Lingua inglese II - The Language of Tourism

Tourism discourse

Tourism can be identified as a cross-cutting sector involving a big diversity of services and professions linked to many other economic activities and policy areas. The tourism industry is designed to attract as many customers as possible in order to make profit and it involves many different disciplines like marketing, history, geography, sociology, psychology, etc. It is also one of the fastest-growing economic sectors in the world.

Tourism discourse types

Dann (1996) distinguishes tourism texts according to the type of medium they use (audio, video, written, etc.) and to their stage in the tourist cycle: pre-trip, on-trip, post-trip.

• Pre-trip includes: Advertisement, Brochures, Leaflets;
• On-trip includes: Itineraries and Tour Guides;
• Post-trip includes: Trip-report and Reviews.

Besides Dann's identification, tourism discourse can be divided into promotional and specialized discourse according to the pragmatic function of the texts. Promotional texts are addressed to customers and they provide different information to persuade, lure, woo, and seduce people and convert them from potential to actual clients, while specialized discourse are texts aimed at the communication between specialists and experts in the touristic field and they may comprise norms, legislation, contracts, conventions, marketing, tourism planning, and governance.

Promotional texts

• Tourism Advertising - It advertises location and provides useful information (it is the most common and difficult to translate). Advertising is successful if the message is correctly codified by the reader and immediately comprehended. In advertising, a very important role is played by the layout, the look and the style of the adv. Normally it is formed by a large picture of the destination and a headline that is a large printed word located on the top of the page, in bold, colored and designed in an eye-catching way to immediately attract the reader's attention. It also includes a main text that provides clear information and a slogan or a logo that identifies the destination in order to remain in the reader's mind (take a look at the AIDA principle);
• Tourist Guides - They contain information about places from an artistic and historical point of view and also practical information about museums, sightseeing, restaurants, itineraries, food, nightlife, and so on (they are the easiest to translate). They are the longest touristic texts and are written in a narrative way. The language could be both colloquial and formal. They use emotive words and foreign words and idioms in order to confer an exotic flavour to the destination. A destination is authentic when the pleasure of the tourists from their holiday corresponds to their expectations;
• Brochures and Leaflets - Their main purpose is to sell touristic products and they are the most persuasive texts of tourism. Lexis is extremely simple, understandable, and accessible;
• Itineraries - They contain descriptive information about the places to be visited and the activities offered to the customers and they are generally printed on a single sheet of paper with short and clear messages divided into paragraphs. All of them use English as a lingua franca;
• Articles in Specialized Magazines - Similar to Touristic Guides, they provide information about locations and also details of various offers;
• In-flight Magazines - They are free magazines provided on planes and they are part of the flight marketing process and present the company as the best expert in the field in order to offer the travelers a higher sense of security.

Specialized discourse

A specialized text uses a mixture of lexis, syntactic, and semantic features which differ from general language in order to achieve their purpose depending on the type of addressee and field. The main elements that characterize specialized discourse are:

Lexical features

• Monoreferentiality: One only meaning is accepted in order to reduce ambiguity;
• Lack of emotion: Words have only a denotative function because the text is informative and not persuasive;
• Precision: Immediately assigned a precise meaning to a word;
• Transparency: Immediately identified a concept;
• Conciseness: The shortest possible way to show a concept by using acronyms, abbreviations, eponyms, blending, and zero derivation.

Semantic features

• Metaphorization: Is a language strategy that uses a figure of speech called metaphor in order to say concisely what in other words would need long explanation. Metaphorization uses catachresis which concerns the use of a word with a new meaning like a neologism;
• Elliptic similes: A strategy that tends to omit elements in order to achieve a greater effect;
• Paradoxes and puns: Are "giochi di parole" that tend to exaggerate a concept and they are used especially in slogans to persuade the customers.