Adapting English for the specific purpose of tourism: A study of communication strategies in face-to-face encounters in a French tourist office

Abstract

This article explores some uses of English for international tourism. Tourism is one of the biggest industries in the world, yet little work has focused on how non-native speakers use English in face-to-face encounters in this context. This paper studies how speakers coconstruct meaning in English through an analysis of interactional data drawn from an ethnographic fieldwork project undertaken at the tourist office of Marseille (France). It is shown how speakers deploy certain discursive and pragmatic strategies in order to elaborate and maintain the common ground necessary for mutual understanding. Three strategies are identified as being particularly prominent: coconstruction of utterances, repetition and reformulation. It is shown how these strategies contribute not only to the co-construction of meaning but also to the practical and semiotic elaboration of the tourist experience. These findings are then briefly applied to the field of ESP research and teaching.