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TOURISM DISCOURSEINTRODUCTIONIn Europe, mass tourism developed in the 1950s and 60s, when the increasing demand for holidays in Northern Europe countries led to the development of local seaside resorts. Since then is has acquired a prominent position in international business market, being one of th...

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TOURISM DISCOURSE INTRODUCTION In Europe, mass tourism developed in the 1950s and 60s, when the increasing demand for holidays in Northern Europe countries led to the development of local seaside resorts. Since then is has acquired a prominent position in international business market, being one of the fastest-growing economic sectors in the world. Just for being a key sector of the Europe economy, in 1986 the European Commission established the Tourism Advisory Committee with the function of facilitating exchange of information, consultation and co-operation regarding tourism. The tourism industry transformation led to the fact that attention has shifted to customers’ behaviour and decisionmaking process. They are no more considered as passive but rather as experienced, educated, destination-oriented, independent and more ecologically-aware clients. The Internet plays now a central role as dynamic source of information for them. In order to be sold on different markets and to different customers, tourism products have to be presented in adequate and convincing linguistic ways. The language of tourism has indeed some precise features which identify it as different from general discourse. It is highly persuasive language, since its ultimate purpose is to sell a product by describing a reality which has to be perceived by the potential buyer as an authentic experience he makes of the holiday before actually living it. In the texts created for the tourism industry verbal and iconic elements are interconnected  the potentialities of these multimodal relationships are evident in tourist guides and brochures but increase on the net. Hypertexts indeed are designed to attract attention and there are made of internal and external weblinks, reflecting a communicative choice of the webdesigers. Genres are inherently dynamic rhetorical structures, so that they often interact with other genres  this causes an interdiscursivity = invasion of the integrity of one genre by another genre or genre convention, often leading to the creation of a hybrid form. Interdiscursivity gives was to colonization, i.e. when expert members of a discourse community adopt conventions of a particular genre in the realization of another in order to communicate their private intentions. For this reason, we can try to categorize texts, but we have to take into account that tourist text types are hybrid genres that share various linguistic and discursive strategies belonging to other genres. Dann classifies tourist text types according to the communication medium they use and to their stage within the tourist cycle:   

Pre-trip: adverts, leaflets, brochures On-trip: travel guides, travelogues Post-trip: trip reports, reviews

Nigro on the other hand, identified 5 typologies:     

Leaflets Brochures Tourist posters Travelogues Travel guides

The most typical genres characterizing tourism can be classified in two groups, according to their pragmatic function: 1. Professional communication, which are used between:  agencies and customers  agencies and agencies  agencies and hotels, tour operators, airlines  institutions such as the Europe Union, the United Nation World Tourism Organization, the British Travel Authority and agencies or tour operator associations such as the Italian Federazione Italiana Associazione Imprese Viaggio e Turismo. It comprises: a. contracts, b. norms and conventions

c. legislations d. marketing and tourism planning and governance 2. Promotional communication, which are aimed at potential travellers and visitors: a. Tourism advertising, which usually advertises a location and provides useful information b. Brochures and leaflets, whose main purpose is that of selling tourist products and are highly persuasive c. Itineraries, contained in leaflets and produced by travel agents, containing descriptive information about places and activities to do d. Articles in specialized magazines, which convey information on locations but at the same time provide details of various offers for the same destinations, comparing prices, services and their quality e. Tourist guides, which contain description of places from artistic, historic point of views and give practical information as monuments opening f. In-flight magazines, are provided free on planes and offer products that appear less expensive. They convey the idea of being global and open-minded tourist

THE LANGUAGE OF TOURISM AS SPECIALIZED DISCOURSE 1- THE ROLE OF DISCOURSE IN THE TOURISM INDUSTRY Tourism is a well-established social practice which involves various fields such as the financial, marketing, anthropological, geographical, artistic and historical sectors and is expressed through language. The marketing language of tourism promotion of a product to be acquired by potential clients have made the identification of tourism discourse as a specialized discourse, since it complies with norms that govern the realization of specialized text genres. For this reason, an in-depth investigation of these textual genres has been carried out in recent years by discourse analysis . A genre is composed of a class of communicative events, which share some set of communicative purposes. These purposes, recognized by the members of the discourse community, shape the schematic structure of discourse and at the same time they influence and contain content and style choices. For this reason: ≠

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Speech community, identifies a sociolinguistic grouping, whose members have a commonly-shared knowledge of the use of interpretation of speech in order to reach the communicative needs of the group itself, such as socialization and solidarity Discourse community, identifies a socio-rhetorical grouping, whose members’ objectives are prior to those of socialization and solidarity  This implies that: o Genres are used by socio rhetorical grouping, rather than individuals, in order to reach goals going beyond individual need and geographical settings o Membership of these discourse community is obtained with persuasion, training and relevant qualification rather than being acquired

Constraints imposed by genres are often exploited by expert members of the discourse community to reach private goals  they adopt certain rhetorical strategies, called non-discriminative, to obtain special effects without changing the main communicative purpose of the genre. Otherwise, should they be discriminative, they would give rise to subgenres. Generic integrity is therefore flexible, negotiable and sometimes contested. It can be defined both by:  

text-internal features (contextual, textual and intertextual) external features (discursive practices, discourse procedures, disciplinary culture)

