The spread of English in international business going along with globalization has promoted a new interest in language in organization studies. However, little attention has so far been paid to the implications of the Englishization, as Dor (2004) pertinently termed it, on the level of power relations in organizations. Relatively few empirical studies have been conducted; and on the theoretical level differentiated concepts for the analysis of these political dimensions are scarce.

This dissertation project therefore proposes to further investigate political aspects of the dissemination of English in international business on an organizational level. The global spread of English is taken as a catalyst for the emergence and change of power dynamics in companies with employees from different linguistic backgrounds.

Following a discourse analytical approach, an empirical study was conducted in two multilingual companies in Switzerland. In both firms, employees from different backgrounds (language, age, gender, hierarchical status etc.) accounted for their everyday language use in semi-structured interviews. These are analysed based on conceptualizations of power proposed by the French discourse analyst Michel Foucault and Foucauldian discourse analysis that emerged from his writings.

The analysis of power aspects of discourses on language use in multilingual organizations focusses on the emergence of new and the change of existing power relations due to the effects of “Englishization”; the regulations of inclusion and exclusion that discourses on language use produce and the nexus between existing power relations in organizations and discourses on language use.

Claudine Gaibrois joined the Research Institute for Organizational Psychology (OPSY) in 2008 as a doctoral candidate and project collaborator in the research project “Sprachlandschaften. Sprachenvielfalt in Unternehmen in der Schweiz” (“Languagescapes. Linguistic diversity in companies in Switzerland”) with Prof. Chris Steyaert, director of the OPSY. This research project has been conducted within the Research Programme „Sprachenvielfalt und Sprachkompetenz in der Schweiz“ („Linguistic diversity and linguistic competence in Switzerland“) of the Swiss National Fund.

She holds a lic. phil. degree in Political Sciences, History and German Literature from the University of Zurich and a Master of Advanced Studies (MAS) in Intercultural Communication of the University of Lucerne. Besides, she gained long and broad practical experience in radio and print journalism, partly in a leadership position. Claudine Gaibrois also is active as a moderator of public events and panel discussions.