Germany An International Business Plan Economics Essay

Germany An International Business Plan Economics Essay Abstract This paper will examine the country of Germany from the aspect of a corporation looking to do business there. It will consider aspects from the culture, people, technology, government, and their economic system. A business environment analysis report has been conducted to examine things corporations must consider when doing business in Germany. A report on opportunities for market entry has been conducted to identify potential import and export prospects for a potential firm in Germany. A market entry strategy assignment has also been conducted to develop a market strategy for launching new products in Germany. Germany: An International Business Plan MARKET INTELLIGENCE REPORT Profile The official name of Germany is the Federal Republic of Germany. The head of state is currently Christian Wulff and the head of government is Chancellor Angela Merkel. The population of Germany is 81.8 million people, with about 8% of the people being of foreign origin. Protestants and Catholics each make up third of the religious population, with an assortment of other religions filling the other third. German is the official language spoken in Germany; however, the vast majority of the population also speaks English. Geography Germany is a very temperate country located in Europe. It is much cooler and rainier than most of the United States. It is approximately 137,000 square miles, about the size of Montana. The largest city is Berlin with a population of about 3.5 million people. The next three largest cities, Munich, Cologne, and Hamburg all have populations over a million. As far as the terrain is concerned there are low plains in the north; high plains, hills, and basins in the center and east; mountainous alpine region in the south. People Most inhabitants of Germany are ethnic German. However, there are also more than 7 million foreign residents, a lot of those who are related to guest workers. Guest workers were foreign workers, mostly from Turkey, invited to Germany in the 1950s and 1960s to fill labor shortages) who remained in Germany. Germany has a sizable ethnic Turkish population (2.4% at the beginning of 2010). Germany is also a prime destination for political and economic refugees from many developing countries. An ethnic Danish minority lives in the north and a small Slavic minority known as the Sorbs lives in eastern Germany (Germany, 2012). Most foreigners do not have German citizenship, even if they were born and raised in Germany. This is due to highly restrictive German citizenship laws. However, change is coming, and with the citizenship and immigration law reforms that took place in 2002, many foreign citizens have been getting their citizenships and have gained the ability to naturalize. Germany has one of the worlds highest levels of education, technological development, and economic productivity. Since the end of World War II, the number of youths entering universities has more than tripled, and the trade and technical schools of the Federal Republic of Germany (F.R.G.) are among the worlds best (Germany, 2012). Germany, as country, is mainly middle class. The social welfare system that is set up in Germany provides universal medical care, generous unemployment compensation, and provides for many other social needs. Germans also travel extensively, and millions of Germans travel abroad every year. It is estimated that the population of Germany will decline from the current 81 million people to around 77 million people by 2050. Due to this demographic change, the available workforce aged 20-64 will shrink by more than six million by 2030, resulting in a marked shortage of skilled workers. In the absence of appropriate and timely policy action, demographic change threatens to become a constraining factor for prosperity and growth (Germany, 2012). When unification happened in 1990 Germany began a major undertaking. Their goal was to bring the standard of living of people living in the former German Democratic Republic to where it was in western Germany. This has really been a struggle for Germany because of how inefficient business had been in the former German Democratic Republic. There was also the issue of property ownership that had to be settled. On top of all of that, there was a tremendous amount of environmental damage from communist rule as well. Economic uncertainty in eastern Germany is often cited as one factor contributing to extremist violence, primarily from the political right. Confusion about the causes of the current hardships and a need to place blame has found expression in harassment and violence by some Germans directed toward foreigners, particularly non-Europeans. The vast majority of Germans condemn such violence (Germany, 2012). Economy Market Overview The state department has done a thorough overview of Germanys market and concluded the following: The German economy is the worlds fourth largest and, after the expansion of the EU, accounts for more than one-fifth of European Union GDP. Germany is the United States largest European trading partner and is the sixth largest market for U.S. exports. Germanys social market economy largely follows free-market principles, but with a considerable degree of government regulation and generous social welfare programs. The German economythe fifth largest in the world in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms and Europes largestis a leading exporter of machinery, vehicles, chemicals, and household equipment and benefits from a highly skilled labor force. Like its Western European neighbors, Germany faces significant demographic challenges to sustained long-term growth. Low fertility rates and declining net immigration are increasing pressure on the countrys social welfare system and have compelled the government to undertake structural reforms. The modernization and integration of the eastern German economywhere unemployment can exceed 20% in some municipalitiescontinues to be a costly and long-term process, with total transfers from west to east amounting to roughly $3 trillion so far. In 2011, gross domestic product grew by 2.7%. The countrys export-dependent economy is growing more quickly than the euro-zone average. In 2010, gross domestic product grew by 3.6%, and the German economy experienced its strongest rate of growth since reunification. Domestic demand is becoming a more prominent driver of growth. The German labor market also showed a strong performance in 2010 and 2011, with the unemployment rate dropping to 5.5% in October 2011. Economists attribute the decrease in unemployment to structural reforms implemented under the government of former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and to the use of government-sponsored short-time (Kurzarbeit) work programs. The German economy so far has been largely