Communication Strategies Used by Tourist Guides: A Case Study at Bukit Lawang

This study deals with the communication strategies used by tourist guides at Bukit Lawang. It was aimed to investigate types of communication strategies and the way of communication strategies used by tourist guides at Bukit Lawang in order to deliver massage about culture and tradition. This study was conducted by applying a qualitative research design. The sources of the data were taken from three tourist guides at Bukit Lawang as the respondents. The instruments in this study were observation sheet, filed notes, and interview. Data were analyzed by using Milles and Huberman's theory on qualitative data analysis. Based on the analysis of data, there were 37 utterances which contained communication strategies. There were 5 (13.5%) for avoidance or reduction strategies, 19 (51.3%) achievement or compensatory strategies, 2 (5.5%) stalling or time-gaining strategies, 5 (13.5%) self-monitoring strategies, 6 (16.2%) interactional strategies. The process of communication strategies used by tourist guide in contacting with the tourist is necessarily needed by the tourist guides to overcome the conversation boundaries that might happened during the interaction. The basic reasons were based on their lack of grammar, vocabulary and lack of confidence.   Keywords: communication strategy, communicative competence, English for specific purpos