On Communication Skills of Language in International Busines

On Communication Skills of Language in International Business Negotiation

Contents Abstract (1)

Introduction (1)

Chapter 1 International Business Negotiation (2)

1.1 Definition of International Business Negotiation (2)

1.2 Features of International Business Negotiation (2)

Chapter 2 Problems of the Communication in International Business Negotiation (5)

2.1 Pragma-Linguistic Failures in International Business Negotiation 5

2.2 Socio-Pragmatic Failures in International Business Negotiation (6)

Chapter 3 The Strategies of the Language Communication in International Business Negotiation (9)

3.1 The Strategies of Listening (9)

3.3.1 Passive Listening (10)

3.3.2 Acknowledgment (10)

3.3.3 Active Listening (10)

3.2 The Strategies of Asking Questions (11)

3.2.1 Manageable Questions (12)

3.2.2 Unmanageable Questions (14)

3.3 The Strategies of Answering (16)

3.3.1 Refusing to Answer (16)

3.3.2 Slipping Over the Questions (17)

Conclusion (19)

Notes (20)

Bibliography (20)

Acknowledgements (22)

Abstract:With the development of economic globalization, international trade has developed greatly. International trade negotiation is inevitable crossborder business. The content of business negotiations concerning the interests of both the results of the negotiations or both parties may have a greater business impact, therefore, the negotiations should take a good business negotiations, successfully reached the purpose of negotiation. This paper gives a definition about business negotiation and finds some problems in business negotiation, then, analyses the communication skills of language in business negotiation from three aspects, i.e., listening, asking and answering.

Key words: business negotiation; communication skills; strategy

摘要：随着经济全球化的发展，国际贸易也越来越发达。国际贸易中跨国的商务谈判在所难免。商务谈判的内容涉及到谈判双方的利益。谈判的结果对双方或各方的业务发展产生较大的影响。因此，在谈判中应尽可能的把握商务谈判的交际技巧，顺利达到谈判的目的。本文从商务谈判的定义及意义出发，分析商务谈判中存在的一些问题，并从听、问、答三个方面来陈述商务谈判的语言技巧。

关键词：商务谈判；交际技巧；策略

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Introduction

With economic development, business negotiations become more and more frequent. Negotiation needs language as a tool to complete. Language serves as a bridge in the business negotiation, because business negotiation is substantially a process that both sides of negotiators express their views, exchange opinions in order to persuade their opponents with persuading words. This thesis, taking business discourse as a target for analysis, tends to describe the rules and conventions of business discourse, that is, to show general language strategies to achieve communicative purposes. This thesis is pided into three chapters.

Chapter one introduces and clarifies the major definitions involved in International Business Negotiations and their features.

Chapter two is devoted to the manifestations of failures in International Business Negotiation. Failures in International Business Negotiation are classified into Pragmatic Failures and Linguistic Failures. This paper also analysis the reasons leading to these Failures.

Chapter three elaborates and proposes the language strategies which fall into different types of negotiations and are significant in facilitating communicative interaction.

In short, communication skills are vital to successful negotiations. With the proper strategies of listening, asking questions and answering, people can achieve the goal of negotiations.

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Chapter 1 International Business Negotiation

In this chapter, two aspects of Business are discussed: first, the definitions of International Business Negotiation; second, the features of International Business Negotiation.

1.1 Definition of International Business Negotiation

International Business Negotiation is an umbrella term that covers various types of business negotiations at the international level. More specifically, “International Business Negotiation includes such activities as importing and exporting and certainly all of the invisibles. Negotiations of this kind are never straightforward and simple.”[1] Owing to the fact that the negotiators come from different culture backgrounds, International Business Negotiation is more complicated and the clash of cultures that occurs during the communication between the parties make negotiations more difficult. While compromise is necessary in all negotiations, it becomes complicated, even more compelling, when different cultural backgrounds are involved.

