Cruzando las fronteras de la comunicacion profesional entre Mexico y Los Estados Unidos: the...

This study presents analytical research that explores the form and function of written business communication on a U.S.-Mexico border through a combined method of descriptive and context-sensitive rhetorical text analysis. Dam comprise documents (letters, proposals, invoices) from a Mexican

company that operates on both sides of the border and communicates in both English and Spanish. Documents were analyzed through multiple passes for identifiable linguistic and rhetorical patterns in the areas of purpose, audience, style, and organization, paying close attention to those traits typically ascribed to Mexican business discourse. Findings of this study suggest that professionals on this U.S.-Mexico border are adopting, and adapting to, shared communicative standards and practices in business communication.

Keywords: international business communication; border business communication; nondivisive cultural theory; text analysis; Mexico business writing

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This study presents analytical research that explores the form and function of written business communication in a U.S.-Mexico border company. This is done to assess the presence of rhetorical and linguistic features typically identified with Mexican business discourse such as indirectness about purpose, ornateness and fluidity in style, and placing higher emphasis on personal rather than business issues. In addition, this study explores to what extent, if any, professional writing behaviors in Mexican border texts subscribe to principles of U.S. business communication and what implications this might have for U.S.-Mexico border business communication and, more generally, for border business communication at large.

Although much has been written about U.S. business communication, very little research has been done in the area of Mexican-U.S. business communication--more specifically, in border regions where, under the influences of the twin plant industry and NAFTA, rich commercial and industrial sites have created a unique bicultural professional community and language. As such, border regions offer an excellent site for the study of emerging bicultural discourse practices--the communication practices of two cultural groups in neighboring geographic zones.

Many scholars investigating communication between Mexicans and U.S. Americans take an essentialist or contrastive approach, focusing not on the technical and business writing that travels cross border between cultures but rather on culturally marked practices and behaviors such as greetings, use of colors, dress codes, and attitudes regarding time (Hall, 1959; Hoft, 1995; Hoftstede, 1980). These essentialist or contrastive approaches highlight remarkable differences between the Mexican and U.S. cultures and define communication as centered on "us/them" attitudes of cultural variability; thus, we have texts on Mexican/American communication, which in many cases are read both by academic and nonacademic audiences. Such "quick fix" reference manuals can be found in bookstores as well as university libraries. Reed and Gray's (1997) How to Do Business in Mexico: Your Essential and Up-To-Date Guide for Success and Morrison, Conaway, and Borden's (1994) Kiss, Bow, or Shake Hands': How to Do Business in Sixty Countries are examples of commercial texts that provide brief cultural overviews of behavior styles, negotiation techniques, and business practices in Mexico:

   For business, men should wear a conservative dark suit and tie. ...
   Giving gifts to executives in a business context is not required.
   ... Secretaries do expect gifts. Be
   prepared for a hug on the second or third meeting. At a party, give
   a slight bow to everyone as you enter the room. You are expected to
   shake hands with each person when you leave. (Morrison et al., 1994,
   pp. 234-235)

These texts give rise to amusing images of U.S. Americans abroad, bringing gifts to secretaries, bowing at everyone, and preparing to be hugged. Whether the advice is accurate or inaccurate, such suggestions on doing business in Mexico would provide only minimal knowledge in limited areas of culturally correct behavior.

Condon (1985), like Morrison et al., focuses on prescriptive recommendations about dress, vocabulary, and attitudes about time, set within the context of Mexican history, machismo, and the importance of family in Mexico. Centered on the cultural differences between Mexicans and Americans, Condon argues that

   too little has been done to encourage Americans and Mexicans to come
   to grips with the fact that in a number of critical ways their views
   of the world differ radically and that these differences raise
   important barriers to effective communication and mutually
   satisfactory working relationships. (p. xvii)

Although Condon mentions working relationships as part of international communication between Mexico and the United States, his text is mostly limited to general communication, rather than business communication, between members of the two countries.

Limaye and Victor (1991) emphasize the obvious limits of traditional European and North American linear paradigms for communication, stating that they "do not represent the complexity of cross-cultural communication" (p. 284). The authors spend a considerable amount of space discussing traditional issues in international communication such as cognitive styles, subjective and objective cultures, concepts of time (monochronic and polychronic), and convergence and divergence. However, Limaye and Victor seem to eventually fall victim to the traditional notions against which they argue and, like other researchers in this field, they ultimately promote prescriptive generalizations of culture, embodied in phrases such as "Differing time perceptions in various cultures may cause failure in business negotiations between participants who do not share identical attitudes of time" (p. 287). Thus, they seem to re-create the culture-divisive, us/them chasm that permeates cross-cultural and international professional communication.

Similarly, Kras (1986, 1994) explores the marked distinctions between Mexican and U.S. cultural and economic characteristics, but she exaggerates the role of culture as the primary determining factor that shapes Mexican communicative practices or she reduces it to prescriptive notions of etiquette, which often lead to the dissemination of stereotypes about Mexican culture and behavior. Throughout her text, Kras (1994) comparatively discusses differences between the two cultures. Her focus on "Mexican" characteristics can prove potentially problematic because it typecasts the Mexican, both socially and professionally:

   Mexicans attach great importance to interpersonal relationships. The
   human element is key in all transactions, at all levels of society,
   in both private and public sectors of the economy. Mexicans relate
   to people, not to products or services. This "Mexican way of doing
   things" contrasts sharply with the Anglo-Saxon business approach
   that emphasizes task before person. (pp. 46)

She continues on the following page:

   Emotional sensitivity of Mexicans should come as no surprise given
   the emphasis on interpersonal relationships. This sensitivity
   relates closely to the aesthetic nature of Mexicans, and both
   aspects are clearly evident in the workplace. Aesthetic
   manifestations range from flowery language to pomp and ceremony
   on festive occasions. ... As an emotionally sensitive person, the
   Mexican is apt to take all work criticism personally. (p. 47)

Kras concludes: "Recognizing Mexico's deep-rooted cultural values is the prerequisite for a successful transition to modern management" (p. 52). These seemingly "concrete" notions of Mexicans can be potentially damaging to Mexico-U.S. interaction because they can lead to the dissemination of stereotypes and blanket categorizations about Mexican culture and behavior.

