Language and tourism

Abstract

The sociolinguistic study of verbal encounters in touristic situations provides an opportunity to exanine communication between different linguistic groups under unusual circumstances: the high temporariness of the foreigners and the high degree of linguistic accommodation of the locals to them. This state of affairs stands in marked contrast to the tendency of guestworkers and immigrants who are less temporary and usually of lower status, to accommodate linguistically to the locals. While accommodation by locals is common to virtually all touristic situations, the degree of proficiency of locals in the tourists' language varies considerably and hence also the extent to which tourists are forced to accommodate linguistically. In an effort to organize the linguistic variation in tourism, a typology of tourist roles is used as the principal framework. The notion of “language brokerage” is introduced. The integration of sociological and sociolinguistic analyses is illustrated by incidental data from the literature on tourism and from fieldwork in Thailand.