{"title":"“Doing Explicit” in hospitality and tourism service encounters in English as a lingua franca","authors":"Aonrumpa Thongphut, Jagdish Kaur","doi":"10.1016/j.esp.2023.01.003","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p><span>In many highly heterogenous hospitality and tourism (HT) settings around the world, English is used to mediate hospitality service encounters. However, little is known about how front-desk staff are able to effectively communicate with international guests of diverse linguacultural backgrounds to deliver quality service. This study investigates the use of communications strategies by Thai front-desk staff that is characterized by increased explicitness in their interactions in </span>English as a lingua franca (ELF) with international tourists. The data comprise 15 h of authentic interactions recorded at three sites: a tour service counter, an airport information counter, and a hotel front office. Using conversation analytic procedures, the analysis reveals the staff's orientation to explicitness: they repeat key information multiple times to increase its prominence, use explication, circumlocution, and self-reformulation to clarify keywords and repair ongoing utterances to address potential ambiguity. In the absence of overt displays of non/misunderstanding, the staff's use of multiple explicitness strategies in these short, routine exchanges points to explicitness as a defining feature of ELF HT service encounters. The findings of this study have implications for ESP course development in HT where awareness raising and practice in the use of explicitness strategies should be incorporated.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47809,"journal":{"name":"English for Specific Purposes","volume":"70 ","pages":"Pages 224-236"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"English for Specific Purposes","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889490623000030","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In many highly heterogenous hospitality and tourism (HT) settings around the world, English is used to mediate hospitality service encounters. However, little is known about how front-desk staff are able to effectively communicate with international guests of diverse linguacultural backgrounds to deliver quality service. This study investigates the use of communications strategies by Thai front-desk staff that is characterized by increased explicitness in their interactions in English as a lingua franca (ELF) with international tourists. The data comprise 15 h of authentic interactions recorded at three sites: a tour service counter, an airport information counter, and a hotel front office. Using conversation analytic procedures, the analysis reveals the staff's orientation to explicitness: they repeat key information multiple times to increase its prominence, use explication, circumlocution, and self-reformulation to clarify keywords and repair ongoing utterances to address potential ambiguity. In the absence of overt displays of non/misunderstanding, the staff's use of multiple explicitness strategies in these short, routine exchanges points to explicitness as a defining feature of ELF HT service encounters. The findings of this study have implications for ESP course development in HT where awareness raising and practice in the use of explicitness strategies should be incorporated.
期刊介绍:
English For Specific Purposes is an international peer-reviewed journal that welcomes submissions from across the world. Authors are encouraged to submit articles and research/discussion notes on topics relevant to the teaching and learning of discourse for specific communities: academic, occupational, or otherwise specialized. Topics such as the following may be treated from the perspective of English for specific purposes: second language acquisition in specialized contexts, needs assessment, curriculum development and evaluation, materials preparation, discourse analysis, descriptions of specialized varieties of English.