unaffected by the sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone, but a recession or slowdown of Europes largest economy is expected for the winter half of the 2011-2012 year, mostly due to declining exports to the countrys European partners. The European Union (EU) gave Germany until 2013 to get its consolidated budget deficit below 3% of GDP, and the governments 4-year fiscal consolidation program worth approximately à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬80 billion (U.S. $109.6 billion) is intended to meet deficit targets. Germanys deficit decreased from 3.3% of GDP in 2010 to 2.0% of GDP (est.) in 2011 thanks to the strong economy and low unemployment. In May 2011, Chancellor Merkel announced Germanys plan to phase out nuclear energy power by 2022. It is expected that this policy will further accelerate the growth of the renewable energies sector. Germany is the largest consumer market in the European Union with a population of over 82 million. However, the significance of the German marketplace goes well beyond its borders. An enormous volume of worldwide trade is conducted in Germany at some of the worlds largest trade events, such as MEDICA, Hannover Fair, Automechanika, and the ITB Tourism Show. The volume of trade, number of consumers, and Germanys geographic location at the heart of a 27-member European Union make it a cornerstone around which many U.S. firms seek to build their European and worldwide expansion strategies. Market Challenges The German economy has improved markedly in recent years. The economy took a serious hit during the economic crisis, but recovered quickly. The German economy has been steadily improving recently. There was a serious setback during the economic crisis, but recovery occurred quickly. Like most other OECD countries GDP declined significantly in 2009 (by 4.7%), but grew by 3.6% in 2010, the highest rate since unification. Following a 3% growth in 2011, the pace of expansion is expected to slow in 2012 (Germany, 2012). Most of the market research organizations had been predicting the GDP of Germany in 2012 to be around 1%, but are lowering that to around 0.6%. Labor The United States State Department (2012) had this to say in regards to Germanys labor market: The labor market remained resilient during the economic crisis and continued to be strong in 2011. In addition to a series of labor and social reforms implemented in recent years, many experts credit the government-funded short-time work program for limiting unemployment. Other factors, such as moderate wage increases, flexibility in bargaining agreements, numerous company-level alliances to retain jobs, and employers willingness to accept higher unit labor costs, also contributed to the stability of the German labor market. Job cuts in logistics and manufacturing have been offset by job creation in other sectors, such as services and health care. Also due to a declining workforce, average unemployment dropped to 2.976 million over the course of last year, with an average jobless rate of 7.1% down from 7.7% in 2010. For 2012, the government expects unemployment to decline to an average of 6.8%. Although unemployment is still higher in the east of the country than the west (11.3% versus 6.0%), it dropped to the lowest level in 20 years. The number of persons in employment living in Germany reached an all-time high (about 41.6 million) in November 2011, an increase of 521,000 from a year ago. The wages in Germany, when compared to the rest of the world, are among the highest in the European Union and worldwide. German labor is also known to be very productive and highly skilled. German quality is known throughout the world. Labor Law The unions in Germany are incredibly large and powerful. Strong labor laws protect the workers and give them many rights. The laws in Germany are much more substantial than in the United States. Ordinary dismissal of workers must be preceded by notice, which depends on the duration of the time the employee was with the company. It may vary from 1-7 months. The employee may also challenge the dismissal in court. The Mother Protection Law grants a mother a total of 36 months leave. 6 weeks prior to birth and 8 weeks thereafter are on paid leave. The mother and the employer can agree on a parental leave (max. 36 months), after which the employer provides her with the same job prior to the birth of the child. Social Security and Health Care cost are equally split up between the employee and the employer. Average working hours are 37.5 hours/week and annual leave varies between 20 and 30 working days (Export.gov Home, 2012). Trade Barriers There really are not a lot of formal barriers concerning trade with the United States or investment. The only one that could be considered substantial would be Germanys participation in the EUs Common Agricultural Policy and their continued restrictions on biotech agricultural products. This does place some barriers on U.S. goods. Germany has continually tried to get the EU commission to ease up on the regulations to help and try to promote innovation and help the EU members become more competitive. The government under Merkel has made the case for widespread reform in Germany. Specifically, there is a drive to cut through the bureaucratic red tape and reduce the costs due to the complex nature of their bureaucracy. The complexity, in and of itself, offers a certain degree of protection to the local businesses because the complexity of the regulations makes it that much more difficult for foreign competitors to do business in Germany. There are very stringent safety standard and environmental standards that are zealously applied that cuts back on the access available to U.S. products. As a result, any American companies considering exporting to Germany really need to evaluate the standards that would be applicable to their products and insure that they met them on a timely basis. Foreign Relations Germany continues to be close with the United States of America. They maintain their membership in NATO, and they continue to be a vital component of the EU. Germany made sure that after the war that they were actively involved in closer cooperation politically, economically, and defensively with other countries of Western Europe. Germany has been, and will continue to be, one of the largest contributors to the EU budget. After the war, Germany made great effort to repair its relationship with the countries of Eastern Europe. They started by establishing trade agreements and worked their way up to actual diplomatic relationships. When Germany unified in 1990, their relationship with other democratic countries in Europe blossomed even further. Government The government is parliamentary, and a democratic constitution emphasizes the protection of individual liberty and division of powers in a federal structure. The chancellor (prime minister) heads the