Of course, understanding the culture and history of Mexico is necessary when designing written communication for consumption by Mexican professionals. This is Tebeaux's (1999) argument in "Designing Written Business Communication Along the Shifting Cultural Continuum: The New Face of Mexico," wherein she discusses the importance of the associations between culture, history, and writing. Tebeaux recognizes the critical need to understand Mexican communication because of Mexico's proximity to the United States and because of its emerging status as a major market (p. 49). One of the limitations of Tebeaux's analysis, however, and one she shares with the other researchers cited here, is that her text has the propensity to essentialize Mexican business communication as an impermeable historical and cultural system of static and immutable Mexican values, conventions, and beliefs:

   We can see how cultural dimensions are embedded in Mexican business
   communication. Mexico ... has different values surrounding family,
   society, work, and politics. Designing written business
   communication that will be effective in Mexico requires an
   understanding not only of the Mexican culture but also Mexican
   history and the relationship of that history to those principal
   values .... it is Mexico's history that underpins the rhetorical
   strategies for written business communication. (p. 50)

In addition, although Tebeaux acknowledges the crucial role of the relationship between Mexico's history and its principal values, she does not explore an additional relationship, one which is equally important in Mexican professional communication: the evolving, day-to-day business relationship between Mexico and the United States. Every day, the business that gets done between the two countries shapes discursive practices. Professional communication conventions grow more similar through the use of computer technologies in the writing process, occurring in business contexts such as maquiladoras and other transnational industries whose entrance into the Mexican market was further facilitated by NAFTA.

Tebeaux (1999) briefly discusses some of the similarities between modern Mexican and U.S. communication, but ultimately she relies on an analysis of differences rather than similarities, highlighting the "otherness" of Mexican conventions and styles in written communication.

Much of the extant literature surveyed for this study presents a view of culture as monolithic and divisive, delineating differences between self and other, what Hoft (1995, pp. x-xi) calls the "source" and "target" cultures. Such approaches promote static, one-dimensional views of culture that do little to advance our understanding of international business communication. Varner (2000) agrees that international business communication should consider culture as multidimensional:

   Business people need to take into account the national culture, the
   general business culture, and the specific corporate culture. In
   addition, they must be aware of individual communication styles.
   After all, cultures do not communicate with each other; individuals
   do. (p. 45)

Varner, too, warns against "travel poster" approaches that focus on cultural variables rather than on the process of international business communication (p. 40).

As a process, international business communication, Varner (2000) argues, leads to the creation of a new construct: "When two business people from two different cultures interact, they bring their own backgrounds but step outside their own cultural and business environment to create this new context" (p. 43)--what Bell (1992) calls "transactional culture" (p. 452). Varner's and Bell's descriptions of a new context and transactional culture are useful but can be taken even further: What happens to the communicators after they have created the transactional culture and new context? I argue that in the process of creating a transactional culture, business communicators themselves become multidimensional, multicultural--hybridized. This is especially relevant to business communicators in border zones, because of their geographic and cultural proximity.

So, what is needed in the conversation of Mexican-U.S. business communication is a perspective that combines elements of constructionist and critical theory, eliminating the rigid demarcations between self and other and creating an aperture for "multicultural identities" (Zoreda, 1997, p. 928). With the existence of multicultural identities, "realities" become multiple, socially based, and intangible constructions, dependent on the individual who constructs them (Guba & Lincoln, 1994, p. 110). Thus, "culturality" becomes relative, mutable, and situational. The static, one-dimensional identity disappears and is replaced by multidimensional, multicultural identities capable of adapting to novel situations and emerging business practices.

The notion of multicultural identity is relevant to the study of Mexican-U.S. business communication, especially in border regions where the very word border/ frontera takes on metaphorical as well as real dimensions that delineate division, otherness in essence, a dichotomous distinction between cultural, economic, and sociopolitical systems. But borders are not necessarily best construed as lines of demarcation; rather, they are spaces where people live and work. Thus, in place of divisive approaches, researchers could focus on Mexican-U.S. borders as places where growth and dialogical enrichment occur between cultures and disciplines, creating a field of interculturality (Zoreda, 1997, p. 928). In this scenario, the multicultural identity is a person who is "psycho-culturally adaptive," "whose horizons extend significantly beyond his or her own culture," and whose relationships with others are situational and subject to contextual shifts (Adler, as cited in Zoreda, 1997, p. 929). Mexican-U.S. border professionals, then, become cultural mediators, metaphorical flaneurs--explorers who use their subjectivity to "consciously make sense of the environment" and who become transformed in the process (Scobey, as cited in Zoreda, 1997, p. 930). A flaneur in a Mexican-American border is one who can use his or her bicultural position to navigate and function on both sides of the border while at the same time being transformed and hybridized by the daily nuances and practices of that bilateral space.

