Reading Tourism Texts

A Multimodal Analysis

Sabrina Francesconi

• Publisher: Channel View Publications
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781845414290
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

This volume explores the relationship between tourism and travel texts and contemporary society, and how each is shaped by the other. A multimodal analysis is used to consider a variety of texts including novels, brochures, blogs, websites, radio commercials, videos, postcards and authentic tourist pictures and their meaning-making dynamics within the tourism discourse. The book looks at the ways in which these different texts have influenced how tourists and travellers have been viewed over time and how we envision ourselves as tourists or travellers. It puts forward multimodal analysis as the best framework for exploring the semiotic potential of these texts. Including examples from the UK, Malta, Canada, New Zealand, India, Jamaica and South Africa, this volume will be useful for researchers and students in tourism studies, communication and media studies and applied linguistics.

1 Genre Analysis

Genre and Generic Integrity

This chapter addresses tourism discourse through the notion of genre and through genre analysis. After briefly mentioning the development of the concept of genre throughout the decades, an open, fluid definition is acknowledged, with a focus on processes of generic innovation and hybridisation. Attention is paid to tourism texts and different classification models are illustrated, with varying emphasis on actors (sender, addressee), medium, stage of trip, mode, communication function, genre value and degree of language specialisation (lexico-grammar). The last section examines Wikitravel as exemplifying travel text innovation.

Tourism and travel textuality and language are substantially affected by the situational context they inhabit. Following Gotti (2006: 19), the language of tourism is taken as ‘specialised discourse’. Frequently used and abused terms and formulae like ‘restricted language’, ‘special language’, ‘codes’ and ‘microlanguage’ seem inappropriate, as they suggest a relation of subordination to general language. Rather than a mere terminological issue, this choice acknowledges a more complex view of tourism and the language use it implies and is being implied by (Gotti, 2003, 2005, 2006). Identifying English for tourism as ‘specialised discourse’ foregrounds that it ‘possesses all the lexical, phonetic, morphosyntactic and textual resources of general language’ (Gotti, 2006: 19). Yet, as Graham Dann asserts, ‘tourism has a discourse of its own’ (Dann, 1996a: 2).

Discourse has been defined as ‘language use in institutional, professional or more general social contexts’ (Bhatia, 2004: 3). Going beyond linguistic forms per se, ‘discourse’ is language as that is shaped by and is shaping society and regulating individuals’ interaction within that society. Accordingly, it is as social practice that discourse makes meaning (Jaworski & Coupland, 1999: 3). Specifically, the critical debate on discourse has tradition ally unveiled the ideological component of discursive practices (Mills, 1997; Said, 1978). In his influential work The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault ([1969] 2002) defines discourse as expressing and negotiating ideologically rooted social viewpoints and value systems. In this light, it would be used as a means of control, manipulation and orientation of recipients’ mindsets and behaviour. It is the task of discourse analysis to unveil ideologically based assumptions and communication strategies.

Discourse analysis can be variously conducted following a multiperspective model, considering text, genre, professional practice or social practice. Among these, genre is increasingly being assigned a substantial role in explorations of discourse and it is used here to understand tourism and travel specialised discourse. Throughout the volume attention will be paid to how discourse instantiates generic patterns into authentic texts such as websites, brochures, online diaries, postcards or videos.

Far from being unquestioned and unquestionable, the notion of genre has undergone systematic (re)conceptualisation throughout the centuries and is still an open concept. Ancient, medieval, renaissance, modern and contemporary models differently defined and applied generic forms as classification systems (Ragonese, 2010: 5). Derived from the Latin genus, genre was prominently used in classical philosophy. Drawing on Aristotle's Rhetorics and the recognition of the three official discourse practices – deliberative, forensic and epideictic (see e.g. Jonathan, 1984) – various positions grounded genre theories on predictable structural and stylistic constraints. In a literary context, Dante Alighieri illustrated the classic styles of tragedy, comedy and elegy in his De vulgari eloquentia ([1302–05], 1996). More recently, in the 20th-century debate, Northrop Frye (1957) identified in certain universal genres the key to organising the whole literary corpus. These positions have nourished a view of generic integrity (Bhatia, 2004), which relies on conventionalised and standardised stable patterns instantiating genre configurations in recurrent textual situations.

