Cruzando las Fronteras de la ComunicaciOn Profesional Entre MEXico y Los Estados Unidos: The Emerging Hybrid Discourse of Business Communication in a Mexican-U.S. Border Region

Abstract

This study presents analytical research that explores the form and function of written business communication on a U.S.-Mexico border through a combined method of descriptive and context-sensitive rhetorical text analysis. Data comprise documents (letters, proposals, invoices) from a Mexican company that operates on both sides of the border and communicates in both English and Spanish. Documents were analyzed through multiple passes for identifiable linguistic and rhetorical patterns in the areas of pur-pose, audience, style, and organization, paying close attention to those traits typically ascribed to Mexican business discourse. Findings of this study suggest that professionals on this U.S.-Mexico border are adopting, and adapting to, shared communicative standards and practices in business communication.

Do Their Words Really Matter? Thematic Analysis of U.S. and Latin American CEO Letters

“…Analyses of Spanish language business documents have provided some preliminary insight into Latin America, particularly the tendency of Latin American societies to be high power, collectivistic, masculine, and high on uncertainty avoidance (Hofstede, 1980) as well as high context and polychronic (Hall, 1981). More specifically, two lines of research offer a framework for further research in this area: work by Ortiz (2005) and work by Conaway and Wardrope (2004). Ortiz (2005) singularly analyzed 84 English and Spanish business documents obtained from a company located along the Mexico and U.S. border and used rhetorical text analysis to determine the extent Mexican border communication differs from U.S. business communication.…”

“…More specifically, two lines of research offer a framework for further research in this area: work by Ortiz (2005) and work by Conaway and Wardrope (2004). Ortiz (2005) singularly analyzed 84 English and Spanish business documents obtained from a company located along the Mexico and U.S. border and used rhetorical text analysis to determine the extent Mexican border communication differs from U.S. business communication. She used six of Tebeaux's (1999) findings to operationalize Mexican Spanish traits appearing in the business documents, seeking to confirm the typical placement of the purpose statement in the letter and whether the documents lacked the U.S. business communication conventions of directness, conciseness, and clarity of purpose.…”

“…Furthermore, Ortiz (2005) characterizes previous Mexican-U.S. American research approaches as essentialist or culturally contrastive, as opposed to a focus on technical or business writing practices and behaviors. She believes that these contrastive approaches are manifested in reference manuals promoting inaccurate stereotypes and images (Morrison, Conaway, & Borden, 1994;Reed & Gray, 1997), that they limit research on general communication rather than business communication (Condon, 1985), and that they exaggerate the role of culture on communicative practices that lead to blanket categorizations about Mexican culture and behavior (Kras, 1986(Kras, , 1994.…”

Caribbean Immigrants' Discourses: Cultural, Moral, and Personal Stories About Workplace Communication in the United States

“…Within intercultural business communication, researchers' and participants' stories make sense of surprising, disconcerting, humorous, and enlightening episodes that problematize assumptions about shared meanings and ways of operating in organizational contexts (see Hagen, 1998). These stories disavow tendencies to stereotype on national culture and on business, managerial, or professional communication conventions and practices (e.g., Hagen, 1998;Hong & Engeström, 2005;Jameson, 2007;Ortiz, 2005;Tebeaux, 1999). Furthermore, immigrants' stories describe how different aspects of social identity, such as ethnic, professional, and familial sensemaking about self and work, affect and are affected by acculturation, or the subjective sense of belonging (Pio, 2005).…”

Mexican migrant workers and workplace communication: the influence of informal labor on English language usage, literacy, and perceptions of ‘the American Dream’

“…Their everyday experience can in some ways be defined as a bilingual and bicultural reality and identity, similar to business professionals who live and work in US/Mexico border areas (Ortiz, 2005;Tebeaux, 1999). On a daily basis, these workers must learn to seamlessly navigate two cultures and two languages, learning to accommodate, adjust, and switch between these two cultures and two languages based on the communication exigencies of everyday life and their necessary interaction with both Spanish and English-centered contexts, similar to DuBord's notion of 'mutually constructed communities of practice' (2010, p. 13).…”