executive branch of the federal government. The duties of the president (chief of state) are largely ceremonial; the chancellor exercises executive power. The Bundestag (lower, principal chamber of the parliament) elects the chancellor. The president normally is elected every 5 years by the Federal Assembly, a body convoked only for this purpose, comprising the entire Bundestag and an equal number of state delegates (Germany, 2012). The Bundestag, which serves a 4-year term, consists of at least twice the number of electoral districts in the country (299). When parties directly elected seats exceed their proportional representation, they may receive additional seats. The number of seats in the Bundestag was reduced to 598 for the 2002 elections. The Bundesrat (upper chamber or Federal Council) consists of 69 members who are delegates of the 16 Laender (states). The legislature has powers of exclusive jurisdiction and concurrent jurisdiction with the Laender in areas specified in the Basic Law. The Bundestag has primary legislative authority. The Bundesrat must concur on legislation concerning revenue shared by federal and state governments and those imposing responsibilities on the states. Germany has an independent federal judiciary consisting of a constitutional court, a high court of justice, and courts with jurisdiction in administrative, financial, labor, and social matters. The highest court is the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court), which ensures a uniform interpretation of constitutional provisions and protects the fundamental rights of the individual citizen as defined in the Basic Law (Germany, 2012). Technological Status Information technology, without a doubt, is the single most important factor in transforming the world into a global economy. As the rankings are starting to point out, how a company ranks as far as its advancement with information technology is also how it ranks in the overall global economy. Technology is what differentiates a superior economy from that of an inferior one. Technological innovation always lies at the core of any long-term potential of any economy, and Germany is no different. When looking at Europe as a whole, technological capability runs the gamut. In Great Britain and Ireland, they are much higher on capability than the rest of Europe. On the bottom end there is Greece, Italy, and Spain. Germany, and the rest of Europe, is somewhere in the middle. There is a lot of advancement in IT in fields that would necessitate that, such as aerospace, mobile phones, and pharmaceuticals. However, it is very poor in the service sectors. The general consensus is that Europes information technology infrastructure not only lags behind the U.S. and Japan, but that the technology gap is rapidly closing between Europe and Asias new tech powerhouses (like China, India and South Korea). Europe risks being squeezed between the high end challenge posed by the U.S. and Japan and the catch-up challenge posed by the rapidly developing countries (Hamilton Quinlan, 2008). Where Germany is a little stronger in the technological exports is within the realm of medium-high tech exports. According to Hamilton and Quinlan (2008): When it comes to high-tech exports, Germanys share (20.5%) lags behind the EU15 average (25.7%), and is well under the share of the U.S. (36.1%) and China (36%). Against this backdrop, as Germany edges closer to being a knowledge-based service economy, it must keep and embellish its competitive strengths in high-tech goods and services, or suffer a loss in average economic welfare. In a world economy where the application of technology and innovation increasingly dictates both the pace of change and the level of economic prosperity, Germany is challenged to raise its innovation-intensity production and capabilities, while continuing to attract the investment capital and IT core competencies of foreign technology leaders. However, this is not to say that Germany does not have its strengths. In fact, Germany was the third ranked company in 2006 for global patents. The regions in Germany account for nine of the 20 innovation regions in Europe. Germany is more advanced in IT usage and applications than most of Europe and is a favored destination for IT leaders looking to tap indigenous RD talent (Hamilton Quinlan, 2008). Germany is also way ahead of the rest of the EU in terms of their citizens using the internet and using computers at home and at work. Underpinning this dynamic, Germany is ahead of the EU in general in the use of the internet and computers at home and at work. Germany has also become the world leader in alternative energy technology, and has produced a third of all solar cells and half of all wind turbines worldwide. BUSINESS EVIRONMENT ANALYSIS REPORT Center of European Economy Largest Market in Europe. Of all the markets within Europe Germany is by far the largest. It makes up 20 percent of Europes gross domestic product. It also contains close to 20 percent of the total population of the European Union. The GDP has grown about 1.8% every year for the last five years. The economy of Germany is very industrialized, with a very heavy focus being on service and production. They are also very forward thinking in Germany, evidenced by the large amounts of money earmarked for research and development. Belief in Exportation Even though there has been a tremendous amount of shakiness in the world economy, Germany has somehow managed to stay stable. They continue to export worldwide on a grand basis. In fact, in 2003, Germany became the worlds leading exporter, having overtaken the United States for that title. Germanys biggest trading partners include France, UK, the Netherlands, Japan, China, and the United States. Foreign Direct Investment Preparing for FDI Free and Open Markets. An attractive part of the German business environment is how welcoming Germany is towards foreign direct investment. Foreign direct investment, in its classic definition, is defined as a company from one country making a physical investment into building a factory in another country. The direct investment in buildings, machinery and equipment is in contrast with making a portfolio investment, which is considered an indirect investment (Graham Spaulding, 2004). The interesting thing is that Germany treats German investment into business the same way as they treat foreign investment into business. There is no distinction made. There are also no restrictions or barriers to capital transactions or currency transfers, real estate purchases, repatriation of profits, or access to foreign exchanges (Germanys business environment:, 2009). Attracting FDI Globally. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Germany ranks among the worlds leading countries for foreign direct investments with more than EUR 476 billion in FDI stocks in 2008. Official German statistics further underscore Germanys attractiveness as a business location. Bundesbank (German Central Bank) FDI stock statistics indicate a growth of 2.2 percent in 2007 to EUR 459billion (Germanys business environment, 2009). New Investment Projects Foreign Direct Investment Projects. There are over 45,000 foreign companies that operate within the borders of Germany, and these companies employ over 3 million people. Every year more companies realize that operating from Germany is a financially sound decision. Diverse Industry Opportunities. When looking at the different markets that foreign companies are invested in, one will note that it is quite diversified, including 39 different industry sectors. Most of the new investment from foreign companies is invested in to the IT and software industry. In fact, this industry accounts for 20% of every foreign direct investment project in Germany. Business and financial services, and automotive and industrial machinery and equipment are the next top industries. Research and Development High-Tech Germany High Turnover with Innovative Products. Over 27 percent of German manufacturing company turnover is generated from innovative products. These products are new to the enterprise and to the market. In France and the UK, this ratio is comparatively low at around 16 percent, whereas in Finland the level is at 21 percent. The European average lies at 19 percent (Germanys business environment, 2009). Technological Leader. Germany has always been known for their high quality and innovation, and they are one of the worlds leaders in developing new technology. They are also one of the largest exporters of high-technology goods as well. In 2007, Germany exported high-tech goods to the value of EUR 114 billion -making it the top exporter in Europe and third worldwide (Germanys business environment, 2009). Knowledge Base of Workers. Germany is also known for the knowledge of their population, namely scientists. Germany has the largest population of scientists in all of Europe. German scientists work on projects all over the globe. Business Climate Cost Effectiveness High Productivity. In the last decade, Germany has become incredibly efficient in their industries. Their overall productivity rose much faster than the labor cost increase. Because of this, it costs them much less to produce things than many other countries. This gives them a competitive advantage. As a result, much of the world views Germany as having the best process technologies in action. Labor Costs. Another reason Germany is favored by many companies considering foreign direct investment is the stable and low labor costs. Germany has the lowest labor rate growth in the last decade in all of Europe, at two percent. This has not been the case for the rest of Europe. Since 2000 wages have risen in most European countries -at a rate significantly above that of the EU-27 average increase of 3.7 percent (Germanys business environment, 2009). Competitive Tax System. The tax system in Germany is one of the most competitive in the world. Corporations only have to pay a 30% tax rate. Trade taxes have also been drastically reduced. Labor Market Highly Skilled and Educated Workforce. The workforce in Germany contains over 40 million people, the largest amount of labor in Europe. However, the sheer volume of Germanys labor force is not the main attraction. Germanys work force is highly skilled and educated. Eighty percent of Germanys workforce has had vocational training or is a college graduate. German government ties the amount of investment into education to Germanys gross domestic product, ensuring that the two stay linked. Germany also has one of the highest rates of workers receiving doctoral degrees. Germany also employs what is known as a dual education system. In this system, workers receive on-the-job training while they are attending school, for a period of two to three years. This system has over 300 occupations that are accepted in this program, and because it is regulated, a certain level of quality is guaranteed. Closer to Market Logistics. With state-of-the-art transportation networks by road, rail, sea, and inland waterways as well as a dense network of both national and international airports, Germany provides easy access to domestic and international markets (Germanys business environment, 2009). As a result, Germany is a major player in the logistics game globally. Their logistics account for 28% of the European logistics market, making them a huge player in Europe. In fact, more goods pass through the country of Germany, than any other country in Europe. Germany has the second busiest port in Europe, located in Hamburg. They also have Europes largest port container terminal in Bremerhaven. If that was not enough to cement Germanys stature as a global logistics force, there are also the companies in Germany themselves. In fact, the worlds largest logistics services provider is a German company Deutsche Post World Net (DPWN). Deutsche Bahn is the worlds second largest transportation and logistics company and Lufthansa Cargo is the global air freight services leader (Germanys business environment, 2009). Excellent Business Environment Good Legal System. Germany has an incredibly stable and transparent legal environment, and has been globally ranked as one of the safest places to conduct business. Germans was also ranked as the safest country in the world concerning the security of intellectual property. Secure Place to Conduct Business. Germany has a growing business landscape and is becoming well known for the safety in which that business is conducted. White-collar crime is lower in Germany than most of its neighbors. Laws are upheld, and private property laws are strong. Easy Start Up. Corporations and enterprises looking to set up shop will find that the process to do so could not be easier. The rules and regulations for starting up an operation in Germany are simple and thus, very efficient and quick. REPORT ON OPPORTUNITIES FOR MARKET ENTRY An organization should not only determine whether the business environment of Germany is conducive to their operations but also whether their product is within the growing industries of Germany. There are many industries blooming in Germany, but two stand far above the rest: management consulting services and medical equipment. Management Consulting Services Germany is the largest consulting market in Europe. Consulting took off in Germany during 2011 and overall revenues were up around 10 percent. This growth trend is supposed to continue through 2012 as well. Demand was especially strong in the automotive (up 19 percent) and consumer goods (up 14.3 percent) industries. The two largest consulting fields are strategic and organizational/process consulting (Germanys business environment, 2009). Projects that have to deal with growth and innovation, or business development, have great growth potential. Medical