While I embrace the nascent social media, the role it plays in society and its lingua franca across all age groups, I am terrified though; that the language of communication or the manner of speaking through these platforms could have a serious negative impact to the future generations on formal business communication, especially written communication. Young people are entering the world of work without the skills to write an appropriate letter. I still witness and receive emails analogous to a “SMS” on formal business matters with poor grammar and at most with no punctuation marks. So, I am expected to painstakingly first understand what the sender attempts to say and mean before I could get to the substance of the correspondence. It’s atrocious and this takes some precious time for which i personally do not have luxury.
While I was at school, university to be precise, and gleaned through newspaper recruitment advertisements, one of the common requirement and essential of the job would be fluency in English, as a universal business lingua franca. Given that I would garner for job opportunities in the media industry as a salesman, excellent written communication skills would be an added requirement or necessity. It is through the latter requirement that my observation and experience in the recent past sends shivers down my spine. It is my nature to be curious and inquisitive in the quest to learn and gain knowledge on subjects and matters. I am the foe of naivety. I take a conscious wisdom and a literal sense of the cliché phrase “knowledge is power”. I’m not trying to blow my own trumpet and pat myself on the back. I went to school precisely for this purpose; to learn, be inquisitive and critical and most of all to listen so that i am able to engage.
Our future generation is destined to face a catastrophic challenge and difficulty excelling in the fields where written communication, in a universal lingua franca, that is English, is an absolute requirement, unless there’s specializing in literature and grammar up to and including tertiary level. And I am deliberately referring to the universal medium of instruction in a global sense. South Africa comprises eleven official languages and preserved in the constitution. The vision of all these languages being practically spoken in business communication remains a dream in the horizon, given the lack of prioritizing linguistics in our education system. So, English, for a foreseeable future, will remain a dominant medium of instruction in South Africa, let alone the dominant of Afrikaans in remaining companies with a predominant Afrikaans culture.
Let’s go back to my concern about written communications skills by the future generation amidst short-message-language in social media and telecommunications services, added to it the vision of South Africa’s 11 official languages. In the future, companies will be compelled to demand a requirement of not just fluency in English, but Business English. The Queen Elizabeth’s lingo has now been subjected to derivatives with proliferating slangs and informal speak (chats). Business English would now be the requirement. Yes, Business English. So there it is a clear distinction between a “Chat English” and “Business English”. Spoken English is much easier as there’s a lot of informal grammar that goes in it. But still it would be pleasant to listen to a language that is “reach” in its grammar, that is, inclusive of idioms and phrasal verbs. I admire the older generation when they speak their language with that “reach” depth across all racial groups. It’s like the sounds of the sea waves to one’s ears and the morning oceans’ breeze to one’s proboscis. I am in no way suggesting that this generation should cease to use this so called "chat" speak. Efforts must be made to make them aware and not let them lose focus on understanding and learning the correct and accepted lingua franca in business, let alone in general formal communication.
In the article published early this year by Annica Foxcroft entitled “Speech of Freedom: how English can unlock doors”, she maintains that how we speak and how well we speak, affects our future. “Misunderstood agreements and rules and ambiguous contracts can cost companies their profits and their customers”, she retorts. She made the point that people can and do lose their jobs. In a country where the bulk of the population does not have English as a mother tongue, this situation is actually almost a national emergency. People are graduating from universities still unable to write a basic e-mail or an effective report. School leavers from the vast majority of schools speak a mangled, poorly pronounced pidgin English, short on tenses, vocabulary, spelling, reading and written skills.
The next challenge is that of reducing the breeding of the so called “rhetoric” synonymous primarily with politicians, hence “political rhetoric”. This speak is permeating and traversing the manner of speaking in the society. I remember one day at an interview after making a point following a question, one of the panelists quipped that I spoke like a politician. At one instance I was also told that I spoke like a marketer and not a sales person. That’s“rhetoric”. It’s a story for another day.
