What language does one use in international business to express emotion in formal & informal contexts?
Asked by forest
I am an English as a Foreign Language instructor who is teaching college-level Korean students who are interested in business English. We are learning how to express: happiness (at something), sadness (at something), disappointment (at something or someone), and confidence (about someone or something). I want to teach valid and highly used forms of functional language that is specific to this context. I have never worked in International Business and feel unprepared to teach them the specific kinds of "typical language/lingo." If you have experience in this field, could you give me some examples. For example, if you are talking about a business proposal, does it sound realistic to say, "I am very happy about the proposal." Or, does it sound stilted and unrealistic. Obviously, I want phrases that are as realistic as possible to teach them so they can succeed in their choosen field.

Best Answer:
I work for a large, global company based in the USA and here's how we typically handle this: I don't typically hear the words "happy" or "sad" to describe how people feel about things that may or may not happen. For things that are proposed or possible, we tend to describe our feelings as "excited", "enthusiastic", "interested", "hopeful", "confident" (or if the outcome is likely to be negative, "concerned" "worried", "depressed", "uncertain", "confused", etc). The negative emotional words tend to be used sparingly. For things that have happened or are certainly going to happen, then we would use "happy" or "pleased" or "disappointed" (for example, "I'm really happy about how that marketing study came out."). "Sad" is usually reserved for situations that have a strong personal nature, for example, "I'm really sad to see so many talented people leaving us because of early retirement". In informal contexts, we may describe more complex emotions, but not until we have had time to get to know the other people we are speaking with. Of course, every company is different and once your students are employed, they will do well to study the memos that come out from upper management to see what emotional words are used and how. There is a tendency for the upper managers to set the tone for how emotional words are used in their organization.