Asymmetries and adaptation in guided tours with German as a foreign language

This study describes and analyses the strategies, means and procedures adopted by tour guides during guided tours in coping with the latent asymmetries inherent in the social and interactional structure of this specific form of communication. Particular attention is given to the asymmetries of knowledge, age and language proficiency. However, the paper also aims to investigate how tour guides tend towards other-orientedness, how they – to use the well-known terminology of Sacks/Schegloff/Jefferson 1974 – produce ‘recipient designed’ communication forms, how they accommodate their speech in order to handle the relationship with their interlocutors, either by converging and minimizing the distance between themselves and their interlocutors, or by diverging and accentuating distinctiveness.