This part of their professional identity is largely hidden for at least two reasons. First, most of their communication work is done virtually and, in some cases, from home, as in the experience of home-based offshore accountants. These professionals have been managing the communication challenges (including feelings of isolation) linked to working from home long before the COVID-19 pandemic forced other office workers across the globe to work remotely. Second, the prevailing occupational stereotype tags them as good with numbers but bad with words, along with the stigma of being boring, grey, and introverted to a fault, as popularly depicted in media.

The perennial shaming of accountants’ linguistic competence motivated my linguistic ethnographic study of this occupational group. Using critical discourse analysis and the sociolinguistic lens of performance, I examined how students in top accounting schools in Metro Manila are trained to communicate for the globalized workplace and how they communicate on the job as onshore and offshore accountants. This project offers some novel threads in ongoing discussions about the linguistic experience of workers in the rapidly expanding, highly multicultural and multilingual offshoring industry in Global South countries like India and the Philippines.

My research builds on current understandings of these number-centric workers theoretically and methodologically. In terms of theory, I argue that since ‘good communication’ is a social construct that is rhetorically and interactionally reproduced in academia and the profession, labelling accountants as ‘poor communicators’ should not be treated as fact. Rather, as in other stereotypes tied to different social groups, it should be interrogated. While previous studies have predominantly explored how accountants are ‘poor communicators,’ I take a step back and ask: Where and how is this idea of ‘accountants as poor communicators’ deployed, by whom, and for what reasons? In terms of method, my study demonstrates how examining together (rather than separately) the education and work domains can help provide a big-picture understanding of how language practice and ideologies are (re)produced and (re)shaped across the entire field continuity—from formal education to hiring to employment. This approach has revealed that the echoing of the deficit discourse that highlights curricular and competence gaps of accounting schools and accounting practitioners is a very limited and limiting view of Global South accountants and their globalized work.

I briefly present some of my PhD thesis findings in my 3MT. But for a more detailed and exciting discussion about this special group of language workers, you may check out my new monograph, Communication that Counts: Language Practice and Ideology in Globalized Accounting. It is the latest title in the “Language at Work” series of Multilingual Matters lined up for release in December 2022. You may want to take advantage of the generous discount offered until the end of the year by using the code: CCLPIGA75 when you place your order through the publisher’s website.

About the book

To date, communication research in accounting has largely focused on the competencies that define what constitutes ‘effective communication’. Highly perception-based, skills-focused and Global North-centric, existing research tends to echo the skills deficit discourse which overemphasizes the role of the higher education system in developing students’ work-relevant communication skills. This book investigates dominant views about communication and interrogates what shapes these views in the accounting field from a Global South perspective, exploring the idea of ‘good communication’ in the globalized accounting field. Taking the occupational stereotype of shy employees who are good with numbers but bad with words as its starting point, this book examines language and communication practices and ideologies in accounting education and work in the Philippines. As an emerging global leader in offshore accounting, the Philippines is an ideal context for an exploration of multilingual, multimodal and transnational workplace communication.

What others are saying about the book

This book is a welcome addition to the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) materials in the field of accounting. It explores the way students and professionals in accounting communicate and emphasizes the importance of well-defined relationships and effective communication in globalized accounting work. The volume is one of only a handful of resources ever produced focusing on ESP in accounting and in the context of the Philippines. (Marilu Rañosa-Madrunio, University of Santo Tomas, Manila, The Philippines)

Tenedero comprehensively and carefully traces how ideologies about languages and effective communication are mobilized in the field of globalized accounting – from the Philippine classrooms where communication skills are part of the accounting curriculum to the workplaces where offshore and onshore accounting services are offered. A must read for understanding what counts as communication and how communication counts in work where language is seemingly marginal. (Beatriz P. Lorente, University of Bern, Switzerland)

Reference

Tenedero, Pia Patricia P. (2022). Communication that Counts: Language Practice and Ideology in Globalized Accounting. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Besides meetings, webinars, and classes, another traditionally face-to-face event organized this year via Zoom is the 3-minute thesis (3MT) competition.  This yearly academic contest, which challenges students to explain their thesis in three minutes to a non-specialist audience, was started during one of the worst droughts in the history of Australia. With the current COVID-19 pandemic far from over, the 3MT organizers decided to go virtual this year.

On 11 August 2020, the Macquarie University Linguistics Department hosted its first-ever virtual 3MT competition. My contribution, which won the People’s Choice Award, is about the communication practices and ideologies of globalized accountants in the Philippines. Unlike many, they did not start to work remotely during the pandemic but have been doing so for a long time. In my presentation, I highlight the unique challenges of professional communication from home in multilingual, global work contexts. These points are discussed at length in my online lectures on how Global South accountants are prepared to communicate in Global North workplaces and lessons about working from home.

While it is tempting to think that joining a virtual 3MT is faster and easier, my experience is quite the opposite. Surely, the competition proper was a less tensed moment for me and my fellow-participants as we sat and watched our pre-recorded presentations. However, such a small production involves a big investment of time and effort, as faculty members doing online teaching this semester can testify. Even so, a memorable learning experience!

***

“The trend of the future is working from home. The big question is: Are Filipinos ready for this kind of work?” This question was asked by an employer of Filipino virtual accountants providing offshore services to clients overseas during my fieldwork in June 2018. Two years later, office workers all over the world find themselves forced to do just that—work from home—as a social distancing measure in light of the COVID-19 pandemic situation. In Australia alone, 1.6 million reported this significant change in their working conditions.

Unsurprisingly, there are many different reactions to this global shift to remote-work setup—some readily embracing it as the new normal, others taking a more critical stance. In the interim, as working from home continues to be the norm for some occupation groups, the experience of offshore accountants, who are employed to work remotely, pandemic or no pandemic, provides a picture of how this work arrangement works on a permanent basis.

A sociolinguistic analysis of the globalized accountant experience of working from home was the subject of a webinar co-organized on 3 July 2020 by the Linguistic Society of the Philippines (LSP) and the Lasallian Institute for Development and Educational Research.

In this online lecture, I explore how working remotely has shaped communication practices and ideologies in globalized accounting practice in the Philippines. Examining communication in this context is important as the demand for off-shored (including home-based) accounting services is increasing. This trend comes with the positioning of the Philippines as an emerging global provider of knowledge process outsourced services to businesses headquartered overseas. Ethnographic data collected from this work context for my PhD thesis (in progress) is analyzed using the lenses of performance and audit. Findings show that the way accountants communicate has evolved to fit the shape of virtual work environments. Digital solutions are making communication skills more salient and creating new norms and protocols of transparency that contribute to tensions between autonomy and accountability. The lessons highlighted from accountants’ experiences potentially reflect communication challenges and opportunities in other work domains especially during this period of COVID-19 pandemic, when mandatory physical distancing is redefining workplace interactions.

You can watch this virtual presentation uploaded in the LSP YouTube channel.

Language challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic

Visit here for our full coverage of language aspects of the COVID-19 crisis.