Frontstage and backstage BELF email communication: a case study of a Turkish-Bosnian company

English has assumed the role of a global business lingua franca (BELF) at the turn of the 21st century, with an ever-increasing number of multinational corporations (MNCs) adopting English as either their official corporate language, or, the working language as a natural byproduct of a company’s linguascape. This paper investigates the use of English in a business context drawing from the BELF paradigm, i.e. it sets out to compare and contrast the frontstage and backstage English in a multinational organization in written (email) communication, as an answer to a call by Kankaanranta et al. (2018), as this specific kind of study within this genre is still underrepresented and under-researched within the Global South setting. The emails used in this study were collected from a small-sized Turkish-Bosnian international company based in B&H with a total of 10 employees. The approach adopted for the analysis of the study is discourse-analytical in its essence, supported by corpus analysis instruments. The analysis showed that the backstage English, primarily used among employees for internal communication, is indeed in most cases characterized by BELF features. Conversely, frontstage English, was shown to be aligned more closely with native English norms due to its role in corporate branding and external communication, although showing some variability as well. It is expected that the results of the study will help in understanding English communication nuances within this particular business context and help businesses foster clearer, more effective interactions across linguistic and cultural boundaries.