Nico Nassenstein

Studying Language at the Beach: Perspectives on Contact and Change In the Context of Tourism

Beaches are spaces of language contact and language change, especially in contemporary contexts of mass tourism. However, descriptive work on changing or emerging language practices in touristified areas does not fully grasp the complexities around socioculturally changing landscapes in these contexts. In my talk, I focus on the East African coast as a space of multilingual and multicultural encounters (with a longstanding historical tradition) and I intend to show perspectives on language intertwined in power asymmetries and marginality in the tourism industry, creative performances, and language endangerment on the one and diversification on the other hand.