How Multinational Companies Manage Languages As A Gatekeeping Tool

The accelerated development of internationalization facilitates worldwide interaction and cooperation of individual workers in multilingual workplace.Against this backdrop,an increasingly important role of language has been observed in multinational workplace,and language management in multinational corporations has raised growing attention of scholars in recent decades.Previous studies mainly focused on language management after employees’ entry to MNCs from either an individual or a corporate perspective and discussed neoliberalism in a general workplace context.Taking a neoliberal perspective,this study attempts to fill in the gap through probing into language management in recruitment aspect in MNC workplace at the meso and micro level.Informed by Spolsky’s language management theory,this study aims to explore how languages are managed in recruitment in multinational corporations under neoliberal impact.In particular,the study involves both perspectives of employees and managers.A case study approach was implemented in a Germany-based subsidiary domiciled in China.Qualitative methods of semi-structured interview and participant observation were adopted in data collection.A total of 18 participants were interviewed including 12 employees and 6 managers respectively and the observation lasted for three months.The data analysis process was theoryinformed to create a coding scheme,while content analysis was also employed to have themes emerge in a bottom-up manner.The findings showcase that employees and managers both designate English as the official corporate language which is considered as a strictly required skill for entry to MNC workplace.However,the two parties differ in many aspects.While employees expect that having an advanced level of English competence leads to better chances in MNC job hunting,analysis indicates that a high level of English capacity barely affects managers’ evaluation of candidates.Also,LOTEs is not used as a linguistic baseline but deemed as a plus for HQ-subsidiary communication in multilingual workplace.Besides,while employees accord the highest importance to certificates in accessing ideal jobs,managers have a more flexible take on the possession of language certificate.That is,language certificates and scores are not treated as the yardstick of mainly testing employees’ linguistic competence,but as a benchmark for gauging employees’ non-linguistic abilities.This study provides both theoretical and practical implications on how languages are managed in recruitment in MNC.Theoretically,it offers a dynamic understanding of language as a linguistic gatekeeping tool in MNC,applying and enriching this theory in the domain of language management in MNC workplace context.Practically,it may guide job hunters in how to satisfy linguistic requirements in MNC recruitment and inform managers of the misaligned perceptions held by recruiters and recruitees and help them better manage languages in workplace.