Over the centuries, this classification method has not been exempt from criticism. Anti-prescriptive and anti-regulatory positions towards genre, born in the aesthetic and cultural context of Romanticism, were maintained in the last century by intellectuals like Croce and Blanchot (see Ragonese, 2010: 5). These stressed the rigid and deterministic nature of generic classifications, ultimately perceived as undermining the comprehension of a text in its literary uniqueness.

However, it was Todorov ([1978, 1990) who underlined the importance of addressing genre as a ‘negative imperative’, a theoretical model that is meaningful only when and if displaced and deconstructed in diverse, specific and irreducible textual practices. As such, genre analysis is not to be taken as prescriptive but as descriptive (Chandler, 1997: 1) and it should observe the extent to which a text participates in a genre group, and questions, redefines and subverts it at the same time. Following this open and fluid interpretation of genre, Bakhtin (1986) proposed the generic notion of ‘heteroglossia’, suggesting that texts use a plurality of juxtaposed and interactive voices, thereby confirming the impossibility of rigid generic taxonomies.

In recent decades, the debate on genre has expanded enormously and incorporated varying positions. As reported mainly by Halliday (1978) and Kress (2003, 2010), the Sydney school has been developing a notion of genre as deriving from a systemic functional view of language (see Chapter 2), which could be fruitfully applied to educational contexts. The New Rhetoric School, including Bateman and Miller, emphasises social practice as shaping genres, with a focus on textual and contextual dynamics. Within the domain of ESP in applied linguistics, scholars like Bhatia (1993, 2002, 2004, 2010) and Swales (1990) have been addressing genre as a communicative event, occurring within a particular discourse community and following a specific communicative purpose or function.

Determining both generic content and form, the communication function is and has to be recognised by the expert members of the ‘discourse community’, that is, a socio-rhetorical group (Swales, 1990: 24). As Bhatia himself states (2004: 113), a communication function is not to be considered and treated as a ‘definite and objective’ criterion but as a flexible and dynamic one. Moreover, it is never isolated but needs to be recognised as composite and stratified (Martin, 1992; Swales, 1990). For instance, the functionally stratified title of a tourist publication should, at the same time, introduce a text, foreground the main theme and attract and capture attention. Yet, title stylistic and linguistic articulation is also flexible, as variously affected by text genre, target, medium, topic and position on the page or screen. Both aspects make the analytical process challenging.

Identifying communication purpose as the primary determinant of genre membership, Bhatia thus maintains that genre:

essentially refers to language use in a conventionalized communicative setting in order to give expression to a specific set of communicative goals of a disciplinary or social institution, which give rise to stable structural forms by imposing constraints on the use of lexico-grammatical as well as discoursal resources. (Bhatia, 2004: 23)

Accordingly, the still crucial concept of generic integrity refers to a genre's standardised nature, to its recognisable structural and stable identity (Bhatia, 2004: 113), which can be identified both by text-internal and text-external features. The former indicate textual, intertextual and contextual elements, while the latter imply discursive practices and procedures as well as disciplinary culture (Maci, 2010: 42). For example, the encoding of a letter of complaint regarding a holiday requires specific textual rules to be followed, such as the codification and placement of the sender's address, date, recipient's address, salutation, subject, body, greeting and enclosure. These factors may vary if the faster and cheaper genre of email is chosen, peculiarities of which are contextually determined.

Clearly, language analysts heavily rely on generic constraints to assess texts. However, a genre-based view of discourse addresses regularities in linguistic and stylistic behaviour not per se but as they are affected by the purpose of the communication. In Bhatia's terms, such features are defined in terms of ‘typification of rhetorical action, regularities of staged, goal-oriented social processes, and consistency of communicative purposes’ (Bhatia, 2004: 22). Three main levels of investigation can thus be identified (Bhatia, 1993):

• a structural level, aimed at the identification of a set of rhetorical moves;

• a textual level, concerned with the genre-specific use of linguistic features;

• a lexico-grammar level, focused on specific and recurring linguistic features.