The metaphor of the hybrid, discussed by Zoreda (1997), if disassociated from pejorative connotations, can lead to an understanding of hybridism as "beneficial and necessary for survival, and, like the flaneur ... offers a space to reinvent and thus, oppose, to a certain extent, a complete submission to globalization or reductionist behavior" (p. 931). With cultural hybridism comes "cross-fertilisation": "a dialogic process of recovery and reinscription" (p. 931) where the interweaving of practices produces new forms while older forms continue to exist.

Studying the written texts that travel between Mexican and U.S. professionals in border regions and understanding the nature of their cultural and commercial relationship has significance beyond itself. The overall goal here is not simply to study the writing facilitated and influenced by the rhetoric of NAFTA and its policies. Rather, the goal is to study the professional discourse of a Mexican border community, one that is in constant geographical, cultural, and linguistic contact with the United States, and analyze how this discourse might inform the business relationship between Mexico and the United States.

Research Question

Although this study does not accomplish the above goal in its entirety, it begins doing so by exploring the following research question:

   To what extent does Mexican border business communication differ
   from U.S. business communication and to what extent do they share
   features?

Description of Study

This study served as an exploratory pilot for a doctoral dissertation. As such, it may not offer the formality and structure of a more rigorous study; however, it does provide a preliminary glimpse into the fertile topic of border business communication. The focal point of this study is Mexican business communication in the border community of Juarez, Chihuahua, and El Paso, Texas, a region of rich cultural and commercial interaction between the United States and Mexico. Through professional networks, I gained access to a Mexican border company that operates on both sides of the border and communicates in both English and Spanish.

The Company

In accordance with the human subjects research guidelines of New Mexico State University, I examined the correspondence documents of a Mexican company that operates on both sides of the border and communicates professionally in both Spanish and English. This company sells industrial supplies to area maquiladoras and provides consulting services for U.S. companies desiring to enter the Mexican market and industry. As such, it produces writing that establishes recurrent rhetorical behaviors within a Mexican professional discourse community.

This small company has two locations, one in Juarez and the other in El Paso. Each location is equipped with telephones, a fax and copy machine, and IBM computers that house Microsoft Office 97. The U.S. office has Internet and e-mail access (which are used very rarely). All of the correspondence documents are from one company, representing various projects. All documents are written in Microsoft Word and mailed or faxed.

El Paso-Juarez Border Business Culture

Border areas shared by the United States and Mexico, such as El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Chihuahua, in particular, have gained prominence and appeal as attractive sites for transnational trade and commerce. Since the early 1960s, the El Paso-Juarez area has been a prime location for the twin plant industry, also known as the maquiladora industry, where large corporations split their manufacturing and assembly operations between the two border cities. El Paso alone--population 750,000 and 4th largest city in Texas, 17th in the United States--is home to more than 100 Fortune 500 companies, according to the El Paso Chamber of Commerce (1999). Combined with Juarez--population 2 million and 4th largest city in Mexico--the El Paso-Juarez region is the chosen industrial and commercial site for 489 Fortune 500 companies (Gutierrez, 2000, p. 5b), including Boeing, General Motors, IBM, AT&T, Chevron, Johnson & Johnson, RCA, DuPont, and Coca Cola. Government and government-affiliated entities such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Raytheon, and the U.S. Army are also represented in El Paso.

Data Gathering

I gathered data by visiting the company's Juarez location. This is where, as my personal contact informed me, most of the incoming and outgoing correspondence files were kept. Once at the Juarez location, my personal contact randomly selected and copied documents from the company's outgoing correspondence files. I did not give her specific details about my study or what I would be looking for in the documents. At the end of that workday, she presented me with a box full of documents--92 total, to be exact. Of those 92 documents, I eliminated 3 documents on the basis that they were written prior to 1994. I also eliminated 5 other documents--reports, employee contracts, and manuals--that did not, in my opinion, reflect everyday external communication. After the elimination process, I was left with 84 documents including invoices, letters, and proposals. All of these documents travel between Mexican and U.S. professionals and thus, I argue, qualify as correspondence. The texts analyzed in this study provide a sample of the types of texts that make up the larger pool of 84 documents.

The Writers

Five employees, who own and operate the company, are the writers of the correspondence documents in this study; they were selected for this study because they are the primary writers of all the company's documents. Each writer contributed both English and Spanish documents intended for bilateral readers (readers on both sides of the border). All of the writers are Mexican nationals, four men and one woman. All but one of the men have bachelor's degrees/licenciaturas, two of the men in business administration from U.S. universities, the woman in architecture, and the last man in law, both from Mexican universities. None of the writers has forreal training in U.S. or Mexican business communication.

The Nature of the Correspondence

I obtained and analyzed a total of 84 correspondence documents (54 in Spanish, 30 in English), including letters, proposals, and invoices. These types of documents were selected because they reflect daily or regular business communication with external audiences on the border (this is why specialized documents such as research reports and internal employee manuals were not included as data). The documents selected were sent either through regular surface mail or via fax. The purpose of the documents varies: letters of introduction to promote the company's services, memos or letters requesting or sending price quotes/cotizaciones, or proposals defining agreements or delineating technical information regarding business transactions. All of the correspondence in this study was written between 1994 and 2000.

Intended Readers of the Documents

The intended readers of the documents are U.S. American or Mexican professionals, men and women, on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. The majority of the readers reside in either Juarez or El Paso, although some are located in other U.S. cities such as Dallas or other Mexican cities such as Chihuahua. Most of the readers, like the writers, work in the industrial supply field or related areas.