Equipment Germany also has the largest European market for medical devices, and is third in the world. Demand will mainly be driven by demographics and a substantial increase in the number of patients and by the need for more efficient procedures. The German medical market expects a sales growth of approximately 6% this year, with continued upwards trends predicted for next year as well (Germanys business environment, 2009). This industry sector has the most potential for corporations that can bring innovative products to the table at competitive prices. The medical technology sector continues to be strong on innovation and growth and will provide excellent potential for U.S. suppliers of innovative and price-competitive products. MARKET ENTRY STRATEGY ASSIGNMENT When considering how to undertake a successful market entry into Germany, there are two things to consider: high quality and modern styling. Germans are responsive to the innovation and high technology evident in U.S. products, such as computers, computer software, electronic components, health care and medical devices, synthetic materials, and automotive technology (Germanys business environment, 2009). Price is not that high of a priority for German buyers, the emphasis remains on quality. Germany also has a very high rate of Internet access, and as more and more Germans gain access, products and services relating to that will grow as well. In speaking about the German market, the United States State Department (2012) had this to say: The German market is decentralized and diverse, with interests and tastes differing dramatically from one German state to another. Successful market strategies take into account regional differences as part of a strong national market presence. Experienced representation is a major asset to any market strategy, given that the primary competitors for most American products are domestic firms with established presences. U.S. firms can overcome such stiff competition by offering high-quality products, services at competitive prices, and locally based after-sales support. For investors, Germanys relatively high marginal tax rates and complicated tax laws may constitute an obstacle, although deductions, allowances and write-offs help to move effective tax rates to internationally competitive levels. Direct Marketing Germans do quite a bit of shopping from catalogs and they are starting to do more shopping online. Three-fourths of German companies use direct marketing in some fashion. Email marketing is by far the most common form of direct marketing and a company looking to gain market entry would be wise to consider the virtues of this method. Selling Strategies The key to selling in Germany is realizing that there has to be some form of long-term commitment. There is a feeling in Germany that U.S. corporations give preferential treatment to their domestic sales, at the expense of their global market. There is also the concern of corporations from the United States being in it for the long-haul and sticking around for after-sales support. Addressing these concerns will alleviate worry and establish credibility. The German customer also expects superior customer service. They expect to be able to call and talk with someone from the organization for help and would require this immediately. American exporters should avoid appointing distributors with impossibly large

Family history Essay

English 12 Oct, 02 2013 Cuiyu.He Mr.Wong My Father My father is one responsibility person. My grandmother has four children, my father is the oldest one, and he has two brothers and one sister. They were very poor in their childhood, my father only finished middle school, and then he needs go get a job for his brothers and sister to pay for the school. When my father was teenager, he can do a lot of things such as farming, selling the crops and take care of the family. My Father was born in 1963, has experienced the Cultural Revolution of the 60 s and seventy s life, he has also experienced the Cultural Revolution after the era of reform and opening up in the eighty s and ninety s life and well-off life in the 21st century. I always hear my father say, I was born at right time; when I was born I can have anything. Before China carried out reform and open policy, my father was not enough twenty year old. The whole country was poor at that time, Even the common people to raise a few chickens and sold eggs have a little more money can’t buy buy clothes, include my father’s family. My father remember as he was a child, every sew a new clothes must wait for Chinese New Year, and sewed particularly big, wear in the body doesn’t fit, sewing plan have to grow up when he was three years old can wear, if the fit, the body grow up a year, the clothes will not grow up. Every clothes were wear by brother and yonger brother and then sister in turns. anyway, the youngest children basic can’t wear new clothes, can only wear take down the old clothes, and often the old clothes on pile of patch. When my father was a kid, listen to my grandmother said: â€Å"in order to save money, grandmother just buy 1 cent or 2 cents vegetables, 9 cents of rice, meat, fish is unthinkable, is eat fish oil are not to burn, only 5 per person per month plan two oil, half jins of flesh, Sometime they do not have enough food for everyone, they were only eat sweet potato evey meal; they do not have any pork to eat, and until they would have a chicken to eat must wait for New Year.my grandmother to the balance of the money you gave birth to a child do confined, due to the lack of nutrition, grandmother sometimes faint in the ground, the grandfather’s wages to the 52, 50 RMB, only slightly better family life. In order to reduce the burden of my grandfather, my father took temporary workers, worked at the porters, stevedore, caster, Turner, he only have 28 to 60 RMB a month. After the reform and opening up to a good period, especially into the 21st century, our lives have improved considerably, my father’s income also has in the past 300 RMB rose to nearly 30000 , my father was building our first home in our hometown. In 1997, my father immigrant to the Untied State, he also working hard every day. My father used his whole life for his family, I love him, and He is always my most respected person in my heart.

A Corpus-Based Analysis of Mixed Code in Hong Kong Speech

