English in Southeast Asian tourism

Abstract Tourism requires communication, and the default choice for transcultural interactions is English. This chapter looks into the roles and forms of English employed in tourism in Southeast Asia, and into methodological issues of investigating this subject. It begins with some fundamental sociolinguistic considerations on tourism encounters, together with a brief survey of the depth and quality of penetration of English in Southeast Asian countries and the growth of tourism in the region. It is argued that agents active in tourism in the region often acquire it ‘at the grassroots’ instead of (or in addition to) the usual scholastic transmission. Various possible sources are characterized and exemplified, including anecdotal observations, oral recordings, written samples observed on location, and metalinguistic statements found in travel guidebooks and on the web.