Method

I chose rhetorical text analysis as my analysis tool for this study because it best complements the data I collected. Used in studies by Bazerman and Russel (1994); Ferguson (1994); Swales (1990); and Atkinson (1999), whose method description has been extremely useful, rhetorical analysis "focuses on the highly contextualized microanalysis of rhetorical features in and across individual texts" (Atkinson, 1999, p. 56). It operates at the textual level of genre--the written word--and as a result, as Atkinson claims, "the written word is assumed to reflect its complex environments of production and consumption" (p. 59).

Similarly, Cross (1993) analyzed data alone rather than using outside readers because, as he points out, the researcher "is the critical instrument of observation" (p. 145). Kras (1986), Tebeaux (1999), Locker (1987), and Clyne (1994) also use the lone-observer method, analyzing and interpreting data through multiple passes and observing and recording patterns they saw as rhetorically significant in the linguistic usage of their chosen population of study. This method of analysis is common also to linguistic analysis, which proceeds by a case and example argument.

Although it is seldom used at the level of text analysis, where participant observations are absent, many of the tenets of ethnography of communication are pertinent to the study of cultural texts that exist in unique contexts. Ethnography of communication is a linguistic approach based on traditional anthropological concerns for "holistic explanations of meaning and behavior" (Schiffrin, 1994, p. 8). According to Hymes (1974), an early theorist who developed ethnography of communication, communicative competence includes the ability to engage in daily conversation as well as other "culturally constructed" speech events such as prayer and public oratory (p. 8). Hymes seems to adopt a view of culture as "a system of ideas that underlies and gives meaning to behavior in society" (Hymes, as cited in Schiffrin, 1994, p. 138). As such, Hymes (1974, p. 4) points out, even the fundamental notion of communication will change from one culture to another because of differences in personal perceptions, cultural values, and knowledge of the world.

Ethnography of communication, in certain cases, may focus on how language use itself reflects knowledge of culture and ideology; in other cases, it may center on the researcher's familiarity with the speakers and their culture (as in my case, with the Mexican and American cultures) and upon what is particular about each act of communication (Schiffrin, 1994, p. 9). Ethnography of communication is an approach that opens itself to new questions and answers about data by approaching language use as part of cultural knowledge and behavior; this "entails a recognition of both the diversity of communicative possibilities and practices (i.e. cultural relativity) and the fact that such practices are an integrated part of what we know and do as members of a particular culture" (Schiffrin, 1994, p. 137). In the case of the Mexican-American border, this translates into how professionals in that region become aware of and partake in the nuances of cross-border (bilateral) communication, thus creating a shared professional culture (or biculture) that is unique to that region and whose practices and behaviors are symbiotically and synergistically created by both groups, on opposite sides of the border.

Using the hybrid framework of analysis described above, I analyzed correspondence documents through multiple passes (two to three passes per document) for identifiable linguistic and rhetorical patterns in the areas of purpose, audience, style, and organization, paying close attention to those traits typically ascribed to Mexican business discourse (Tebeaux, 1999) such as indirectness about purpose, ornateness and fluidity in style, and placing higher emphasis on personal rather than business issues.

I used Tebeaux's (1999) findings as a benchmark for operationalizing and determining Mexican Spanish traits in business writing:

1. The purpose of the message does not appear until the middle section of the text (p. 56).

2. Texts lack directness, conciseness, and clarity of purpose (p. 61).

3. Linguistic style of texts is emotional, fluid, and obsequious, containing opulent praises embedded in long and rambling sentences (p. 62).

4. Texts do not focus on the "business" of the text but rather on establishing a personal relationship with the reader. Writers establish rapport with reader by commenting about family and/or mutual friends (p. 57).

5. The concept of audience is largely ignored (p. 77).

6. Little emphasis is placed on a structured message or use of headings or page design (p. 81).

I also used Tebeaux's findings to operationalize and determine U.S. American traits in business writing:

1. Essential information or the purpose of the message are found at the beginning of the letter (p. 54).

2. Texts exemplify positive tone, concise sentences and paragraphs (p. 61).

3. Texts are neutral in terms of emotional expression (p. 57).

4. There is a concise, specific focus on the business objective (p. 58).

5. Linear focus is prevalent (p. 64).

6. Emphasis is on a structured, logical message (p. 81).

Based on Tebeaux's trait categorizations, I then isolated identifiable patterns and more closely reviewed and interpreted them to determine their significance and validity as recurrent rhetorical writing behaviors of Mexican border professionals.

ANALYSIS

A general overview of these correspondence documents suggests that Mexican border writers differ from the nonborder Mexican writers described by Tebeaux (1999), because border writers seem to adapt to various rhetorical situations depending on the purpose and audience of the communication. There are notable features in these border texts that suggest the writers are not native English speakers, such as phrasings that can be recognized as direct translations (or what is also called "first-language interference") from formal Spanish or substitutions of English words such as mobile for the Spanish movil. Although the writing in these texts still shows some traces of formality, it is very similar to the kind of writing that takes place in small U.S. businesses; that is to say, the texts of Mexican border professionals are direct and practical, combining elements of formal and conversational style that reflects everyday language as well as more formal business discourse. Finally, these texts do not exhibit primary attention to personal matters but rather focus on the business of the communication.

The company's English and Spanish correspondence documents reviewed tend to give obvious attention to issues of purpose: frequently, English and Spanish documents explicitly state the purpose of the written communication, usually at the beginning of the letter. Consider the following text, which introduces a U.S. border reader to a potential business venture with the Mexican border company.

