Small. This adjective certainly applies to Basel. Dense. This one, without doubt, does too. This density shows in the plethora of different museums all around the city. One of the (one might add here internationally) more renown ones is the Kunstmuseum in the heart of the city. Another one, much less known (one might add […]

REMEMBER KARAJAN? Every orchestra musician knows at least one example of a true ‘old school’ conductor. One doesn’t necessarily have to go back as far as Herbert von Karajan and his Berlin Philharmonic to find pretty archaic relationships between conductors and orchestras. But how do conductors establish their leading position amongst a group of up […]

Museums play an important role for tourism in Basel. Thus, it is no surprise that museums use English  as an international language to reach and communicate with more tourists than could be achieved by Swiss German or even standard German. To reach younger international museum goers, instagram has become the medium of choice, but creating […]

  A well-known pharmaceutical company situated in Basel supplies work to more than 100 000 people (!) from over 140 nationalities (!!) according to their own sources. This definitely makes it an international company and thus, they necessarily require a branch on cultural diversity and inclusion. All websites that I can read provide us with […]

  Have you also noticed for a long time that English seems to be more and more a part of our lives every day? Particularly at work. All the major corporations seem to be rushing to hire employees with intermediate or advanced English skills. But which English skills do I need to pay more attention […]

  In this blogpost I examine how Roche – a multinational healthcare company, located in the heart of Basel – uses their website to construct a global identity by using English employee narratives. Even though the company is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, it has several branches all over the world. Its multinational status means that […]

  Source: File:DickseeRomeoandJuliet.jpg – Wikimedia Commons We’ve all heard of the famous love story of Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers, but I don’t recall their tale ever being used to describe a relationship between a company and a language. That is, however, until I interviewed a friend of mine who gave me the impression that this is […]