Speech Acts Used in Business Meetings (And Elsewhere).

The increasing demand for good business English Second Language courses is stymied by a lack of research and good teaching tools concerning speech acts used in business meetings. This study analyzed speech acts used in two business meetings and evaluated four business English textbooks to determine the type of English used in real business settings and its reflection in current instructional materials. An analysis of the language used in two editorial meetings of a university publishing department found that business English in real-life situations was informal, subtle, direct, idiomatic, and full of overlap and incomplete sentences. Unexpected forms, which appear to mean one thing but actually mean another, were used, and speech acts were expressed using so many variants that no particular form could be identified as the canonical form. None of these characteristics was adequately covered in the four textbooks reviewed. (Contains 11 references.) (MDM)