Bilingualism in Hospitality Properties : Language Choice and Code Alternation as a Resource for Organizing the Multiple-Participant Check in Activity

• Main Author: Ponomareva, Yulia
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Linköpings universitet, Institutionen för kultur och kommunikation 2012
• Subjects: Hospitality; hotel reception; bilingualism; plurilingual resources; language choice; code alternation; conversation analysis; complex participation framework; General Language Studies and Linguistics; Jämförande språkvetenskap och allmän lingvistik
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-81053

This empirical study deals with the issues of language choice and code alternation as a common practice in the organization of the complex check in activity with multiple participants in hospitality properties in Sweden. In particular, it discusses several interactional tasks that code alternation may accomplish in that setting and represents a crossroad of general linguistics, bilingualism studies and conversation analysis. In the light of arising interest of specialists of different areas of linguistics in bilingualism in formal settings, it deals with institutional bilingualism in Sweden, an EU country with a comparatively high level of bilingualism among residents. In the era of the new economy with its globalization and human mobility, bilingualism has become an emergent practice in many tourism settings, the hospitality sector of tourism among them. In hospitality as a tourism setting with a potentially high concentration of foreign tourists, it is inevitable that certain groups of hotel guests include members who expose different language abilities and preferences. As a result, in the interaction with one single group of guests two or even more languages can be used at the same time, as oriented to the needs and preferences of each and every guest. This investigation aims at discussing some possible accomplishments of language choice and code alternation in a standardized hotel check in activity where a single group of guests has to be addressed in two languages, Swedish and English, and where the language choices are crucial for participation and the accomplishment of the check in activity in general.