Marseille en V.O. ? La négociation des langues dans des interactions entre touristes internationaux et conseillers touristiques

Abstract

Abstract 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.