   November 28, 1995
   Dear David:

       As per our phone conversation today, I herewith confirm to you
   our interest to apply on behalf of our client in Mexico, Mr. Rogelio
   Carrillo and/or his company RC Corporativo S.A. de C.V., for
   licensing rights to your Instant eyeglasses, movil clinic programs
   and similar products for the territory of Mexico. Mr. Carillo has
   been involved with the eyeglass business in Mexico for over 30 years
   and he manufactures glass single vision and bifocal lenses at a
   plant in central Mexico.... Please do mail us the confidentiality
   agreements we need to have in place for us to proceed....
   Looking forward to your materials, we remain,
   Truly yours,

There is some immediately apparent residue of overly formal, legalistic jargon in the opening phrases "As per" and "herewith confirm" and the closing "we remain." Such phrases reflect an older style of business writing, one now in disfavor in U.S. professional communication. With the exception of these formulaic phrases, however, the content of this border document is purpose oriented and the style is direct and to the point.

The purposefulness of this letter is further emphasized by the conclusion, where the writer uses direct address to clearly state the course of action he wishes the reader to take: "Please mail us the confidentiality agreements we need to have in place." This letter attempts to establish credibility on behalf of the person seeking the licensing rights, Mr. Carrillo, but it does so on business terms by attesting to the length of time he has been doing business and the wide distribution of his operations. There is no attempt to insinuate familiarity on the basis of mutual acquaintances or family ties.

Similarly, the company's Spanish correspondence shows purpose-oriented traits early in the introduction of the text. Consider the following letter sent via fax to a Mexican border professional employed by a Mexican municipal government office:

   El Paso, Texas, a 3 de Octubre de 1997
   Estimable Lic. Ingle De La Mora:

      En relacion a nuestros comunicados de los pasados dias 17 y 26
   de Septiembre pasado donde atentamente solicitamos a Uds., nuestra
   inclusion en su registro de empresas interesadas en el proceso de
   privatizacion de los aeropuertos del sistema ASA a fin de recibir
   sus comunicados al respecto, en esta ocasion nuevamente solicitamos
   sean tan amables de confirmar nuestra solicitud.

English translation:

   El Paso, Texas, October 3, 1997
   Dear Lic. Ingle De La Mora:

      In relation to our past communiques of September 17 and 26 where
   we attentively solicited from you our inclusion in your registry of
   companies interested in the privatization process of the airports
   in the ASA system after receiving your information on this subject,
   on this occasion we again ask that you be so kind as to confirm our
   solicitation.

This brief document, though written in a prose style discouraged by U.S. business writing style guides (the entire letter is one sentence) and given to stylistic formality with terms such as "communiques" and phrases like "attentively solicited" is overall a purposeful document. The final line of the document, prefaced by specific background information, explicitly delineates the reason for the communication and desired actions on the part of the reader.

Even in documents in which the subject might be considered delicate or unpleasant for the writer, such as acknowledging a negative or sensitive message or charging for services, there tends to be a concise statement of purpose, which is illustrated in the following two examples. In the first letter, the Mexican border writer responds to a U.S. American reader who has declined to participate in a bilateral business project that would create an air cargo hub for providing shipping services to maquiladoras in the El Paso-Juarez border area:

   April 23, 1997
   Dear Mr. McKillop:

      It is with regret that I receive your information that your
   company would not entertain an interest to participate in our
   Mexico project at this time. Please keep in mind that an open
   invitation for you to reconsider should your conditions change in
   the future, is kept at our project.

The second example, an invoice, highlights communication that stems from a landfill project where a large disposal company on the U.S. side of the border prepared to establish a landfill on the Mexican side of the border and hired the company highlighted in this study to initiate the project:

   May 28, 1997
   TO: El Paso Disposal

      For professional services rendered in topographical surveying,
   International boundary research and confirmation, and establishment
   of different alternatives available for purchase of land in Mexico.
      $2,650.00 (TWO THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS 00/
   100)

      Thank you.

These letters exhibit extreme directness and expediency. They are short and explicit and display a focused attention to the business of the communication without drawn-out personal salutations, perorations, or digressions of any kind. This is also the case with the following one-page correspondence document sent via fax to a professional in Dallas, Texas:

   March 11, 1997
   Dear Paul:

      I have decided to try to save you the trouble of having to
   dedicate some of your valuable time at the office in a potential
   visit and instead try to get, via fax or telephone conversation,
   the information sought from you that will help us ascertain the
   economic parameters associated with the disposal of the tires
   accumulated at the El Paso Municipal Landfill at the El Paso
   Disposal's landfill in New Mexico. I would like to ask that you
   please confirm the following information...

Again, the content of the document is direct, leading right to the business of the message, and displays a regard for time and expeditiousness, to save "valuable time at the office." Here, there is some stylistic carryover of the propensity for long sentences with complicated clause structures, a characteristic of written Spanish, especially in the more formal registers. Again, however, the overall purpose of the document is clear: to obtain the information sought from the reader via fax or telephone without the need for a personal visit.

In very few cases, the purpose of the document is deferred until later in the text. Even in these instances, however, the decision to do so seems conscious on the writer's part, as a way of establishing a context for the subject before introducing the purpose of the communication--to offer a potential business opportunity to a U.S. border reader:

   April 11, 1997
   Dear Sherry:

      As mentioned to you in our communique we are moving along on a
   business plan to develop industrial airparks at certain Mexican
   airports. The concept calls for leasing land from the Federal
   government inside the airports, in plots that vary from 30 to 80
   acres, depending on the area of unused land at each airport, and
   building customs, warehousing and industrial assembly facilities.
      [four paragraphs of background information omitted]
      Subject to your own criteria, we would love the opportunity of
   meeting with you and explaining our business plan in detail and
   showing you the advances that we have reached so far in our
   application for land leasing at the Chihuahua, Chih., airport to
   develop a 40 acre industrial airpark a that location....

