The comunication of enterprises is more and more international: products are sold on international markets, components are purchased in forein countries and collaborators are from foreign countries and cultures. In order to gurantee an eficient comunication it is becoming important to have a reasonable stretegy in the management of multilingualism. Enterprises have to decide which languages can or must be used in conferences and meetings, in which language they address customors or which language skills they expect collaborators to have. Such strategies can be defined as language policy.

The course will try to describe the most important purposes, measures and actors of language policies and analyse, looking at many examples, how international enterprises deal with the challenges related to language policies.  

1. Language policies: a first overview

2. Language, language use and institutional identity

3. Language policies: basic concepts and methods

4. Interculturality and transculturality

5. Forms of multilangual comunication 

6. The hidden power of translators

7. The  management multilinugal teams

8. Languages on the labour market

9. Formal and informal measures of language policies 

10. Language training in enterprises

(a) Knowledge and Understanding Skills: Students acquire the main concepts of language analysis of and policies in business.
(b) Applied knowledge and understanding skills: They know how to apply the acquired concepts to the description and analysis of German and its varieties. They know the importance of the proper management of communication on the argumentative level and are able to evaluate the relationship between linguistic forms on the one hand and communicative effects on the other. They know how to apply knowledge to the business context. 
c) Autonomy of judgment: Students know how to judge the correctness and appropriateness of utterances in German language in particular they know how to evaluate the impact of texts published on business web pages.
d) Communication skills: Students can communicate in German at an advanced level.
e) Learning skills: Students acquire the basic tools and concepts to deal with research on texts written in German, particularly in the field of business communication.

The teaching material prepared by the lecturer in addition to recommended textbooks (such as for instance slides, lecture notes, exercises, bibliography) and communications from the lecturer specific to the course can be found inside the Moodle platform › blended.uniurb.it

Teaching

Lectures

Group analysis work and presentation of results.

Innovative teaching methods

The lessons will be integrated by seminar activities and presentations prepared by the participants. 

Course books

Coulmas, Florian (2025). Language Policy. A slim guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Spolsky, Bernard (2009): Language Management. Cambridge: CUP, capp. 4, 9, 11.