International tourism and (linguistic) accommodation: Convergence towards and through English in tourist information interactions

International tourism continues to grow and diversify exponentially, creating situations of intense language contact and giving rise to unexpected sociolinguistic dynamics and phenomena. In order to ensure successful communication and counteract the challenges linked to these dynamics, speakers in tourist contexts must be able to adapt in order to accommodate to their interlocutors. Based on ethnographic and interactional data taken from a fieldwork project, the aim of this article is to explore the manifestations of accommodation in face-to-face interactions between international tourists and tourism professionals in the Tourist Office of Marseille, France. Taking Communication Accommodation Theory (Giles, Coupland & Coupland 1991) as its main conceptual basis, this article shows how English is at the heart of two key processes of accommodation. Firstly, speakers converge towards English as a main language of interaction. Secondly, speakers accommodate to each other through one-off uses of English in side sequences and pragmatic reformulation strategies in order to repair or prevent communicative difficulties. Following this, the dynamics that underpin these accommodation processes are explored and the repercussions of accommodation are discussed, both in terms of interpersonal relationships and wider social dynamics. The analyses presented here show that converging towards and accommodating through English allow speakers to establish, protect and recover “common ground” (Stalnaker 2002), overcome communicative problems and co-construct understanding. Finally, language ideology is shown to be a key factor in the dynamics underlying processes of accommodation in this particular context.