      Looking forward to your reply, I remain,
      Truly yours,

In this document then, the writer provides essential background information about the subject before delivering the purpose of the message.

In addition to exhibiting explicit purposefulness, most of the border documents, both English and Spanish, show signs of audience awareness and accommodation. This accommodation is most evident in the fact that levels of formality, tone, and language vary according to the intended reader and the nature of the message: Each of the examples cited thus far establishes intimate pronoun relations between writer and reader, using first person we or 1 and second person you. Thus, Mexican border writers go beyond personal pronoun use to establish or signal closeness. Consider the following fax:

   May 5, 1995

      Anna, just to let you know I have not forgotten about your
   request. My bookkeeper is out of town and will be back Monday. So
   expect our fax sometime Tuesday or Wednesday. If you can, fax us
   your phone number and do not forget to send the information you
   mentioned during our phone call.

      Saludos.

In this document, the tone is conversational and informal. Here, as in some of the documents presented earlier, the writer's level of professional familiarity with the reader manifests itself in interpersonal expressions such as directly addressing the reader on a first-name basis and using personal pronouns to emphasize relationships between writer and reader. There are also reduced clauses, a linguistic feature that typically signals spoken language. There is no hesitancy in this letter to state exactly what needs to be done, but the force of the reminders to follow up with actions promised on the phone, is softened by the polite conditional "If you can."

Aside from containing explicit statements of purpose and action, and awareness of various levels for addressing personal audience, the correspondence documents in this study also exhibit a concise and somewhat linear pattern in the layout of information, suggesting that, like their U.S. cohorts, Mexican border professionals are adopting a writing culture that gives attention to both structure as well as content of a document. Consider the following letter introducing the Mexican border company's services to a potential U.S. border client:

   December 3, 1997
   Dear Manny:

      I wish to confirm my visit to your business today and at the
   same time describe the services that we provide for companies like
   yours.

      We are a service company providing support in different fields to
   maquila and manufacturing companies in the area, and as such, we can
   take care of your needs associated with the final or temporary
   importation into Mexico of all kinds of equipment.

      We can provide advice for your company with regards to legal
   issues concerning the proper stay of your equipment while in Mexico
   and the necessary customs-related steps to take in order to
   safeguard the equipment from any confiscation or complication risks
   that may represent the issuance of fines against your company or the
   unnecessary holding of the equipment in Mexico.

      But most of all, when you find yourself in need to move some
   rental equipment to customers in Mexico on short notice, we can do it
   as fast as you may need under a minimum risk environment at the
   lowest rates in the area.

      Saludos

This letter, introducing the company to a potential client on the U.S. border, is similar, if not identical, in its organization of information to U.S. business letters, which emphasize brevity, directness, and simplicity. Here again, the purpose of the document is explicitly stated in the first sentence of the letter, and audience awareness is illustrated by the first-name-basis salutation, the use of personal pronouns, and the interweaving of formal and informal stylistic elements within the document. The writer creates an effective textual play between "what your needs are" and "what we can do to meet your needs."

A keen awareness of purpose and audience is also present in a document from 1994, an informal business proposal to a longtime Mexican business partner and friend, wherein one of the writers uses humor as part of a parody of the traditional florid style of Mexican business writing. The following is the opening and conclusion of the proposal, which is two pages long:

   Agosto 31, 1994

      Como dice el corrido "en vista del tiempo transcurrido y el poco
   caso que me pelas" le sugiero por este conducto, por supuesto despues
   de desearle completa salud y bienestar fisico tanto a su ilustre
   persona como a sus mas allegados familiares y descendientes, que
   considere Ud., seriamente, la posibilidad de echar a andar la
   siguiente propuesta con la finalidad de incrementar en la medida de
   las posibilidades, el monto de los recursos liquidos que en un
   momento dado pudieran llegar a contenener nuestras, a la fecha
   vacias, arcas familiares....
      [parrafos omitidos]
      Dados nuestros escasos recursos intelectuales, fisicos y
   economicos y tomando ademas en consideracion nuestros aun mas
   escasos niveles de energia y capacidades de concentracion en un
   esfuerzo definido, por supuesto que no intentariamos comernos el
   mundo a punos y sencillamente comprariamos en el mercado americano
   aquello que previamente hubiesemos vendido en el mexicano, y que
   ademas los despistados clientes que tuvieran a bien negociar con
   nuestra floreciente empresa, hubieran tenido el desplante de tomarse
   el riesgo de enviar sus pagos a nuestro favor, en forma
   anticipada....

      Sin mas preambulos ni consideraciones de ninguna especie: ?que
   onda, le entramos?

English translation:

   August 31, 1994

      As the corrido says "in view of the time transpired and the
   little attention that you pay to me" I suggest to you, of course
   only after wishing you complete physical health so much to your
   illustrious person as to your most distanced family members and
   descendants that you seriously consider the possibility of getting
   the following proposition started, with the final aim of
   incrementing, by means of all possibility, the amount of the liquid
   resources that at any given moment could come to contain our,
   presently empty, family coffers....

      [paragraphs omitted]

      Given our scarce intellectual, physical and economic resources
   and moreover taking into consideration our even more scarce levels
   of energy and capacity of concentration in a defined effort, of
   course we would not attempt to eat the world in fistfuls
   and we would simply buy in the American market that which previously
   we would have sold in the Mexican, and that even more so,
   absent-minded clients who would have to negotiate with our
   flourishing business, would have the audacity to take the risk of
   sending their payments in our favor, in anticipated form....

