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It is often said, in business and business schools, that accounting is the language of business. This paper attempts to deconstruct this nostrum by demonstrating the possibility of a language of business existing and why accounting is not it. The paper will briefly discuss the technical ability of accounting to behave as a communication medium and finally suggest that other functions may have a stronger claim.

Accounting practices vary not only across firms, but also across countries, reflecting the respective legal and cultural background. Attempts at harmonization therefore continue to be rebuffed. The purpose of this paper is to argue that different wordings in national laws, and different interpretations of similar wordings in national laws, can be explained by taking recourse to the philosophy of language, referring particularly to Searle and Wittgenstein.

The example of the substance over form principle, investigated in seven countries, is particularly suitable for this analysis. It is known in all accounting jurisdictions, but still has very different roots in different European countries, with European and international influences conflicting, which is reflected in the different wording of the principle from one country to the next, and the different socially constructed realities associated with those wordings.

This paper shows that, beyond accounting practices, the legal and cultural background of a country affects the wording of national law itself. The broad conclusion is that different socially constructed realities might tend to resist any attempt at harmonized socially constructed words.

The paper contributes to the debate surrounding the possible homogenization of accounting regulations, illustrating the theory of the social construction of both “reality” and “language” on the specific application of one common principle to various Member State environments.

This paper aims to explore the individual and social learning experiences of first-year accounting students studying in English as an additional language. The challenges of these students relating to listening, reading, speaking and writing in English, and the impact of these on their academic outcomes, are examined.

A qualitative case study design was used. Face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 students, both academically successful and unsuccessful, who had completed the first year. A thematic analysis of the data was conducted and a hybrid approach of deductive and inductive coding was used to interpret the data. This entailed the application of a language skills-based framework of teaching and learning to the first-order process of coding. An iterative and reflective process allowed themes to emerge from the data. These themes, in turn, triggered second-order codes that resonated with aspects of the interactionist approach to second language acquisition (SLA).

The themes that emerged indicated that students’ ability to interact with their study material, and their exposure to positive verbal interaction opportunities in both formal and informal contexts, may have contributed to their academic success.

It is recommended that an interactionist perspective be considered when designing curriculum resources and accounting language learning activities for first-year accounting students.

It is anticipated that the results will contribute towards building a bridge between accounting education and SLA research and provide a more informed linguistic foundation for incorporating language skills into the accounting curriculum.

Drawing on the semantic field theory, the paper aims to uncover the challenges of importing and translating a management accounting concept into the Russian language and the semantic nature of resistance towards the imported management accounting concept.

The paper draws on the extensive literature review of the histories of accounting in the Soviet Union and the United States in the first part of the twentieth century and 17 interviews conducted with the Russian accounting academics.

We demonstrate the case of resistance in adopting the imported Anglo-Saxon management accounting concept. We also discuss historical underpinning and origins of this resistance in light of semantic field theory.

The paper calls for more research in the non-Anglo-Saxon contexts problematizing conventional assumptions and beliefs about objectivity and universality of accounting language.

The study demonstrates the importance of understanding historical and cross-cultural developments of accounting language for accounting educators and practitioners. Critical awareness of the differences in semantic fields of accounting can help accounting researchers and educators to develop contextualized research projects and context-relevant teaching practices.

The study contributes to the literature on translations of accounting concepts by demonstrating that accounting concepts are not understood in isolation, instead, they are interpreted in relation to each other. The present study demonstrates that the relationship between the management accounting concept (the signifier) and its meanings (signifieds) is fluid, culturally and historically contingent. To understand this relationship, we should attend to the historical development of semantic fields and associative relations between concepts.

Stakeholder theory research identifies changes in language as one possible mechanism to overcome the deficiencies of current accounting practices with regard to social aspects. This study aims to examine the effects of the terms used for specific accounts on company internal decision-making, drawing on the example of “value creation accounting”.

The study uses a survey based-experiment to analyze the effects of terms used for specific accounts on decision-making, with a focus on social aspects (in particular expenditures for staff) in cost reduction and expenditure decisions.

The findings indicate that wordings, which more closely relate to value creation than to costs, decrease cost reductions and increase the priority ascribed to the social aspect of reducing staff costs in times of financial shortage. The effects of terms used on cost reductions are stronger among female decision makers.

The analysis suggests that conventional accounting language best suits organizations that aim at incentivizing decision makers to primarily cut costs. By contrast, if an organization follows an approach that puts importance on social aspects in times of financial shortage and on not doing too sharp cost reductions, value creation-oriented language is the more effective approach.

The study suggests that the specific terminology used for accounts should be chosen more carefully and with awareness for the possible effects on cost reduction decisions as well as on social consequences.

