Language negotiation sequences and linguistic resource “bricolage” in exolingual tourist interactions
Résumé
Interaction between tourists and “hosts” in international tourism constitutes one of the most common forms of exolingual interaction the world over. Despite this fact, detailed analyses of these interactions remain few and far between. This paper offers a sociolinguistic analysis of language negotiation sequences (Auer 1998) present in these interactions and how they contribute to a “bricolage” of linguistic resources (Mondada 2012) between tourists and hosts. The paper is based on examples taken from an original corpus of recorded interactions between native French-speaking tourist advisors and international (non-native French speaking) tourists. The corpus is the product of an innovative fieldwork project undertaken in a tourist information office in a well-known French city. Using excerpts from this corpus, the paper shows that there exists a huge variety in how these language negotiation sequences are carried out by participants and the effect they have on the development of the interaction. While taking this variety into account, it is shown how participants often use these sequences as a strategy to combat the interactional difficulties produced by the 'asymmetry' of their respective linguistic competence (Taquechel-Chaigneau 2010) in order to complete the task at hand. It is shown that language negotiation sequences – performed explicitly or implicitly -, coupled with other communication strategies, form an important part of the process of linguistic resource 'bricolage'. Furthermore, this paper postulates that explicit language negotiation sequences allow the participants to overtly identify the interaction as 'exolingual'. In turn, it is suggested that this gives participants more freedom to overtly deploy further communication strategies and actively (and consciously) enter into the 'bricolage' process in order to manage the difficulties inherent to this type of interaction. The paper concludes that further research into language negotiation sequences in asymmetrical bi-, pluri- or exo-lingual situations would be extremely valuable in order to fully understand the variation present in how these sequences are conducted by speakers.