1.2 Features of International Business Negotiation

The unique character of International Business Negotiation, compared with domestic Business Negotiation, is that the former is influenced by a wide persity of environments. Under the international setting, one’s counterpart in the negotiation is very different in contrast to the domestic one. Therefore, the negotiator will encounter complicated situations. Some unimportant factors such as facial expressions in domestic Business Negotiation may be crucial in International Business Negotiation and sometimes could even become barriers to the success of negotiation. A number of theorists have discussed and summarized the

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special features of International Business Negotiation, and according to their research there should be at least four features as follows: Firstly, as International Business Negotiation is not only Business Negotiation, but also an international communication activity, it is highly policy-restricted. As a part of the whole economic relationship between two countries or regions, the business connection of the negotiating parties often involves their political and diplomatic relationship. Therefore, the national guidelines and foreign policy of country should be observed strictly in International Business Negotiation.

Secondly, International Business Negotiation may result in international asset transportation and international monetary transfer, etc. Therefore, International Business Negotiation should follow International Law of Commerce and other international practices.

Thirdly, International Business Negotiation is generally influenced by a wide variety of environments, including cultural and sub-cultural differences, foreign bureaucracy, political and economic instability and so on, which will increase the risk of failure and lengthen the time it takes to arrive at a deal because negotiators may pursue different paths of logic, have different ways of thinking, follow different criteria, or take different decision-making processes. Therefore, negotiators should be quipped with profound knowledge and excellent negotiation skills to guarantee the success of the negotiation.

Fourthly, International Business Negotiation is not just cooperation or conflict, but the contracting unity of cooperation and conflict. It is not the process of pursuing the benefit of one side, but the one of adjusting the needs of both sides to reach a win-win outcome. It is not the unlimited

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exertion of one culture, but the balanced consideration of both cultures. There are not only the principles to be persisted in, but also the strategies to be adopted. Therefore, the negotiation is not only the matter of science, but also the combination of science and art.

These features make International Business Negotiation distinctive from domestic negotiations. For the negotiators in International Business Negotiation, a win-win outcome is more desirable because any loss of one party means not only the loss of the profit, but also the loss of the competence in international market. In addition, culture differences play a more important role in International Business Negotiations, and sometimes may become a decisive factor in the negotiations.

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Chapter 2 Problems of the Communication in International Business

Negotiation

People are frequently influenced by their mother tongue or culture in the process of using the target language, which forms inter language between the mother tongue and the target language. It is inevitable that people generate pragmatic differences in distinct cultural background and pragmatic principle if they communicate with each other in different ways. These differences will affect communication，leading to message misguidance, message error and message obstacles, the study of which is called cross-cultural pragmatics which deals with how a learner should properly use language in different cultures. In communication, if one participant produces pragmatic failure, another participant will be led to misunderstanding, which will affect communication successfully.

This chapter will discuss different manifested of pragmatic failure, that is to say, various forms of pragmatic failure are manifested in communication. It is accepted that people not only have different education but are in different cultural background and linguistic situation. Accordingly they will produce different pragmatic failure when they communicate with each other. In this section, pragmatic failures in International Business Negotiation are classified into two groups: pragma-linguistic failure and socio-pragmatic failure. The same explanation can also be applied to pragma-behavior failure.

2.1 Pragma-Linguistic Failures in International Business Negotiation

Tomas defines pragma-linguistic transfer as “the inappropriate transfer of speech act strategies from one language to another, or the

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transferring from the mother tongue to target language of utterances which are semantically equivalent, but which, force in the target language.”In the context of International Business Negotiation, due to the variety of negotiators’ nationalities and different proficiency level of language use, pragma-linguistic failure is common. It can occur at different levels, such as grammar, semantics and cognition.

Below is an example of prama-linguistic failure in International Business Negotiation context.

In a business negotiation concerning the technology to be adopted in a certain project, the chief negotiator from the foreign company insisted that a second experiment be carried out, and said to the engineer of the Chinese company, “I can not bear to part with anything.”These sentence was translated as: “我不能容忍一知半解。”（The correct translation should be: “我不能容忍放弃。”）As a result, the Chinese engineers refused to take part in the experiment because they misunderstood the meaning of their scanty knowledge, which baffled the negotiators from the foreign company as well. (Wang Tao, 2002)

In this example, the word “part”followed by “with” means “to give away”or “stop having”instead of meaning “separate into parts”. Such pragma-linguistic failure finds no way to be made up after negotiation because the mistranslation seriously affected the process of international communication.

2.2 Socio-Pragmatic Failure in International Business Negotiation

Intercultural communication involves inpiduals in contact

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