Language Choice and the Multilingual Soundscape: Overhearing as a Resource for Recipient-Design in Impromptu First-Time Encounters

When previously unacquainted people spontaneously strike up a conversation in multilingual public space, a fundamental practical problem with which they may be faced is language choice. Using video recordings of naturally-occurring first-time encounters collected in a variety of public settings, this article shows that one way of calibrating initial language choice in emergent encounters is by taking advantage of overhearables in the immediate environment. Analysis demonstrates how incidentally co-present individuals who are within earshot of one another aurally monitor co-present others and accountably exploit their sensory access to a previously-in-progress interaction for then implementing a recipient-oriented, linguistically fitted action when moving into focused interaction, thereby using overhearing as an occasioned resource for recipient-design. The analysis contributes to the study of openings between strangers in public space and our understanding of the relation between embodied participation and everyday multilingualism-in-interaction. Data are in (lingua franca) English, French, Italian, Standard German, and Swiss German.