   With no further preambles or considerations of any sort: what's up,
   should we do it?

Here is a playfully dense parody that is highly rhetorical and shows awareness of purpose, the organization of information, and most important, audience. The writer's high familiarity with the reader is evidenced by his conscious use of humor throughout the text. Certain formal salutatory and closing phrases are used such as "Por medio de la presente"/"by these means" and "sin mas por el momento"/"with nothing else for the moment"; yet these stock phrases appear to be historical, linguistic conventions in Mexican professional writing that are slowly going out of style, similar to the U.S. "To whom it may concern" and "as per your request" that were stock phrases in American professional communication until recently. This final border document, in a humorous statement--"we would simply buy in the American market that which previously we would have sold in the Mexican"--illustrates the natural tension of U.S.-Mexico commercial interaction that begins in border zones and works inward into the interior of both countries.

RESULTS

The research question posed for investigation in this study was, To what extent does Mexican border business communication differ from U.S. business communication and to what extent do they share features? Results suggest that the majority of the Mexican border business documents highlighted in this study do not subscribe completely to the Mexican Spanish business conventions specified by Tebeaux (1999). On the contrary, in most cases the Mexican border business texts in this study illustrate rhetorical attention to the areas of purpose, audience, style, and organization:

* Purpose: In most cases, the purpose of the document is explicitly stated in the first sentence of the communication.

* Audience: Both English and Spanish border documents show signs of audience awareness and accommodation, evident in the levels of formality, tone, and language, which vary according to the reader and the nature of the message.

* Style: Border business documents are direct and practical, combining elements of formal and conversational style that reflects everyday language as well as more formal business discourse.

* Organization: Content of border documents is purpose oriented, concise, and mostly linear in layout of information: does not exhibit primary attention to personal matters but rather focuses on the business of the communication.

Overall, texts in this study exhibit features commonly ascribed to U.S. American business communication such as directness in stating purpose and attention to the business of the correspondence. Therefore, although Mexican border business documents in this study retain some residual features typically associated with Mexican Spanish, they do, for the most part, exhibit many features of U.S. business communication.

SUMMARY

Analysis of these border documents suggests that although they share some features typically ascribed to Mexican business discourse, the border business documents analyzed in this study do seem to differ from those produced in the interior of Mexico, as evidenced by Tebeaux (1999). For example, the correspondence analyzed in the study shows that although there are still traces of formality in the writing of Mexican border professionals, the writing of these professionals is highly purposeful, direct, and exhibits attention to audience through interpersonal hybrid expressions of formal and conversational style. Moreover, the writing analyzed in this study shows characteristics of being both reader and business oriented, exhibiting a decline in the traditional overly formal, obsequious style of Mexican professional communication discussed by Tebeaux, and--perhaps because of geographical proximity to the United States--adopting and adapting to communicative standards and practices similar to the principles of U.S. business communication practice.

Some of these findings support those of Tebeaux (1999); mainly, that the writers within this Mexican company have retained some traditional Mexican writing features while adopting features of U.S. business letters (p. 75). Like Tebeaux, I also found that U.S. computer systems are finding their way into Mexican workplaces, allowing Mexican professionals to use formats and templates shared with U.S. workplace writers (pp. 70-75). Conversely, my findings contradict Tebeaux's notion that in Mexican written communication, "the concept of audience, in terms of choices that authors should make in developing documents, is largely ignored" (p. 73). Contrary to Tebeaux's findings, the documents reviewed in this study do exhibit high and clever awareness of the rhetorical relationship between writer, message, and audience, with subtle variations in style and tone, depending on the purpose of the document.

Similarly, the language used by Mexican professionals in these border correspondence documents is much less "emotional and fluid," especially in letters written for cross-border U.S. readers, than Tebeaux (1999, p. 63) suggests. This is illustrated by the directness and purposefulness of these documents and by their focus on confirming business issues rather than establishing personal ingratiation with the reader. In addition, although some of the letters analyzed in this study are considerably wordy, what Tebeaux calls "the sound of verbal glycerin" (p. 63) in Mexican written business communication is, again, not as prevalent as she claims. Finally, where Tebeaux finds that meaning in Mexican letters must be inferred (p. 63), I find that meaning and purpose in Mexican border business documents are explicitly, or at least clearly, stated in language that is neither as florid, obsequious, or pompous (except in occasions of humor) as Tebeaux argues. Most of the purpose statements in these letters appear in the first sentence or first paragraph of the communication.

Overall, the findings of this border study suggest that the rhetorical and linguistic behaviors of Mexican border professionals differ considerably from the writing of Mexican professionals in Tebeaux's (1999) study.

DISCUSSION

The rhetorical and linguistic qualities of these border Mexican correspondence documents suggest that Mexican professional writers in border areas are protean figures (to end as we began, with metaphorical allegories of border people), who move back and forth on what Tebeaux calls "the shifting cultural continuum" between Mexican and U.S. professional communication. These are adaptive individuals who can assume the color of various language situations, depending on the particular communicative environment that surrounds the discourse.

Several factors might explain this phenomenon: a strong professional influence on Mexican business writing customs because of close proximity to the United States; in this particular case, the influence that the two Mexican professionals with U.S. college degrees may have had on the other Mexican writers; and/or finally, the natural "coming together" of two professional cultures under the auspices of the twin plant industry and NAFTA, which have created the necessity for close interaction between the United States and Mexico, especially in commercially rich border regions where two cultures, two languages, and two professional systems are, and will continue to be, in constant contact with one another.

