository (explanatory)
Argument-oriented
Decontextualised and abstract
Speech is
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Interpersonal (face-to-face)
A dialogue
Ephemeral, linear and spontaneous
Loosely structured
Syntactically simple
Concerned with the present
Informal and narrative
Event-oriented
Contextualised and concrete
Some important things in the
history of writing (the medium)
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Prescriptivism and standardisation (social
norms and values; national languages)
The growth of literature, science, etc
Reading as a private activity
Notions of authorship and copyright
The cult of hand-writing (from glorification
of religious texts to projection of the
civilised self)
Some important things in the
development of writing (the channel)
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The development of personal writing
machines (first design in England, 1711;
first type-writer in the USA, 1873)
Typography invented (1852)
Henry James (1843-1916) used the
telephone as a dictation medium
Other developments: telegraphy, telex
(teleprinter), the PC.
Why the PC is important in the
history of commerce
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Its storage capacity in various programmes (text,
graphics, spread-sheets, etc)
Its cross-referencing capability
Its capability to produce (camera-ready)
documents of any length
Its development into an international
communication centre and connectability with
other devices
Its impact on interpersonal business
communication, especially through e-mail
What is distinctive about e-mail?
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It is a computer-mediated communication method
which is blurring the distinction between speech
and writing, because:
It changes relationships between people in literate
societies, whereby communication is no longer
dependent on (a) face-to-face contact (via the
immediacy of speech) and (b) writing to
overcome the constraints of time and space
E-mail in its written mode
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Interlocutors are physically separated
Separation creates an equal communication
playing field (and may induce personal
disclosure)
It is durable (there is a record)
Idiosyncratic use of grammar, vocabulary,
punctuation, abbreviations, etc
Can be written in almost any native language
Why e-mail is like speech
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Low level of informality, but can generate
intimacy quickly
Typically unedited
Possible unguarded expression of emotion
High usage of the present tense (eg ‘I
think’, ‘this means’, ‘why is this so?’
The verdict
E-mail is ‘a cross-breed between writing
and speech’ ... ‘clearly a language form in
flux’ ... ‘a contact language’
(Barron, 2000)
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E-mail as a contact language
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Restricted code of communication
No-body’s language, but yet common
Replaces somebody’s language
Creates a special lexicon (eg abbreviations)
E-mail and the evolution of business
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A further example of a communication
system that has been developed for other
purposes, but eventually exploited and
developed by business (cf development of
writing, the printing press, the telephone)
What e-mail does for the business world
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More or less instant interpersonal
communication, reaching one or more
people at the same time anywhere
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Its informal, but quasi-intimate character
promotes flatness in organisations, and
supports close, ‘personal’ business
relationships, and is a driver of networks
E-mail and cross-cultural
communication
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Forms of address to ‘strangers’, especially in
more formal cultures
Absence of agreed usage of language and
unconventional abbreviations and punctuation
(problem of standardisation) and etiquette
(‘Netiquette’)
Finding the emotional wave-length (are
emoticons and smileys cross-culturally neutral?)
Hackers create the language of the Internet
Hackers
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Hackers have two key skills: they are trained
programmers and have an ability to write HTML
(Hypertext Markup Language)
They generate (quirky) neologisms in their
Internet culture (or subcultures), which give the
language of the Internet its identity
These neologisms are based on English, but only
those with an advanced (often near-native)
command of English can understand their
motivation
Examples of hacker language
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Nicks = nicknames
Morf = male or female
Sorg = straight or gay
Newbies = newcomers to the Internet
Trolling = sending a message specifically to
annoy people
Spamming = sending of unwanted messages of
excessive size
Flaming = using aggressive language
… ad abbreviations
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Afaik: as far as I know
B4: before
Cul: see you later
Gr8: great
Imo: in my opinion
T+: think positive
X!: typical woman
Y!: typical man
So, can we speficify ‘Netspeak’?
Netspeak
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A type of language with the characteristics of
speech and writing, displaying features unique to
the Internet: electronic mediation, global reach
and interactivity
This language is uncontrolled and is distinct from
the language of computer science
It is rooted in (American) English
It appears to be promoting a form of global
values linked to people’s participation in the
Internet
What values?
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Global self-expression is ‘a good thing’
Connectivity is more important than what
is communicated
It is acceptable to break traditional rules
and conventions concerning orthography,
punctuation, etc
Implications for cross-cultural
knowledge management
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Firms – not hackers - will increasingly
determine standards of etiquette
Need for new forms of cross-cultural
communication training
The anonymity, which the Internet fosters,
is not compatible with good CCKM
practice (people must know each other
personally)
Final thought
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Everybody is engaged in a kind of experiment
without entirely clear rules or guidelines
This experiment will last to the end of time:
history shows that there is no limit to (a)
mankind’s technology ingenuity; (b) human
linguistic resourcefulness; and (c) the quest for
connectivity
The Tower of Babel always reconstructs itself!