2012 International Conference on Asian Language Processing A Corpus-based Analysis of Mixed Code in Hong Kong Speech John Lee Halliday Centre for Intelligent Applications of Language Studies Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics City University of Hong Kong [email  protected] edu. hk Abstract—We present a corpus-based analysis of the use of mixed code in Hong Kong speech. From transcriptions of Cantonese television programs, we identify English words embedded within Cantonese utterances, and investigate the motivations for such code-switching.Among the many motivations observed in previous research, we found that four alone account for more than 95% of the use of English words in our speech data across genres, genders, and age groups. We performed analyses over more than 60 hours of transcribed speech, resulting in one of the largest empirical studies to-date on this linguistic phenomenon. Keywords-code-mixing; English; corpus linguistics. code-switching; Canton ese; II. PREVIOUS RESEARCH I. INTRODUCTIONWhile Cantonese is the mother tongue for the vast majority of the people in Hong Kong, English is also spoken by 43% of the population [1], reflecting the city’s heritage as a British colony. A well-known feature of the speech in Hong Kong is code-switching, i. e. , â€Å"the juxtaposition of passages of speech belonging to two different grammatical systems or sub-systems, within the same exchange† [2]. Specifically, in the case of Hong Kong, the two grammatical systems are Cantonese and English.The former serves as the ‘matrix language’, and the latter as the ‘embedded language’, resulting in Cantonese sentences with English segments such as (example taken from [3]): canteen heoi3 canteen jam2 caa4 ‘let’s go to the canteen for lunch’ Here, the English segment contains only one word (‘canteen’), but in general, it can be a whole clause. We will use the general term â₠¬Ëœcode-switching’ rather than the more specific term ‘code-mixing’, which refers to switching below the clause level, even though most English segments in our corpus indeed contain only one or two words (see Table 3).There is already a large body of literature devoted to the study of Cantonese-English code-switching from the theoretical linguistic point of view [3,4,5]. This paper investigates the motivations behind the use of mixed code, on the basis of a large dataset of speech transcribed from television programs. In Section II, we outline previous research on the motivations of code-switching, and discuss how our investigation complements theirs. In Section III, we describe our methodology for corpus construction, in particular the design of the taxonomy of code-switching motivations.In Section IV, we present an analysis of these motivations according to genre, gender and age. The first major framework for classifying codeswitching motivations in Hong Kong c onsists of two categories: ‘expedient’ and ‘orientational’ [6]. Central to this framework is the distinction between words in ‘high Cantonese’ and ‘low Cantonese’. In everyday conversations, a speaker sometimes cannot find any word from ‘low Cantonese’ to describe an object, institution or idea (e. g. , ‘application form’). Using a word from ‘high Cantonese’ (e. g. , biu2 gaak3), however, would sound too formal and therefore stylistically inappropriate.In expedient mixing, the speaker resorts to an English word; the mixing is pragmatically motivated. In contrast, orientational mixing is socially motivated. The speaker chooses to use English (e. g. , ‘barbecue’) despite the availability of equivalent words from both ‘low Cantonese’ (e. g. , siu2 je5 sik6) and ‘high Cantonese’ (e. g. , siu1 haau1), since he perceives the subject matter to be inherently more ‘western’. This dichotomy has been criticized as overly simplistic, because of the ambiguity in defining lexical and stylistic equivalents among ‘low Cantonese’, ‘high Cantonese’, and English.Instead, a four-way taxonomy is proposed: euphemism, specificity, bilingual punning, and the principle of economy [7]. This taxonomy is then further extended, in a study of code-switching in text media [8], to include quotations, doubling, identity marking, and interjection. These categories will be explained in detail in Section III. While these classification systems are comprehensive and well grounded, they do not per se convey any sense of the relative importance or distribution of the various motivations.Our goal is, first, to empirically verify the coverage of these classification systems on a large dataset of transcribed speech; and, second, to give quantitative answers to questions such as: Which kinds of motivations are the most prominent? Does t he range of motivations differ according to the speech genre, or to the speaker’s gender or age? We now turn our attention to the methodology for constructing and annotating a speech corpus for these research purposes. III. DATA A. Source Material Our corpus is constructed from television programs broadcast in Hong Kong within the last four years by Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB).The programs belong to a variety of genres, including two drama series, three current-affairs shows, a news program, and a talk show. The news program, TVB News at Six-Thirty, carries the most formal register, containing mostly pre-planned 165 978-0-7695-4886-9/12 $26. 00  © 2012 IEEE DOI 10. 1109/IALP. 2012. 10 speech by the anchor. The current-affairs shows, Tuesday Report, Sunday Report and Hong Kong Connection, are serious in tone but contain spontaneous discussions. The talk show, My Sweets, is about food and drink.It also contains spontaneous discussions, but the topics tend to be lighte r. Although pre-planned, the speech in both drama series, Moonlight Resonance and Yes Sir, Sorry Sir, is arguably the least formal in register, designed to reflect natural speech in everyday life. Details of these TV programs are presented in Table 1. Table 1: Television programs that serve as the source material of our corpus. Genre Program Length Current Tuesday Report ( ), 135 episodes affairs ), X 20 minutes Sunday Report ( Hong Kong Connection ( ) Talk 24 episodes My Sweets ( ) show X 30 minutesEuphemism: When a Cantonese word explicitly mentions something that the speaker finds embarrassing, s/he might opt for an English word that contains no such mention. For example, to avoid the female body part hung1 ‘breast’ in the word hung1 wai4 ‘bra’, the speaker might prefer to use the English ‘bra’ (all examples are taken from [7]): bra tau3 bra gaak3 gaak3 ‘A princess whose bra is visible’ Specificity: â€Å"Sometimes an English e xpression is preferred because its meaning is more general or specific compared with its near-synonymous counterparts,† [7] in either low or high Cantonese.For example, the verb ‘to book’ means ‘to make a reservation for which no money or deposit is required’, which is more specific than its closest equivalent in Cantonese, deng6 ‘to make a reservation’. It is often used in sentences such as: book ngo5 soeng2 book saam1 dim2 ‘I want to book 3 o’clock’ Principle of Economy: â€Å"An English expression may also be preferred because it is shorter and thus requires less linguistic effort compared with its Chinese/Cantonese equivalent. † [7] While the word ‘check-in’ has two syllables, its Cantonese equivalent baan6 lei5 dang1 gei1 sau2 zuk6 ‘check-in [on a plane]’ has six.The principle of economy is thus likely the reason