This study contributes to a better understanding of the relevance of language in accounting. It suggests that the terms used for accounts should be chosen purposefully because of their far-reaching potential consequences for stakeholders as well as for the organization.

The purpose of this paper is to increase the awareness of the implications of language translation for accounting standard setting, education and research, and to work towards a critical research agenda.

The paper is based on a selective review of recent intercultural accounting research and literature on translation in accounting, of developments in accounting standard setting and on selected insights from translation studies.

Translation is not a simple technical, but a socio-cultural, subjective and ideological process. In contrast to the translation turn in other disciplines, however, most qualitative and critical accounting research neglects translation as a methodological and epistemological consideration and as a research opportunity.

The paper proposes themes for a research agenda on translation in accounting.

The paper identifies opportunities for further and deeper investigations of translation in accounting regulation, education and research. Particular emphasis is given to the implication of translation in accounting research that is grounded in interpretivist and constructivist paradigms, where translation is inextricably linked with data analysis and interpretation and may inadvertently reproduce cultural hegemonies.

This study aims to investigate two issues inherent in accounting judgements: the directional influence of uncertainty expressions and how they might positively or negatively affect accounting judgements and the foreign-language effect (FLE), which refers to the reduction of judgement bias that occurs when an accounting judgement is made in one’s foreign language. This study examines both issues in the context of accounting judgements made in Chinese and English languages.

This study conducted two experiments. The first experiment applied a 2 × 2 between-subject research design, and the second experiment adopted a 2 × 2 within-subject approach.

The overall results revealed that directionality biases existed in the exercise of accounting judgement in subjects’ native and foreign languages. However, when the language was switched from the subjects’ native tongue to a foreign language, overall directionality biases are reduced.

This study suggests that the use of native and non-native languages can have unintended consequences on accounting judgements. However, because of the limitations of using students as proxies for professionals and applying self-assessed language scales, the literature would benefit from future research that extends the subject profile to professional accountants and that assesses language skills more objectively.

This study contributes to the literature on cross-lingual accounting, both theoretically and methodologically. It also extends the FLE theory to an accounting context, providing insights on how language is involved in judgements concerning uncertainty expressions.

This paper aims to examine the current practice of reporting on translation issues in qualitative, interdisciplinary accounting research. Based on an analysis of the methodological consideration of the translation of quotations from non-English interviews and additional interviews with experienced researchers, the authors aim to develop recommendations for the reporting on such translation procedures in future accounting research relying on interviews not conducted in English.

The analysis is based on papers published in four highly ranked interdisciplinary accounting journals: Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal (AAAJ), Accounting, Organizations and Society (AOS), Critical Perspectives on Accounting (CPA) and Qualitative Research in Accounting and Management (QRAM). The subjects of the analysis are publications of non-English-speaking researchers who conducted non-English interviews and therefore were confronted with translation issues when attempting to get published in these English-language journals. Additionally, to gain deeper insights into reporting decisions on language and translation issues, the authors conducted interviews with experienced researchers in the field of qualitative, interdisciplinary accounting research whose mother tongue is not English. The authors combine these empirical insights with current developments in translation studies.

As suggested by translation studies, translation is an act of sense making and reconstruction of meaning, and therefore is a complex task that needs to be carried out with caution. However, the findings suggest that in current interdisciplinary, qualitative accounting research, the reporting of language and translation issues, especially with regards to the translation of quotations from interview data, have so far received only limited attention. The authors therefore call for more awareness of and sensibility toward dealing with language and translation issues, which should be reflected in more transparent reporting on translation processes to support the credibility and authenticity of qualitative accounting studies based on non-English interviews.

This paper is limited to the reporting on the methodological consideration of translating quotations from non-English interviews in papers published in AAAJ, AOS, CPA and QRAM between 2004 and 2015. For future accounting research that relies on such interviews, the authors call for more transparency and provide specific recommendations. This in turn should strengthen the awareness that language and translation are factors to be considered and reported.

This paper is the first to develop recommendations for the reporting of translation processes in accounting research studies, which are based on interviews not led in the English language.

The use of technical terms to communicate accounting information can lead to misunderstandings when the meaning of such terms is not fully appreciated by the recipient of the information. The discipline of translation studies suggests that full equivalence in translation between languages is rare. This suggests that the risk of misunderstanding is exacerbated when technical terms are translated into another language. This paper examines the implications of mistranslations of technical terms in the context of theories from linguistics, which suggest that language influences the way we think. It uses three examples of accounting terminology to illustrate these problems. It concludes that the choice of an inappropriate label in the translation of accounting terminology is detrimental to international accounting communication and creates problems for users and preparers of translated financial statements as well as for researchers in, and students of, international accounting and for those involved in harmonisation and standardisation of accounting.