MY PERSONALITY IS MUCH SMALLER IN THIS CONTEXT.” Neeley who speaks five languages conducted in depth interviews in English and French with workers at all levels of Frenchco in particular studying status loss among workers learning a new language. She searched for key words in her interviews with workers such as diminished devalued reduced disqualified and less sophisticated. All employees whose native language was not English experienced a status loss under the mandate she found regardless of their level of English fluency.
There s this universal experience of status diminution when people compare their native formally trained language to this new language Neeley says. So no matter how fluent some people are in English they believe they ll never be as sophisticated as influential or as articulate as they Malaysia Email List are in their native language. Interestingly Neeley found the French to English only transition was most difficult for workers with midlevel fluency. They shared the most anxiety about their language abilities which were neither stellar nor poor. summarized his experience If you cannot express your ideas because you lack language skills the collaboration becomes a nightmare. You lose interest to continue and you feel you are being devalued. Most of these language anxiety issues remained under the surface at Frenchco Neeley says.
These workers often suffered silently worrying about disclosing a deficit being passed over for promotions being left out of conversations that they couldn t understand or simply not being able to show their true selves through humor and discussions in English at the same level they were able to in French. Neeley s forthcoming Organizational Dynamics article The Un Hidden Turmoil of Language in Global Organizations written with Pamela J.