Prinzipien der Sprachwahl im Tourismus, mit Schwerpunkt auf sprachlicher Höflichkeit

Abstract

Abstract After defining the concept of ‚tourist‘ and distinguishing ‚inbound tourists‘ from ‚outbound tourists‘, the article focuses on questions of politeness towards tourists who are seen and treated as customers of their goals’ tourist industry. One possibility of treating them politely is the adequate language choice with respect to their mother tongue, I which they will, as a rule expect to be addressed, if it is a language of considerable international standing (e.g. French or German) or spoken by many tourists in the respective location. Otherwise they will consider it at least more polite to be addressed in a lingua franca, mostly English, than in the local language of the tourist destination. Tourist will find it particularly polite to be addressed in their own mother language if it does not rank among the more international languages. These hypotheses are deduced from well-founded politeness theories based on face-saving and identity assumptions and are illustrated by examples in order to show ways of further empirical corroboration or falsification.