Please note that Prof. Dr. Adam Jaworski will not join the guest lecture as he is not feeling well. Prof. Dr. Crispin Thurlow will present part of the findings from their collaborative research.
Grounded in tourism discourse, this presentation considers a singular but typical interaction between two tourists from Germany and a market vendor in Korea. During the course of this video-recorded encounter, we see the vendor not only selling his confections but also narrating the production process. The dominant language of the interaction is English, but the vendor also uses (mock) German in several instances of code-crossing. The interaction is also replete with numerous metapragmatic comments and other metadiscoursive features. This interaction is also replete with numerous metapragmatic comments and other meta discursive features. This multilingual performance thereby functions as a tool for the vendor to assume agency; in doing so, he consistently and skilfully reframes the economic transaction from mere sales pitch to something more flirtatious and convivial. Host-tourist exchanges are inextricably hegemonic, but this particular exchange confirms the world of friendly co-existence with exist within and/or besides commodification.
