Abstract
The problems of ‘lost in translation’ are well known. Yet some terms of English managerial vocabulary, which are perfectly translatable in other languages, remain untranslated. One explanation of this phenomenon is what Linguistic anthropology call negative semantic resonances. Semantic resonances focused on the issue of which meanings can or cannot be expressed by a single word in different cultures. In this paper, based on an organisational ethnography of Latin American expatriates working for an Italo-Latin-American multinational corporation (Tubworld), we analyse the resonances of the word leader/líder and director, direttore, capo, guida, coordinador, caudillo among a group of expatriates; all Italian, Spanish or multilingual speakers who use English as a second language in their everyday interactions. The paper explains how the different uses contribute to create a meaning of what a leader should and should not be; someone who leads without leading, sometimes a manager. The authors, an Italian native speaker who learnt Spanish during childhood and use English as his everyday language and a Spanish native speaker, argue that Italian or Spanish speakers not only avoid the words duce and caudillo (the vernacular vocabulary for leader, not in use due to the political and cultural meaning) but also the word leader/líder itself, as it resonate to the other two (violent, authoritarian, autocratic, antidemocratic leadership) but furthermore because the word, a lexical loan from English, failed to encapsulate the complexity of leading multilingual organisations like Tubworld.
Highlights
Keywords Leadership, language, multilingualism, organisations, polyphony, lexic, semantic resonances. It may seem contradictory for authors who are not English native speakers to write an article in English on the resonances of an English word in Italian and Spanish
One wonders; how much of the resonances of this word for English speakers is related to the meaning Italian and Spanish speakers give to it? What are the limitations on English-medium reflections on the resonance of the word in non-Anglophone contexts? Should an article like this be written in Italian and Spanish? what is the problem of using English words in languages other than English itself, in addition to the obvious point of the domination of this language over others? If the words were gin or rugby it could be argued that they refer to English objects and practices, the justification of using a local vocabulary of the natives of England or English native speakers
What happens if Italians and Spanish have replaced their own native language words and they use the English word leader/líder reluctantly? what attracted to us to write this article was to notice the reluctance of using leader/líder, the need of our research participants to justify what they were talking about every time they used it and a certain sense of apology when they pronounced it
Summary
What happens if Italians and Spanish have replaced their own native language words (duce/caudillo) and they use the English word leader/líder reluctantly?
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