Sour soup, Tom Yum, or Dongyin? What can a menu tell us about linguistic capital and multilingual development in contemporary Thailand?

Abstract

ABSTRACT In Bangkok, Thailand, one of the top tourist destinations in the world, foreign language skills in the tourism industry are seen as a form of linguistic capital. Drawing upon the theoretical notion of ‘linguistic capital’, this study aims to investigate the patterns of language choice on Thai food menus and examine the relationship between the language used on a menu and the average price of four selected dishes in Thai restaurants. Fieldwork data were collected from 117 Thai restaurants located in three districts of Bangkok. The findings reveal that Thai-only menus are the most prevalent in Thai restaurants, while Thai-English bilingual menus and Thai-English-Chinese trilingual menus are less common. However, Thai restaurants with bilingual menus have higher average prices than those with monolingual Thai menus and trilingual menus. By triangulating linguistic ethnography with historical documents, this study argues that English-Thai bilingualism will continue to function as linguistic capital in contemporary Bangkok for the foreseeable future. In comparison to the English language, Chinese is merely an additional script on the menu without a superior economic perception. This demonstrates how linguistic values are shaped by glocalised commercial powers, which can help us understand the changing dynamics of linguistic hierarchy in multilingual Asia.