Bathia proposed a seven-step model for the analysis of genres: 1. Placing the given genre text in a situational context 2. Surveying existing literature, in terms of relevant theories of discourse or genre linguistic analysis, social structure, history, beliefs and goals of the community 3. Refining the situational/contextual analysis, in terms of the addresser and addressee, their relationship and goals 4. Selecting a corpus choosing:

o a long and simple typical text for a detailed analysis, o a few randomly chosen texts for an exploration investigation o a large number of texts to investigate a few specific features 5. Studying the institutional context, identifying the rules and conventions that govern the use of language 6. Carrying out the analysis, choosing a right level: o level 1 – analysis of lexico-grammatical features o level 2 – analysis of text pattering on textualization o level 3 – analysis of structural interpretation 7. obtaining specialist information, in order to add psychological reality to the analysis Both Bathia and Swales consider genres as being composed of a series of communicative events, realized in: 

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moves = a discoursal or rhetorical unit established by a mixed bag of criteria that performs a coherent communicative function in written or spoken discourse. They are meaningful units reflecting the specific cognitive structure of a genre. steps = a lower unit that a move, representing non-discriminating strategies used to realize a particular communicative purpose at the move level.

Fairclough applied intertextuality to genre analysis, distinguishing between:  

manifest intertextuality = textual reference made to external sources in a text constitutive intertextuality = the interrelationship of discourse features in a text

Tourism language, as all specialized discourse, has a multidimensional feature, that can be seen: in the interaction between specialists, from the specific expressions and codified textual genres adopted in the interaction between specialists and non-specialists, from the vocabulary items

Tourism as promotional language

TOURISM DISCOURSE

Tourism as LSP

eer, peer specialist to layman Level of formality: to peer, specialist to layman, layman to layman.

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Multidisciplinary field: environment, history, geography, arts, religion, gastronomy, ecommerce.

Multidisciplinary field: marketing, business, finance, law, e-commerce.

Linguistically, tourism can be seen as macro-specialized discourse which groups together (micro)-specialized languages of the different disciplinary domains and sub-domains it deals with. When tourism discourse is not developed for illocutionary promotional purposes, we can describe it as LSP, but in this case:  we cannot define it as a special language, because it differs from general language for its exploitation of certain linguistic rules or the use of linguistic conventions absent from general language.  we cannot define it as a micro-language because the term refers to a microcosm lacking the expressive richness of standard language  we can define it as A FORM OF SPECIALIZED DISCOURSE, because it shares with general discourse most phonetic, lexical, morpho-syntactic and textual resources The degree of specialization varies from the type of pragmatic function that tourism discourse is developing: o from a promotional point of view, it will be persuasive rather than specialized o in communicative events within the specialized community it will reflect the specialist use of language What is a specialized discourse? = a discourse which maintains the intrinsic communicative purposes of general language, but which mixtures specific lexical, syntactic and semantic features that are present in a different quantity with respect to general language. Lexical features of specialized discourse 

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Monoreferentiality = the most distinctive feature which consists in a word that in a given context has only one meaning, guarantying conciseness. These words have only a denotative function and lack of any kind of emotional and connotative meaning and emotion (if the text is mainly informative). Ex. The word carrier, in tourism is almost applied to a plane representing a category of transportation. Precision requires transparency = the surface form, be it a word or an affix, immediately identifies a concept, avoiding ambiguity and polysemy. Ex. The word biometric, having the bio affix, we immediately connect it with something organic. Conciseness = the expression of terms in the shortest possible form, based on the principle of minimax (minimal efforts of the addressee to reach maximal specificity). It is assured by: o o

Acronyms Abbreviations

o o

Eponyms (JFK) Zero derivation

o o

Blending Juxtaposition

o

Specialization of words

Semantic features of specialized discourse There is a semantic evolution which derives from the specialization of word-meanings originally belonging to general language, thanks to:  

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Catachresis = the use of a word with some new meaning in order to fill a gap in existing vocabulary Metaphorization = the most widely-exploited strategies used to derive new and specialized meanings from general language. Ex. “A fly drive package to escape from stressful society to a real paradise”. Metaphors are also used for catachresis to be more transparent, concise, clearer and to exploit images of real word to represent complex concept. Ex. “A twin room” (a bedroom with two identical separate single beds). This type of language can lead to ambiguity and needs a process of de-codification. Shortened similes = when two terms have similar semantic values linked by an equivalence. Ex. “Ecotourism is a sustainable form of […] tourism”. This technique is useful for adding connotative sense but at the same time creating a connection between the tenor (the concept meant) and the vehicle (the image that carries the weight of the comparison). Elliptic similes = when specialized discourse undergoes a process of popularization. Ex. “Sri Lanka is the pearl of the Orient”

Syntactic features of specialized discourse Specialized discourse uses the same syntactic rules as general language, but the apparent diversity lies in the frequency of syntactic features used (they are more frequent in SD). The main features are:

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Conciseness = it is achieved through the omission of phrasal elements such as articles, prepositions or auxiliaries (function words) but also content words if their omission does not cause ambiguity. This feature favours depersonalization. Expressive conciseness = relative and subordinate clauses are avoided in order to make the sentence structure lighter, favouring dense, long nominal groups and coordination. It can be achieved by: o Substituting them with lexemes with and adjectival role (by means of affixation) o Omitting the relative pronoun and the auxiliary when the relative clause is in the passive form, ex. the rules stated o Exploiting the negative value of the prefix un- added to the past participle of the relative clause (if it is a negative form), ex. the unknown soldier o Substituting them by the present participle of the main verb, ex. clients staying o Substituting them by a noun specified by a complex expression, ex. a 5-star hotel Premodification = a left-dislocation of terms with an adjectival function which modifies the qualities or the properties of the head-noun. It can create complex nominal groups whose modifiers are nouns which have acquired an adjectival role, causing a loss of conceptual clarity. It makes the expression denser syntactically and dives it greater semantic importance. Ex. check-in time, or word where the hyphen is dropped such as timetable. Nominalisation = the process of transformation from one syntactic category to another. The most common type is the transformation of a verb into a noun and the noun/verb into an adjective, ex. upon arrival (when you arrive) at the hotel. Its aim is to convey more adjective and precise data, favouring the organization of textual construction in a theme-rheme pattern and so facilitating cohesion. Special uses of personal pronouns = they acquire a special role in guidebooks and similar genres, achieving the goal of ego-targeting in which the author establishes a direct relationship with the reader so that empathy, identification and loyalty are established. Use of superlative forms = the massive presence of superlatives used with positive terms to transmit both a sense of euphoria and of distinctiveness and authenticity. Verb tenses = o the present simple is the most used, especially in tourist guides, brochures and itineraries because it gives the stay in the city a more permanent and lengthy time span o the imperative is mainly exploited in guides and brochures in order to stimulate tourists to go and visit o modal verbs are used a lot, especially can, must and will. Widely exploited also expression of necessity, permissibility and probability, in order to express a way of behaving, a mode of action to be undertaken by the tourist. They help to create the illusion of a friendly relationship with the writer. o passive forms are widely used, in order to reach a high level of depersonalization, and to diminish the importance of the role the agent, giving more emphasis on the object. However, when the emphasis is not only on the tourist as a person being taken care of but also on the tour operator who takes care of the tourist, the agent is expressed, to convey the idea that the tourist will not be left alone.

Textual features of specialized discourse Specialized discourse is characterized by feature related to the textual framework, which seems to be more extensively used than anywhere else. The exception is anaphoric reference, that in specialized texts is usually replaced by lexical repetition, in order to avoid ambiguity (especially in legal writing). Conjunctions and connectives clarify the following sentences and illocutionarily orientate the text (they can have positive or negative semantic polarity). They are responsible for longer paraphrases but at the same time they give the text more transparency. The textual framework of specialized texts depends on the sequence of:  theme = items introducing the topic or theme. A given item of information (sth known to the addressee) not always coincides with the theme.  rheme = items containing the expansion of what has been presented in the thematic position. Any new item usually corresponds with the rheme. The sequence theme-rheme makes the text more cohesive and coherent.

In the development of the text we can have: 

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Theme-rheme standard positioning: T1  R1 ↓ T 2  R2 ex. Needs assessment in tourism education and training (T1). Human Resource Development Plans (R1). This programme (T2) is directed towards governments of UNWTO Member States (R2). Theme-rheme parallel positioning T1  R1 ↓ T 2  R2 ex. This programme (T1) is directed towards governments of UNWTO Member States (R1). The aim of this programme (T2) is to strengthen National Tourism Administrations (R2).

Some authors use the different sequences of theme-rheme (ex. by the thematization of non-finite adverbial clauses) as a strategy to give emphasis to the textual pragmatic values they wish to, expressing their authority.

2- TOURISM DISCOURSE IN SPECIALIZED GENRES: PLANNING AND GOVERNANCE In order to be successful, the tourism industry requires a great planning and many coordination activities. Tourism planning is the process of identification of the objectives and determination of all the possible methods through which achieving such objectives. This process involves environmental, social, economic sectors but also the relationship to the type of business a community or region chooses to engage in. For this reason, it can be analysed from the discourse perspective: the presentation of tourism policies and decisions is expressed linguistically through highly significant terms and it implies the use of words which dehumanize, impersonalize and objectify the subject.  this analysis is based on a corpus of 68 documents collected from the European Commission, Enterprise and Industry. Tourism (2009 and March 2010). What results from the analysis of this corpus is that planning is something carried out by state or government agencies in networked cooperation with private individuals. In this scenario, planning may be regarded as a form of conflict and negotiation of interests amongst the institutions and the private individuals involved, i.e. it is a power game carried out through discourse, by means of thoughts, intentions, values and actions expressed with language. This language is dehumanized, less emotive and more direct than in any other activity, mainly because its purpose is not to persuade but rather to offer information regarding new potential targets, markets and profits. The texts analysed follow a generic pattern: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Move = expression of negative trends related to the socio-eco context Move = indication of awareness...