‘We are all on the move and have been for centuries, dwelling in travel’ says Clifford (1997: 2). Clifford’s view of ‘dwelling in travel’ returns us to the dwelling perspective, and to the ways in which tourist language learners let other languages dwell in them, alongside others. In Monolingualism of the Other Derrida refers to his own monolingualism as follows: ‘I am monolingual. My monolingualism dwells, and I call it my dwelling; it feels like one to me, and I remain in it and inhabit it. It inhabits me’ (Derrida, 1996: 1).

The question that I am pursuing here relates to the movement of the whole being, through the learning, the ‘letting dwell’, to return to Heidegger’s phrase (Heidegger, 1971), of other languages and, in this particular chapter, how the learning of language in the context of way finding, and following directions changes the way in which the world is perceived and inhabited.

Learning to ask for and follow directions and get to where you have learned you should be plays a key part in the development of a tourist vocabulary. How to gain a sense of place in an unknown environment brings into view the maps and stories used in orienting the tourist around sites and necessities. This also involves the kinds of maps and directions used as examples for learning and the assumptions about the tourist experience and tourist language that these reveal. Language learning as tourists, as we have seen, shows us something of the possibilities of tourism for changing habitus, hexis, into dynamic movement, bodying-forth.

Learning how to move around, how to get from A to B, how to arrive and depart, how to show up in the right place, at the right time, in a strange tourist environment, so that the sites are actually seen, is an important part of tourism and of the imagined presence of tourism in the language class.