English for Tourism PDF

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ENGLISH FOR TOURISM has its own very special type of linguistic we may come into contact with language, but there is a lack of linguistic studies devoted to tourism discourse, with a few recent exceptions. Tourism is considered of the social sciences and of economists and marketing strategists. Yet,...

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ENGLISH FOR TOURISM *Tourism has its own very special type of linguistic communication; we may come into contact with tourism-related language, but there is a lack of linguistic studies devoted to tourism discourse, with a few recent exceptions. Tourism is considered ‘research territory’ of the social sciences and of economists and marketing strategists. Yet, language plays a major role in the creation of the ‘tourist gaze’ (=sguardo) and every professional in the tourism industry needs to master the ‘language of tourism’. In order to do that, it is important to know the different types of texts that belong to the tourism discourse. *There are three stages of tourism and different genres associated with these stages (Dann 1996): a. Pre-Trip, the material is promotional: it includes advertisements, brochures, travel articles, commercial and promotional websites, social media platforms, travel blogs; b. On-Trip, the material is informational: apps, travel blogs, tourist guidebooks; c. Post-Trip, that is writing a feedback: trip reports and reviews, travel blogs, travelogues. The genres unique of the web are underlined in red. *General English is a fuzzy and abstract concept; general English is the essential English, it consists of basic elements of the language (vocabulary and grammar rules) and common core of the English language. Anyway, nobody needs general English, since everybody has their own specific needs. *ESP: English for Specific/Special Purposes: this term is used to refer to English in use within more restricted social or professional areas, e.g. “legal English”, “business English” etc. ESP has four main characteristics:  meeting specified needs  related in content to particular disciplines  centred on appropriate language  in contrast to general English *As for English, the other languages can be used for specific purposes too. LSPs are Languages for Specific (or Special) Purposes or domain-specific languages; they are the result of diatypic variation, that is contextual-functional variation; the term refers to contextual-functional varieties of the language, functional language varieties used in specific domains of civil, professional and institutional life and associated with specific topics and disciplinary fields. -LSPs are defined with reference to the professional, disciplinary or technical field to which they pertain (e.g. the language of the law, of medicine, of economics…). -LSPs have no special grammatical or phonological rules, but they have the tendency to give preference to certain morpho-syntactic forms, used with abnormal frequency. The main feature or the most distinctive trait of LSPs is the use of specialised lexicon and specific vocabulary. LSP research was initially focused on specialised lexicon; then, the research focused on the textual and rhetorical organisation too. This shift increased the awareness of the complex factors involved in the use of LSPs. -Special Languages (De Saussure) are used to refer to legal language, scientific terminology, etc. They are languages with special rules and symbols deviating from those of general language; they include microlanguages, technolets, languages for special/specific purposes (LSPs), domainspecific languages, specialised languages and specialised discourse; these special languages have undergone the transition from an uncontextualised view of language to a situational, contextualised one; this led to a proliferation of terms. English for Tourism is another branch of ESP -English for Academic/ Research Purposes (EAP) is a branch of ESP; it is usually defined as teaching English with the aim of assisting learners’ study or research in the language. Members of the academic community (professors, researchers, students, etc.) share a common knowledge of

the rules and conventions of academic discourse: they use a particular vocabulary, particular grammar structures, a particular register, and they share norms and assumptions, which make communication within the academic community more efficient and effective. The academic discourse is the language used by the members of the academic world in order to describe and talk about issues in their area of interests. A face-to-face lecture, a monographic book, a journal article are all texts produced within the wider domain of academic discourse. THEORETICAL ISSUES DISCOURSE *Discourse is a complex term used in linguistics and in the social sciences; as in the case of most linguistic terms, there is no universal agreement on the exact definition of the notion. Discourse is: -“language above the sentence or above the clause” (Stubbs 1983: 1); this means that the text is the highest unit of language; -a continuous stretch of spoken/written language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit; - a stretch of language perceived to be meaningful, unified, and purposive; language in use; - (viewed) as social practice: bidirectional relationship between discourse and social processes. -In its original sense, discourse is the study of conversation units produced in a particular speech community. Sociolinguistics is the study of language and linguistic behaviour as influenced by social and cultural factors. DISCOURSE ANALYSIS *Brown and Yule observe that ‘discourse analysis refers to a wide range of meanings which cover a wide range of activities; it is used to describe activities at the intersection of disciplines as diverse as sociolinguistics, psycho-linguistics, philosophical linguistics and computational linguistics’. *Linguists use the term discourse analysis (DA) to indicate the study of whole units of communicative exchanges produced in a particular speech community. The focus is not only on spoken texts, but also on written texts. Moreover, language is not only analysed in its form, but also in its function. *Discourse analysis has an interdisciplinary nature: it is rooted not only in linguistic, but also in social sciences and philosophy; it was brought in the field of the linguistic debate through the work of Harris. Other disciplines that have contributed to the development of discourse analysis are anthropology (promoted interest in naturally occurring discourse as a culturally relative realisation of ways of acting and being and introduced the distinction between referential and social functions of language), sociology (contributed with the research on the notion of ‘social fact’, microanalytic frames and social interaction), philosophy (contributed with theories on discourse: Foucault proposed a new concept of discourse and exported the term from linguistic to the social sciences; he classified typologies of discourse and their structure with the intention of showing how discourse affects every aspect of our society). *Discourse affects the way we see things and it is responsible for our choice of vocabulary, expressions and the style in which we choose to communicate in different occasions. The type of choices that a speaker or a writer makes which allow us to classify a certain text as pertaining to one type of discourse or the other. Discourse analysis is concerned with language use in social contexts, it studies language in context. Academic discourse in one type of discourse that is built up through the interaction of members of the academic community.

