Effect of Communicative Competence in English Over Evolving Job Roles of CPEC: A Critical Analysis of Pakistani Labor Market

Ali Anwer,Aneela Gill

doi:10.5539/ijel.v10n4p171

Abstract

This research paper critically analyses the Pakistani job market and evaluates the importance of communicative competence in over the realization of the job potential of employees working on the CPEC (China Pakistan Economic Corridor) project. The CPEC project is a multi-dimensional infrastructure-based project that has injected Pakistan with not only great economic potential but also with a multi-lingual work force with a diverse cultural capital. This multi-lingual work force requires better communication standards to function as teams and this study tries to evaluate the effect communicative competence on the careers of employees in this sector. The paper conducted surveys from 10-15 major companies associated with the CPEC project and anonymous employee responses were collected. Data were analyzed qualitatively using strategic competence framework of Canale and Swain (1980). The study found that team leaders that were competent communicators yielded better results from their perspective teams and had higher levels of employee satisfaction. Furthermore, study revealed that people skilled in communication skills had higher chances of career growth and progress as compared to technically skilled personnel.

Highlights

Speaking, Pakistan has been a complex society with the amalgamation of hundreds of dialects and dozens of separate languages mixing together
Research has been conducted over the far reaching consequences of the establishment of the CPEC project in Pakistan, relating the geo-political importance of the project in the context of Asian-bloc being established by China, and the effects of the cultural integration of the incoming Chinese worker population in the Pakistani setting, but no factual research has been conducted over the possible communicational hurdles faced by the managerial team leads of the project dealing with a linguistically diverse work force and a work force that has been injected with an alien element into it, driving a challenging transformation during the work flow itself (Crystal, 2012). This current study aims to determine the analysis of the effect of communicative competence in English on effective management of CPEC project and the employee promotion through ranks
Since the data over the application of such communicative competence over Pakistani corporate sector was lacking, especially considering the leadership styles followed in the said corporate sector, the survey questionnaires were distributed over 10 major companies associated with CPEC program and the responses of employees were collected anonymously

Summary

Introduction

Speaking, Pakistan has been a complex society with the amalgamation of hundreds of dialects and dozens of separate languages mixing together. The British effectively marginalized and controlled the cultural capital of the sub-continent by the subjugation of linguistic freedom and restructuring of official means of communication to an English medium. This form of annexation had far-reaching effects into the linguistic capital and in essence, the cultural capital of the colonies that branched into separate countries. In a perplexing irony, almost all non-formal forms of communication are carried out in local languages and regional languages which vary in accordance with the setting being rural or urban. This very register varies in urban settings where almost all major cities and towns observe Urdu as a medium of daily communication

Methods

Results

Conclusion