Business communication is becoming increasingly intercultural and much more complex in the face of the globalized business arena and workforce diversity (Varner, 2000; Yuan, 1997; Zaidman, 2001). This trend has highlighted the need for understanding the role of culture and language use in business communication. It deserves a close look at how people from different linguacultural backgrounds come into contact and achieve successful interaction with one another in business communication. This chapter aims to survey the research on business communication and discuss its various aspects to help us better understand business communication from an intercultural pragmatics perspective. It consists of three sections after a general introduction and before a conclusion: (1) business communication and culture; (2) major business communication genres (i.e. business meetings, call center exchanges, emails and social media platforms); (3) main research areas and topics.

This chapter argues for a ‘humanistic’ approach to teaching Business Communication which aims to develop students’ critical language awareness (CLA). The chapter begins by establishing a rationale for the importance of CLA for business students. This is followed by a review of relevant literature which finds that, unlike in other areas of Languages for Specific Purposes, there is still a deficit in the acceptance and implementation of critical language pedagogy within Business Communication. I identify two types of critical language awareness: ‘metapragmatic’ and ‘socio-cultural’, which are not seen as binary, but on a continuum or cline. The remainder of the chapter demonstrates how these two types of CLA could be developed with Business students by providing a range of examples from my own teaching practice in a university setting. The activities are based on real-life written and spoken texts and aim to develop critical awareness in areas such as metapragmatic knowledge of different workplace genres, the interpersonal dimension of language or the values and ideology of a professional community of practice.