*Discourse analysis stresses the need to see language as a dynamic, social interactive phenomenon. The meaning is not conveyed by single sentences but by more complex exchanges, in which participants’ beliefs and expectations, the knowledge they share about each other and about the world, and the situation in which they interact play a crucial part. Discourse Analysis is a collection of methods for studying language in actual use in social contexts; it lays emphasis on texts and not just on single words. TOURISM DISCOURSE *English for Tourism is another branch of ESP. *Tourism discourse is a type of discourse in its own right: there are certain practices, norms and values that are conventionalised in the way we use language and other expressive means in order to talk about tourism-related matters. These means can be used by members of a particular discourse community in order to exchange information about the travel-related issues. In the world of tourism and in the tourism industry the language of tourism plays a decisive role in determining the success or failure of certain trends and the popularity of certain destinations. Tourism is grounded in discourse. GENRE *Genre is considered a theoretically and pedagogically useful and necessary level of categorization for both language learning and linguistic research and description. Genre is a category defined on the basis of external criteria relating to the speaker’s purpose and topic (genre classifies texts according to who uses them). The genres categories are assigned on the basis of use rather than on the basis of form. The problem of genres is also related to the problem of discourse: genres can be seen as ‘owned’ and policed by particular discourse communities. In this view, genres are recognized as legitimate groupings of texts within a certain community. Swales defines genre as “a class of communicative events sharing a set of communicative purposes established and recognised by a specific discourse community and exhibiting similar patterns in terms of structure, style, content and intended audience”. He analysed the concept of genre in different fields and claimed that the classification of texts into genres derives from the way in which “texts are perceived, categorized and used by members of a community”. The communicative role of genres don’t depend only on external criteria, but also on communicative purpose and linguistic content and form. Genres is a ‘social action’ based on a categorization process approved and shared by a discourse community and whose communicative function is that of clarifying what the communicative goals are. Genre analysis focuses on elements of recurrent language use (grammar, lexis, rhetorical practices), thus connecting texts with the communities in which they are used. Guidebooks, apps, travel articles, travel blogs, trip reports, tourism advertisements are all examples of genres, and so are recipes, personal letters, textbooks, reviews are all examples of genre. REGISTER *Sometimes genre is used interchangeably with register. However, genre in related to sociocultural aspects, while register can be related to the communicative situation and to the immediate context in which a certain communicative act takes place. There is no agreement as to whether one includes the other or whether they are two distinct notions. A distinction between genre and register is made by considering them to be two different ways of looking at the same subject: Lee explains that we can look at texts from the point of view of the form or category, of the function and of the meaning. Register is used when we view a text as a language: as the instantiation of a conventionalised, functional configuration of language tied to certain broad societal situations, so it

can be defined as a variety according to use: different situations require different configurations of language, each being appropriate to its task, being adapted to the parameters of contextual use. Genre is used when we view the text as a member of a category: a grouping of texts according to some conventionally recognized criteria, a grouping according to intentional goals, culturally defined. Genres are categories established by consensus within a culture, so they are subject to change as generic conventions are contested and revised over time. *Registers are the different code varieties available to the speaker who can choose the most suitable “level” and variety of language for a given communicative act, with variations in lexicogrammar as well as in style; register imposes constraints (=limits) at the linguistic level, esp. vocabulary and syntax, according to the communicative situations, while genre refers to culturallyrecognizable categories and operates at the level of discourse structure, conditions the structure of a text and can only be realised as compete texts. Register is independent of text-level structures. *Genre and register are two mixed dimensions, in that a genre may have instantiations of different registers, and the same register can be used in different genres. TEXT TYPES *The notion of text type is very controversial. Text types cut across genres and registers; whereas in order to define genres we must refer to socio-cultural factors on which the classification of one text as belonging to one particular genre is based, text types are better defined in terms of internal linguistic characteristics of a text and of the function it performs. *Text types have been studied from different disciplines and for different purposes, among which are literature and linguistics. Text type can have different meanings and refer to different levels, sometimes creating new overlaps with the notions of register and genre. *Kinneavy (1971) is one of the first influential works about text types; it is interested in genres and in their realisations in actual textes; it identifies four text types, or ‘aims of discourse’: expressive, referential, literary and persuasive types. -The expressive aim of discourse is divided into individual types (es. Conversation, journals, prayers…) and social types (es. manifestoes, religious credos…); -The referential aim of discourse includes exploratory texts such as seminaries, scientific texts and informative texts (es. textbooks, news articles); -The literary aim of discourse includes jokes, lyrics, short stories etc. -The persuasive aim of discourse includes editorials and political or legal texts, and also religious sermons. This approach considers text-types as kinds of sub-genres and, in Fludernik’s opinion, “it fails to see that most texts of a given genre are referential as well as persuasive and expressive. Real texts combine a number of discourse aim with a variety of local realizations”. A new classification of texts is proposed by Kinneavy (1980), in terms of which reality can be seen. Text types can be seen as “cognitive categories” offering ways of conceptualising, perceiving and portraying the world; the text types proposed are narration, where the focus is on changing reality, evaluation, where the focus is the potential change, description, where the focus is on existence, and classification, where the focus is on grouping. *Werlich is another work which proposes five text types: description, narration, exposition, argumentation and instruction, distinguished between three levels: the ideal type (= prototypical and existing only in language users’ mind), the text form (= a specific text type, such as a guidebook) and the actual text (= sentences, paragraphs, chapters…, which include actual realization of the other two abstract level). Welrich’s idealized text types are based on cognitive proprieties, the text form and the actual text; description and narration deal with the differentiation