The rhetorical adaptations and adoption of U.S. business communication conventions illustrated in the border texts of this study have presumably happened over time--at least a span of 10 years, which is the age of some of the documents analyzed. With the rapid changes in business communication in the past decade, what can these documents tell us about the evolution of border business communication and Mexican business communication in general? This study suggests that both border communication and, more generally, Mexican communication are changing and are being cross-influenced by U.S. communication conventions and technology. With the sharing of computer systems and software, business outsourcing, and virtual communication, we are becoming borderless even where physical borders exist. This study of maturing border business documents can serve as a starting point for a richer exploration of historical and evolutionary, as well as modern, issues in border professional communication--between the United States and Mexico and beyond.

In addition, the preliminary results of this border study can have potentially far-reaching implications for communication, trade, and cultural interaction between Mexico and the United States. Specifically, results from this study suggest two implications for business communication and trade between the United States and Mexico. First, the results of this study identify an emerging need to dispel cultural myths or blanket categorizations when approaching culture in U.S.-Mexico business communication and trade. Stereotypical attitudes and culturally prescriptive practices in cross-cultural business communication should, for the most part, be dispelled to further facilitate U.S.-Mexico industrial and commercial relationships. In relation to the texts of this study, for example, the directness of Mexican professional border correspondence found in this study and the prevalent use of fax machines as a method of sending messages reflect a border professional culture that is competitively paced and, like the U.S. professional culture, values time, immediacy, and expediency, given that fax machines are still heavily relied upon in U.S. workplaces (especially industrial workplaces) to transmit both soft and hard content. Moreover, the fact that many of the documents analyzed here display a "let's get down to business" attitude suggests that contrary to what some researchers advocate, the long professional "courtships" between U.S. and Mexican professionals to establish personal ties before business can begin are not always necessary.

By considering new, nondivisive approaches to culture, approaches that do not create a dichotomy between "us and them," researchers and practitioners can begin to eradicate ethnocentric stereotypes and embrace hybridism. This leads us to the second implication for business communication and trade between the United States and Mexico--that is, the need to legitimize hybridism, not only as a cultural approach but as a cultural and linguistic space we create collectively and equally with others. Hybridism offers a viable alternative to divisive cultural approaches that pit culture against culture and often create tension and misunderstanding in international business relationships.

The findings of this study suggest that where there was once self and other, there now exists a shared space for these two entities to come together and collectively create something new. Thus, in U.S.-Mexico interaction, rigid cultural and professional divisions between self and other should be erased given that they only emphasize the differences rather than similarities of two countries that are highly integrated both culturally and economically. This is especially true of border regions, where professional customs and often ideological beliefs are shared because of cross-influences (hybridism) of the two cultures. Maquiladoras, for example, where the location is Mexican and the corporation is U.S. American, are by their very nature bicultural hybrids of Mexican-U.S. professional and ideological customs and behaviors. Thus, the focus of business communication between Mexico and the United States should be on adaptability, coexistence, and hybridism rather than on difference and dissimilarity.

Finally, professionals participating in transcultural interaction with Mexico should consider taking a less traditional approach, that is, divorcing self from other, expecting business culture in Mexico to be contingent on culturally and historically sensitive behaviors, and so forth, and begin thinking of Mexican professionals as persons fully capable of adapting to a variety of rhetorical business and technical situations--professionals who, contradictory to present communication research, are not locked in an impermeable system of culturally defined beliefs and attitudes that determine their professional behavior. Mexican professionals on the border are already crossing international boundaries of communication and by doing so, provide us with the opportunity to challenge what we envision when we imagine the intercultural exchanges that might take place within U.S.-Mexico business correspondence.

The implications of this study can be far reaching if we consider the numerous physical borders that exist not only between Mexico and the United States but also between many cities in countries around the world--cities shared by Germany and France, the United States and Canada, Austria and Hungary, to name just a few examples. More than ever before, border spaces are becoming areas for unique research. For example, future studies in border business communication could focus on professional communication in bilateral corporations such as maquiladoras or how e-mail and other communication technologies are influencing or informing the shared discourse of border business professionals. Similarly, emerging research (Ortiz, 2001) can continue to widen the aperture for further exploration of "reverse adaptation," where U.S. border writers are adopting rhetorical and linguistic behaviors typically associated with Mexican business writing. The rich information we can discover in studying border areas, regarding professional language and culture and culture and linguistics in general, can help us strengthen the bridges of communication that we create between ourselves and our international audiences.

As with all research, it is important to point out that the scope of the study is limited. Most notably, the study looks at the discourse of only one particular community--a specific Mexican company and its five writers--within a border business region. Therefore, it is difficult to expand and generalize the findings of this study to the larger area of international business communication. In addition, the text analysis research design for the study may be considered limited by some, given that the reading of these texts is dependent on the observations of one reader. Thus, the subjectivity factor must be accounted for in the interpretation of the texts. Finally, the scope of the study limits the analysis. For example, a more rigorous research design might have revealed additional patterns in the texts, such as how many texts displayed hybrid characteristics or what the specific relationship was between the writers and the readers. Despite these limitations, however, results from this study should encourage additional research on these important matters.

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Lorelei A. Ortiz (Ph.D., New Mexico State University, 2001) is an assistant professor of business communication in the School of Management and Business at St. Edward's University. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Dr. Lorelei A. Ortiz, 5401 Alomar Cove, Del Valle, TX 78617: e-mail: loreleio@admin.stedwards.edu.