behind mixed code such as: check-in nei5 check-in zo2 mei6 aa3 Ã¢â‚¬Ë œHave you checked in already? ’ The taxonomy in [8] builds on the one in [7], further enriching it with categories2 below: Quotation: When citing text or someone else’s speech, one often prefers to use the original code to avoid having to perform translation. An example is direct speech: â€Å"What do you think? † jau5 go3 pang4 jau5 man6 ngo5 what do you think ‘A friend asked me, â€Å"What do you think? ’ Doubling: Originally named ‘Emphasis or avoidance of repetition’ [8], it will be referred to as ‘Doubling’ [9] here to make it explicit, as this category refers to English words that are embedded alongside Cantonese words that have the same or nearly the same meaning. The purpose is to emphasize the idea or to avoid repetitions. In the following sentence, it serves as an emphasis: 2 News Drama TVB News at Six-Thirty ( ) Moonlight Resonance ( ), Yes Sir, Sorry Sir ( Sir Sir) 5 episodes X 20 minutes 4 episodes X 45 minute s B.Data Processing From the television programs listed in Table 1, all code-mixed utterances were transcribed, preserving the original languages, either Cantonese or English. Following standard practice, loan words are not considered to be mixed code; in our context, all English words (e. g. , ‘taxi’) that have been adapted into Cantonese phonology (e. g. , dik1 si2) were excluded. The TV captions corresponding to each of these utterances are also recorded as part of the corpus. These captions are in standard Chinese, rather than Cantonese.Furthermore, alignments between the Chinese word(s) in the caption and the English word(s) in the utterance are annotated. This information will be used in the classification of motivations. Finally, two kinds of metadata about the speaker are recorded: gender (male or female) and age group (teenager or adult). C. Taxonomy of Code-Switching Motivations Our goal is to quantitatively characterize the motivations behind code-switching; to this end, each English segment in the Cantonese sentences in our corpus is to be labeled with a motivation. Due to time constraint, this classification was performed only on the currentaffairs and talk shows.The ‘expedient’ vs. ‘orientational’ classification system is too coarse for our purpose. Instead, we adopted the taxonomy in [7,8] as our starting point, then introduced some new categories to accommodate our data. The categories in [7] are1: 1 A fourth category, ‘bilingual punning’, is excluded from our taxonomy. As may be expected, punning is rarer in speech, and is indeed not found in our corpus. Among these categories is ‘identity marking’, for mixed code that marks â€Å"social characteristics such as social status, education status, occupation, as well as regional affiliation. [8] We found it difficult to objectively identify this motivation, and excluded it from our taxonomy. 166 Very good very good m4 co3 aa1 Ã¢â‚¬Ë œVery good, very good! ’ Interjection: English interjections may be inserted into the Cantonese sentence. For example: Anyway anyway nei5 hou2 sai1 lei6 ak1 ‘Anyway, you are awesome! ’ A significant amount of mixed code in our corpus, however, still does not fit into any of the above categories. Most fall under one of two reasons, ‘Personal Name’ and ‘Register’.We therefore added them to our taxonomy: Register: This is roughly equivalent to the ‘expedient’ category in [6], but will be referred to as ‘Register’ in this paper to make the motivation explicit. Sometimes, the speaker cannot find any equivalent ‘low Cantonese’ word, but feels awkward to use a more formal ‘high Cantonese’ word (e. g. , paai1 deoi3 ‘party’). As a result, s/he resorts to an English equivalent instead. For example, party hoi1 ci2 laa1 ngo5 dei6 go3 party ‘Our party is starting’ Personal Name: It is common practice among Hong Kong people to adopt an English name.Although this phenomenon may be considered ‘orientational’ codemixing in terms of the ‘western’ perception [6], it is given its own category, because it is very specific and accounts for a substantial amount of our data. A typical example is: Teresa, Teresa ngo5 dei6 zing2 dak1 leng3 m4 leng3 ‘Teresa, did we make it nicely? ’ D. Annotation Procedure We thus have a total of eight categories in our taxonomy of code-switching motivations. Five of these categories – namely, ‘euphemism’, ‘quotation’, ‘doubling’, ‘interjection’, and ‘personal name’ – can usually be unambiguously discerned.The annotator, however, has often found it difficult to distinguish between ‘specificity’, ‘register’, and ‘principle of economy’. To maintain consistency, we adopted the fol lowing procedure. When an English segment does not fit into any of the five â€Å"easy† categories, the annotator is to decide whether it has the same meaning as the Chinese word in the caption to which it is aligned. If it is deemed not to have the same meaning, then it is assigned ‘specificity’. If it is equivalent in meaning, and the annotator cannot think of any equivalent in ‘low Cantonese’, then it is labeled ‘register’.Lastly, if there is a ‘low Cantonese’ equivalent, but its number of syllables is larger than that of the English segment, then the motivation is ‘principle of economy’. IV. ANALYSIS English segments in Cantonese speech (section A), then discuss the distribution of the categories of motivations, both overall and with respect to genres, genders, and age groups (section B). A. Density and Length of English Segments It is well known that English words are sprinkled rather liberally in the Canto nese speech in Hong Kong. We measure how the frequency of English segments varies across different genres.As shown in Table 2, the frequency correlates with the register of the genre (see Section III. A). In the drama series, the most colloquial genre, one and a half English words are uttered per minute on average. The talk show occupies second place, and the current affairs shows have slightly less frequent English words. In the news program, where the speech is preplanned, the anchor did not utter any English word. Table 2: The total number of Cantonese sentences containing English segments, and the total number of English words transcribed. The last column shows how often an English word is uttered.Program genre Drama Talk show Current affairs News # sent with English 219 487 1495 0 # English words 259 625 1995 0 Frequency (words/min) 1. 4 0. 87 0. 74 0 Second, we measure the length of the English segments. Table 3 shows that the vast majority of English segments contain no more than two words. Across all genres, more than 80% of the English segments consist of only one English word. This figure is comparable to the 81. 