and interrelation of perceptions in space and time; exposition deals with the comprehension of general concepts through differentiation by analysis or synthesis; argumentation concerns the evaluation of relations between concepts; instruction deals with the planning of future behaviour: Welrich distinguishes between instruction with option (es. ads, manuals and recipes) and without options (es. contracts). This model has been criticised, but it has the merit of proposing the ‘alignment’ of surface text structures (that is the actual linguistic means used) and textual functions. Thus, text types can be seen as serving a communicative function and certain linguistic patterns as serving a function within a specific discourse. Genres are defined in terms of nonlinguistic criteria (e.g. their communicative purposes); text types can be defined in terms of linguistic and non-linguistic criteria. *Longacre also tries to define text type: he does not focus on textual surface structures, but on the ideal text type level; he distinguishes four text types: narration, procedural discourse, behavioural discourse and expository discourse. In his approach, categories such as description and argumentation disappear as global text types. *Adam does not work on the surface linguistic structures too, but rather he chooses to focus on global qualities of texts. Adam adds to Werlich’s typology and links text types with ‘speech-act-like functions’. He proposes eight text types most of which are paired with ‘speech acts’: narrativeassertion; descriptive-assertion; explicative-assertion; argumentative-convince; injunctivedirective; predictive-prophecy; conversational-question; excuse, promise, rhetoric-paired with genres such as poetry, songs, proverbs, graffiti. *The relationship between speech acts and text types has been further underlined in several more recent studies. This interaction is evident in many cases, for instance in advertising; an ad can be predominantly referential and consists of expressive statements even though its purpose is to persuade the costumer to buy or use a service, so it is essentially directive. This means that certain linguistic surface structures can perform different functions and that there is no one-to-one correspondence between text types and the functions they perform. *So, rigid categorisations are not possible; a text made up of pure text types (e.g. a totally narrative or descriptive text) cannot be found, one genre always makes use of several text types. Trosborg speaks about contextual focus to refer to the dominant function of a text type in a text. A similar notion had already been introduced by Virtanen and Warvik (1987), who called it ‘discourse type’. They integrate all these approaches and build a model organized on multiple layers. They propose the existence of an overall (= top) level of cognitive processes using Werlich’s text types as their starting point, to extract from these latter the characteristics that make it possible to determine what our discourses are about from a conceptual point of view. Then they define a ‘second level’ relating to the functions of discourse which make the speaker choose a discourse type, corresponding to Welrich’s text type, such as argumentative an narrative discourse, and in Virtanen, description, instruction and exposition as well. A ‘third level’ in their approach, that of types of texts, corresponds to Welrich’s text forms, and is categorized according to several parameters, such as spoken vs. oral, formal vs. informal. The authors include a ‘fourth level’, that of textual strategies that guide the organisation of the text. A series of other level are mentioned to include syntactic choices at the level of the text itself, called texte actualisé. The cognitive process of judgement has the goal of convincing somebody, and the most suitable discourse type is the argumentative discourse type. This discourse type is not necessarily realised by means of argumentation: one can actualise argumentative discourse through a combination of narration, description, and evaluative commentary. *Biber’s work (1988) is one of the most influential in the study of text types; his text typology is based on an in-depth corpus analysis of the surface linguistic features that are frequently associated with certain text types. Biber distinguishes among eight text types: involved production,

informative production, narrative concern, explicit reference, situation-dependent reference, overt expression of persuasion, abstract information and online informational elaboration. Each of these text types are associated with the presence of certain linguistic elements. -The involved production is generally characterised by contractions, present tense verbs, first and second person pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, hedges, amplifiers, possibility modals; -In informational production, nouns, word length, prepositions and attributive adjectives are to be found; -Narrative concern is realized through past tense verbs, third person pronouns, perfect aspect verbs, public verbs, synthetic negation, present participle clause; -Explicit reference is characterized by wh-relative clauses, nominalisations, phrasal coordination; -Situation dep...