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How Language and Culture Distort The Business Context: A Comparison Between French and American Representations

Author

Listed:
  • Bertrand Agostini

    (ICN Business School, CEREFIGE - Centre Européen de Recherche en Economie Financière et Gestion des Entreprises - UL - Université de Lorraine)

Abstract

Language and culture are inseparable. They feed and influence each other. Therefore depending on its historical evolution, a given word can be filled with several different meanings. Furthermore, being a way to communicate our perception, language is submitted to the 4 functions of consciousness: senses, thought, intuition, feeling. Therefore the fundamental relationship between language and culture is both rational and irrational. The aim of this article is to show through a series of examples that in a management context, beyond the use of a particular terminology, there is a variable preconception of the objects described by words that affect the perception of a given managerial cultural reality or representation. Therefore the words "management", "organization", "hierarchy" offer a wide variety of meanings and representations that vary from one culture to another. As Gérard Tiry (1994) puts it, the preconceptions that are in ourselves constantly put us in a comparative state of mind that distorts the situation by imposing a frame, a starting point, a direction and an evaluation.

Suggested Citation

  • Bertrand Agostini, 2014. "How Language and Culture Distort The Business Context: A Comparison Between French and American Representations," Post-Print hal-01513914, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01513914
    as

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