Volume 32, Issue 1

In this article, the topic of language choice in tourism is examined from the perspective of the participants involved in the communication process. Drawing upon data from guided tours in different interaction settings, recurrent strategies of language selection are shown, taking into account their function as strategic resources on which the participants overtly orient themselves in order to cope with the communication tasks at hand. The data analysis explores and possibly supplements the communicative functions of language choice reconstructed by Thurlow/Jaworski (2010) in the interaction between tourists and guides. The analysis is based on interactional data from multilingual settings with English and German as mother tongue and foreign language.

After defining the concept of ‚tourist‘ and distinguishing ‚inbound tourists‘ from ‚outbound tourists‘, the article focuses on questions of politeness towards tourists who are seen and treated as customers of their goals’ tourist industry. One possibility of treating them politely is the adequate language choice with respect to their mother tongue, I which they will, as a rule expect to be addressed, if it is a language of considerable international standing (e.g. French or German) or spoken by many tourists in the respective location. Otherwise they will consider it at least more polite to be addressed in a lingua franca, mostly English, than in the local language of the tourist destination. Tourist will find it particularly polite to be addressed in their own mother language if it does not rank among the more international languages. These hypotheses are deduced from well-founded politeness theories based on face-saving and identity assumptions and are illustrated by examples in order to show ways of further empirical corroboration or falsification.

Tourism is the leading economy of the 21st century also for Italy. The language could also benefit from it, which statistically performs very well in many areas (on the world stage, on the internet, in foreign language learning, etc.). Unfortunately, the country’s tourist-economic importance does not correlate positively with its language value. Here, the Italian state is asked to do more with investment for the ‚visibility’ of the language in the tourism sector, e.g. with the opening of foreign ENIT headquarters.

After a short historical summary which shows how todayʼs political and geographic distribution of the German language has evolved, the concept of a pluricentric language is developed, with German being a case in point. Following this, the various - seven to ten - “centers” of the language are outlined, illustrated by maps, with their prominent linguistic, demographic and political features, as a possible approach toward a comprehensive typology of the centers of pluricentric languages. It is argued that each center's specific standard variants, which make it an (autonomous) center of the language, are fully valid and correct within their respective political realm. Furthermore, the Variantenwörterbuch des Deutschen is presented as the first comprehensive dictionary of a pluricentric language, containing the entire pluricentric variation of German. It is based on a newly conceived dictionary structure that provides easy access to any pluricentrally relevant linguistic feature. The central topic of the contribution is, however, the level of attraction of the various centers of a pluricentric language as tourist destinations for the inhabitants of the other centers of the same language. The study includes hints at possible methods of exploitation by the tourist industry - a topic also worthy of study for other pluricentric languages.

The paper reflects on the linguistic needs in the field of tourism communication in Italy starting from data on the main tourist markets of origin in Italy. After an overview on language choice in the pre-trip stage on national and regional level, it outlines a research project on language contact between German speaking tourists and hosts in Piedmont aiming at enhancing the quality of communication with German as a foreign language for tourism.

Marseille is slowly transforming into an important international tourist destination following sustained efforts by city authorities. The influx of international tourists has led to an intensification and diversification of language contact situations in the already highly multilingual city. This chapter aims to provide an analysis of in situ language practices in one of Marseille’s key tourist contexts in order to explore the sociolinguistic changes taking place. Using interactional data taken from a long-term fieldwork project undertaken in Marseille’s Tourist Office, this chapter focuses on the negotiation and selection of the principal language of interaction in exchanges between international tourists and tourist advisers. These moments are shown to be crucial to the facilitation of communication and the co-construction of meaning and it is shown how speakers mobilise two strategies - explicit requests and tacit negotiations - in these sequences. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the wider sociolinguistic dynamics underpinning these practices.

There would appear to be a significant in-balance in favour of English in tourism related areas, as is the case with most social interactions in Denmark which require the use of foreign languages. Even German only plays a peripheral role, which is somewhat surprising considering that German speakers make up the largest percentage of foreign tourists by far. However, the frequency of use of common tourism related languages in general, as well as English, would appear to vary considerably according to Danish region; hence it is worthwhile examining each region individually. Tourism degrees that include a foreign language are briefly addressed.

This paper deals with the mechanisms underlying language choices which are carried out by foreign tourists in the capital of the Czech Republic. This research draws upon the ethnographic approach. The data come from participant observations conducted in restaurants and cafés as well as from interactions with tourist agencies in the center of Prague. Additionally, short interviews with foreign tourists and employees of these tourist facilities were conducted. The results show that most of the foreign tourists and the Czech personnel expect English as a lingua franca to fulfill the basic communicative function in mutual interactions. Apart from that, various electronic tools are often used. They help to solve manifold language problems on the written basis.

Tourism is a growth industry in the Baltic States. Current marketing statistics indicate an increase in tours that encompass the capital cities as well as villages and rural areas throughout the Baltics. According to the latest reports, a significant percentage of foreign visitors are German- speaking tourists. This overview combines observation, interviews and quantitative measures to determine how well the Baltic tourism industry is prepared to accommodate needs of this specific customer group. At present, tourism study programs provide a limited range of German language courses, which meet the need for German-speaking tour guides. However, judging from cultural indicators, is apparent that the increase in German-speaking tourists will spark a simultaneous demand for more customized tours geared to the interests of smaller, more specialized groups. Recommendations address the need to design more diversified German studies programs to better prepare tour guides for the future.

The present paper analyses language used in forums about journeys by train, in particular focusing on their thematic and linguistic-functional characteristics. The choice of this type of forum is due to the fact that travelers are more and more interested in travelling by train because of various factors such as economy, environmental protection and the desire for a comfortable means of transport. The paper focuses on the forum https://rail.cc/de/forum and it examines 100 German and 100 English postings, offering a contrastive analysis. The main questions of the investigation are as follows: 1) How are German and English postings structured according to their topics? 2) What kind of relationship exists between the language used and linguistic functions of the postings?