Modulo di Lingua, Lingua e Traduzione Inglese 2

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Tourism

I

NTRODUCTION

The social impact tourism has not only as a marketing product but also as an intercultural interaction is

implicitly revealed by the number of studies devoted to the field of tourism: from literature to social

sciences, from economics and marketing to law and ethics, to quote merely a few.

D G

EFINITION OF ENRE

One of the most distinctive aspects of specialised discourse is that it complies with norms that govern

the realisation of specialised text genres. It is this conceptual framework which seems to be responsible

for the author’s linguistic choices.

T S D

OURISM AS PECIALISED ISCOURSE

Tourism is also a specialised language whose users are professionals. Multi-dimensionality in tourism

discourse can be seen in the different forms it takes: genres characterising specialised communication can

be written documents, professional meetings, video-phone conversations, etc., whereas the generic forms

typical of non-specialised communication can be tourist guides, brochures, emails, advertising texts,

tickets, conversations, letters, articles in the Press and/or TV programmes devoted to tourism, such

communication generally taking place in travel agencies, hotels and so on. The multi-dimension

characteristic of tourism discourse can be shown in a chart where specialisation develops along both a

horizontal and vertical axis (Cabre, 1998; Scarpa, 2001). In all specialised discourses, the horizontal

dimension concerns the disciplinary domains, fields and sub-fields dealt with in its language; the vertical

dimension regards the socio-logical level within which tourism discourse is realised and which depends

on the relationship between the people involved in the communicative event (Gotti, 2001).

By adopting Gotti’s premise (2006: 18), we can conveniently describe tourism discourse as LSP; it is a

specialised discourse

form of because it shares with general discourse most phonetic, lexical, morpho-

syntactic and textual resources by means of which the communicative functions typical of specialised

texts are realised.

The lexical features of specialised discourse are monoreferentiality, lack of emotion, precision,

transparency, conciseness (the language sometimes seems quite telegraphic because of the omission of

function words and content words).

Conciseness is based on the principle of minimax i.e. the minimal efforts of the addressee to reach

maximal specificity. It is the expression of terms in the shortest possible forms. Its linguistic devices are:

Acronyms (LOS, Length of Stay, FIT, Foreign Independent Travel); Abbreviations (Comp to indicate

complimentary / free); Eponyms J.F.K. - New York airport), Marco Polo – Venice airport; Zero

derivation: check-in (noun) derived from the verb to checkin; Blending: campsite vs. camping site;

Juxtaposition which omits prepositions and premodifiers in nominal groups i.e. Fly-Cruise Package, a

package which includes air transportation to the port of embarkation and the cruise itself; Specialization

of words drawn from general language. Expressive Conciseness: Relative and subordinate clauses are

avoided to make the sentence structure lighter. It favours dense, long nominal groups and coordination.

The relative clauses are substituted by lexemes with an adjectival role and usually by means of affixation.

Premodification: Left-dislocation of terms with and 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. Nominalization: Process of transformation from one syntactical

category to another. VERB into a NOUN; NOUN or NOUN /VERB into an ADJECTIVE. In tourism

discourse, there is the frequent use of nouns acquiring a verbal function. Special uses of personal

pronouns: They acquire a special role in guidebooks and similar genres, since they are used to achieve

the goal of ego-targeting. By using we and you the author establishes a direct and personal relationship

with the readership, in doing so he creates a successfully persuasive text and stimulates empathy and

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loyalty. Massive presence of superlative forms: used to transmit a sense of euphoria for the services

promoted and a sense of distinctiveness and authenticity. Verb tenses: The present indicative tense

seems the most widely used especially in tourist guides, brochures and itineraries because it gives the stay

in the city a more permanent and lengthy time span; The imperative is another typical feature of Tourism

discourse in the holiday industry, and it is mainly employed in guides and brochures; its pragmatic purpose

is to urge tourists to fulfil or take advantage of the chances offered. Modals: CAN and WILL convey

the idea of possibility and certainty; MUST is less employed than can and will; it is used in a nominalized

form: a must-see, a must-do and a must. Passive forms: High degree of depersonalization, to foreground

facts, events, results and to diminish the importance of the author.

T L T P D

HE ANGUAGE OF OURISM AS ROMOTIONAL ISCOURSE

All (specialised) texts have a hidden skeleton forming the textual pattern of the document. The type of

skeleton concealed in the text affects the type of conceptual, rhetorical and linguistic aspects that are a

feature of the text itself. In order to categorise textual typologies within tourism discourse, the pragmatic

function of the text has been investigated. Furthermore, such dynamism seems to have a dominant role

in the elaboration of genres which embed more than one code and therefore resort to multimodality.

Four major theoretical approaches are adopted by scholars in order to understand the language of tourism

and tourism itself as a social phenomenon: the authenticity approach (from the perspective of

authenticity, the motivation behind tourism is a search for authenticity; the language of tourism enhances

the impression of authenticity through describing what is native and typical of the destination; this

authenticity, however, is only fictitious because the real destination has been greatly manipulated and

commercialised), the strangehood one (it emphasises the search for something different and for new

experiences as being the driving force behind travel – the desire for something new and exotic:

‘untouched’, ‘remote and unspoilt’, ‘colourful’, ‘picturesque’…), the play one (concept of recreational

tourist: its main feature is the research of the out-of-the-ordinary when travelling – in this sense, tourism

itself is seen as a game) and the conflict approach (the world is divided between the familiar – us – and

the strange – them; language aims to make what is unknown become less fearsome and dangerous, and

sets it in some form of representation of great figures of the past; large use of stereotypes: this language

reconstructs, reassembles and shapes the unknown).

M ULTIMODALITY IN PROMOTIONAL TOURISM GENRES

The layout of tourist texts follows a very precise composition plan, which can be easily be detected thanks

to multimodal analysis: indeed, the positions of the illustrations, the texts, the frames in which they are

set, their interrelation and interaction define as composition. The way in which composition is realised

depends on the fact that Western cultures follow a Z-reading pattern of perusal: the text is written from

left to right, from toto bottom, line by line. Elements can therefore be placed in specific zones of the Z-

reading path and the resulting image possesses corresponding informational values. Elements placed to

the left of the horizontal axis of the page are represented as Given pieces of information, or items that

the reader already knows; New elements on the right are not yet known or agreed upon. A sense of

contrast is presented through layouts based on the vertical axis. Elements in the upper part of the page

appeal to the reader’s emotions, expressing what might be. The bottom elements have an informative

appeal, showing what is. These contrasting appeals can be awarded the values of Ideal and Real, where

Ideal elements are more salient and simply contain the general points of information; Real elements give

more practical and specific information. The elements place in the centre are the essential nucleus of

information, with those set at the Margins as subsidiary parts of the image core. Elements are positioned

so as to attract the reader’s attention and direct it to different levels of importance. These various levels

are created through relative choices of colour, size, image sharpness and position. Often vectors, ideal

lines created by the shape and position of elements, help to lead the eye from one element to another.

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T OURISM ADVERTISING TEXTS

Advertising is persuasive, and is therefore successful, not only if the message at the basis of its

communicative event is correctly encoded by the addresser, but also if the addressee is able to recognise

the addresser’s communicative intentions via the implications created by the latter. The tourism industry