4% for text data reported in [8]. Table 3: Proportion of English segments with only one (e. g. , â€Å"canteen†) or two words (e. g. , â€Å"thank you†).Program genre Drama Current affairs Talk show One-word 85% 85% 81% Two-word 11% 11% 17% This section presents some preliminary analyses on this corpus. We first consider the frequency and length of B. Motivations for the use of mixed code A plethora of motivations have been posited for the use of mixed code in Hong Kong (see Section II). Applying our proposed classification system (see Section III. C) on our corpus of transcribed speech, we aim now to discern the relative prevalence of the various kinds of codeswitching motivations. Table 4 shows the distribution of these motivations in the current-affairs and the talk shows.Four dominant motivations – chiefly ‘reg ister’, but also ‘personal name’, ‘principle of economy’, and ‘specificity’ – are attributed to more than 95% of the English segments. This trend is the same across genres (current-affairs and talk shows), genders (see Table 6), and age groups (see Table 5). All other categories, including quotations, euphemism, doubling, and interjection, are relatively infrequent. Genres. Among the four dominant motivations, ‘register’ – the use of appropriately informal words – is the most frequent motivation in both the current-affairs and 167 talk shows.Its proportion, however, is significantly more marked (47. 4%) in the talk show than in current affairs (36. 4%), reflecting the more informal nature of the former. Table 4: Distribution of code-switching motivations, contrasted between genres. Motivation Current affairs Talk show Register 36. 4% 47. 4% Personal Name 26. 8% 24. 5% Principle of economy 19. 0% 17. 6% S pecificity 13. 2% 8. 2% Quotation 2. 1% 1. 0% Doubling 1. 4% 0. 4% Interjection 0. 9% 1. 0% Euphemism 0. 3% 0% Age groups. Table 5 contrasts the distributions of code-switching motivations between adults and teenagers in the current-affairs shows 3 .As mentioned above, the four major motivations remain constant. However, teenagers are much more likely than adults to use English words to achieve more informal register (52. 4% vs. 35. 1%). They also tend more to opt for English to save effort (23. 8% vs. 18. 6%). Somewhat surprisingly at first glance, teenagers address others in English names less often than adults (2. 4% vs. 28. 8%); it turns out that in the conversations in our corpus, teenagers often prefer to address adults with the more formal Chinese names, likely out of respect.Table 5: Distribution of code-switching motivations, contrasted between age groups. Motivation Adults Teenagers Register 35. 1% 52. 4% Personal Name 28. 8% 2. 4% Principle of economy 18. 6% 23. 8% Specif icity 13. 1% 14. 3% Quotation 1. 9% 4. 0% Doubling 1. 3% 2. 4% Interjection 0. 9% 0% Euphemism 0. 3% 0. 8% use English names to address others (32. 9% vs. 18. 9%); men, on the other hand, more frequently use English words to reduce effort (22. 9% vs. 14. 8%). V. CONCLUSIONS We have described the construction of a corpus of Cantonese-English mixed code, based on speech transcribed from television programs in Hong Kong.Drawn from more than 60 hours of speech, this corpus is among the largest of its type. A novel feature of the corpus is the annotation of the motivation behind each code-mixed utterance. Having proposed a classification system for these motivations, we applied it on our corpus, and reported differences in the use of mixed code between genres, genders and age groups. A key finding is that four main motivations – ‘register’, ‘personal name’, ‘principle of economy’, and ‘specificity’ — account for more than 95% of the embedded English segments.ACKNOWLEDGMENT This project was partially funded by a Small-Scale Research Grant from the Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics at City University of Hong Kong. We thank Man Chong Mak and Hiu Yan Wong for compiling the corpus and performing annotation. REFERENCES [1] K. H. Y. Chen, â€Å"The Social Distinctiveness of Two Code-mixing Styles in Hong Kong,† in Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Bilingualism, MA: Cascadilla Press, 2005, pp. 527541. J. Gumperz, â€Å"The sociolinguistic significance of conversational code-switching,† in RELC Journal 8(2), 1977, pp. 1—34. J.Gibbons, â€Å"Code-mixing and koineizing in the speech of students at the university of Hong Kong†, in Anthropological Linguistics 21(3), 1979, pp. 113—123. B. H. -S. Chan, â€Å"How does Cantonese-English code-mixing work? †, in Language in Hong Kong at Century’s End, M. C. Pennington (ed. ), 1998, pp. 19 1—216, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. D. C. S. Li, â€Å"Linguistic convergence: Impact of English on Hong Kong Cantonese,† in Asian Englishes 2(1), 1999, pp. 5—36. K. K. Luke, â€Å"Why two languages might be better than one: motivations of language mixing in Hong Kong†, in Language in Hong Kong at Century’s End, M.C. Pennington (ed. ), 1998, pp. 145—159, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. D. C. S. Li, â€Å"Cantonese-English code-switching research in Hong Kong: a Y2K review,† in World Englishes 19(3), 2000, pp. 305— 322. H. Cao, â€Å"Development of a Cantonese-English code-mixing speech recognition system,† PhD dissertation, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. R. Appel and P. Muysken, Language contact and bilingualism. London: Arnold, 1987. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] Table 6: Distribution of code-switching motivations, contrasted between genders.Motivation Female Male Register 37. 5% 40. 7% Personal Name 32. 9% 18. 9% Principle of economy 14. 8% 22. 9% Specificity 10. 9% 13. 2% Quotation 1. 9% 1. 7% Doubling 1. 1% 1. 3% Interjection 0. 7% 1. 1% Euphemism 0. 3% 0. 2% Genders. Finally, we investigate whether codeswitching motivations are biased according to gender. Aggregating statistics from both the current-affairs and talk shows, Table 6 compares the motivations of males and those of females. Females are shown to be more likely to 3 [7] [8] [9] The speakers in the talk show are predominantly adults. 168

Equal Employment, Diversity And Discrimination - 1499 Words

The topics for this research paper are Equal Employment, diversity and discrimination because I feel that these topics are strongly needed in any organization. Employees in the workplace can be discriminated against of gender identity, sexual orientation, race, age, disability, ethnicity, nationality, and so on. Companies need to strive to eliminate any of the various barriers above to ensure equal access to employment, services, and benefits, to both the current and future employees. The author, of a discrimination article I read, states, â€Å"That workplace discrimination, job stress, social class, and religiosity were related to lower levels of job satisfaction.† (Ali Rasheed) Equal Employment Opportunities bring a lot of good ideas to the†¦show more content†¦Women are not the only people to experience workplace discrimination; other factors play a role in it as well but an agency was made to support discriminated people and fit for their rights. 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