English as a lingua franca in Australia especially in industry

This paper reports on a project examining the use of English between speakers of differing non-English speaking backgrounds in an industrial context. This is the most multilingual sphere of Australian life, and at the same time the one in which non-English speakers are most likely to use English. Five workplaces have been selected reflecting a diversity of industry type: automotive, electronics, textiles and health; location in Melbourne: north, west, east and south-east; and three of the workplaces are subsidiaries of multi-national companies from the United States, Japan, and West Germany respectively. Data collected to date has highlighted problems pertaining to: levels of directness, cultural expectations of context; turn-taking and discourse sequencing.