Language in motion in the era of globalization: language(s) as a mobile resource in international tourism
Résumé
International tourism can be considered as both a result and a mirror of globalization. The world over, advances in transport and technology lead to ever increasing numbers of (virtual and physical) intercultural interactions. Thus, international tourist encounters can be seen as a physical manifestation of the globalization processes taking place more generally world wide. Taking up the challenge set by Blommaert (2010) to "reinterrogate" sociolinguistic theory in the light of globalization, this paper explores the mobility of languages and their speakers in a globalized world. Aiming to theorize "actual language resources in real situations" (Blommaert 2010: x), this paper analyzes data from an innovative ethnographic fieldwork project which produced an original corpus of recorded natural interactions between international tourists and advisers in the tourist office of a well-known French city. Taking into account mobility through "orders of indexicality" (Blommaert 2010) as well as through space and time, this paper shows that languages - and especially minority languages – are explicitly and ideologically presented as valuable mobile resources both in tourist documentation and in wider language policies. Tourists are encouraged to use these languages which can add to the "authenticity" of the tourist experience (Dann 1996). However, using examples from the fieldwork project it is shown that, in practice, minority languages remain low-mobility resources with little social value. Equally, the status as a socially valuable high-mobility resource is shared only by a small number of "globalized" languages. In conclusion, it is suggested that language use in international tourism could be considered to reflect the wider social effects of globalization: while the dominant explicit ideology seems to empower minority languages (and their speakers), in reality social actors conform to the "globalization process" of facilitating communication by using dominant "globalized" languages, thereby further empowering these already-powerful languages (and their speakers).