Like the units in the previously mentioned letter of complaint, moves are textual segments fulfilling a specific function or ‘functional stages occurring in a particular sequence’ (Eggins, 2011: 58). This last concept of sequentiality implies the existence of a step-by-step text organisation. Travel reportage, for instance, shows a generic structure composed of title, subtitle, introduction, body text and conclusion, in this order. Each move follows distinct formal conventions. The title, for example, adopts nominalisation, wordplay and key-words to capture readers’ attention and briefly refer to text content. At the same time, the article body text makes use of lexico-grammar strategies proper of the language of tourism, like superlative forms of adjectives, abundant and laudatory lexis and anaphoric syntactic structures (Belenguer, 2002; Berger, 2004; Canals & Liverani, 2010). Avoiding a distinction between right and wrong solutions, such a functional view of genre enables assessment of how and why some texts are appropriate while others are not. Appropriacy is seen in terms of the successful realisation of given communication functions in a given context (Eggins, 2011: 70).

In this three-level analysis, tourism text description enables the identification of aspects of similarity and difference between various genre instances. It means that a particular text is similar to, reminiscent of, other texts circulating in their culture (Eggins, 2011: 55). In fact, genres are not isolated but are strictly interconnected, a concept exemplified by Bhatia through the well-known metaphor of the galaxy, according to which genres exist in colonies, like stars exist in galaxies, and colonies, like galaxies, interact with other generic star systems (Bhatia, 2002). Colonies – for example, promotional genres, introductory genres, academic genres – include similar genres with common features used within different discourse communities (Calvi, 2010: 15). Generic identity is thus negotiated within the mutual relations inherent in the colony. The following section outlines genre maps and colonies traced by scholars who have investigated tourism texts.

Genre Maps and Colonies

The critical debate on tourism and travel texts is increasingly exploiting and further developing conceptualisations and tools deriving from the field of genre studies (Bondi, 1999; Calvi, 2010; Francesconi, 2012; Maci, 2010). Yet, the ceaseless proliferation and innovation in specialised genre instances imposes a more complex and composite frame of reference. Notably, Calvi's multifunctional and multidimensional framework is based on the categories of genre families, macro-genres, genres and sub-genres, as follows (Calvi, 2010: 16):

• Genre families comprehend texts in a given socio-professional context with a similar communication purpose. The main genre families in tourism discourse are editorial (travel books, travel guides, travel and tourist magazines), institutional (official leaflets, brochures, websites, advertisements), commercial (hotel brochures, leaflets, advertisements, travel agent websites), organisational (tickets, bookings, cards, invoices), legal (regulations, norms), scientific and academic (critical volumes, articles, essays) and informal (travel blogs, travel chats).

• Defined by common communication purpose and medium, channel and sender, macro-genres include different genres, textual typologies and styles. Examples of tourist macro-genres are the brochure, the travel magazine, the travel catalogue, the webpage and the tourist guide, the latter including genres like itineraries, practical guides, maps and pictures.

• Either autonomous or embedded in macro-genres, genres are determined by communication and pragmatic function, formal distinctiveness and common language features. Among the wide range of tourist text genres are the practical guide, the descriptive guide, the itinerary, the travel programme, the travel report and the advertisement. Other genres are tickets, bookings, contracts, cards, tourist regulations, travel reports, forums and travel blogs.

• Sub-genres are characterised on a thematic level. For instance, art, history, crafts, food and drink, nature, sport, events and entertainment are topics covered by most tourist texts.

According to Calvi and drawing on Bhatia's grid for the description of genre instances, the grid shown in Figure 1.1 describes the travel magazine as text macro-genre. Exemplified by recognisable titles such as National Geographic Traveler Magazine, Lonely Planet Magazine, Afar Travel Magazine and Condè Nast Traveler, the travel magazine can easily be described as part of the editorial family issued by a publishing house. It is, then, a macro-genre, identified as distinct in its printed medium (even though a growing number of magazines are also digitally available) and in its predominantly informative function. A plural and composite text, it includes genres like travel reports, destination advertisements and itineraries, which are distinctive in terms of form and language. More specifically, the genre of a report itself can be further described in terms of its thematic profile, since it can variously focus on geography, society, ethnography, nature, history and arts, sports or the economy, among others (Belenguer, 2002; Canals & Liverani, 2010).

A second example of generic description, illustrated in Figure 1.2, is given for the present volume. This text is part of the scientific family, being produced and used within the academic context and for research and educational purposes. It can subsequently be defined by printed medium and by educational function. Not homogeneous in its composition, it is a macro-genre, and it includes a list of contents, a list of figures, an introduction, five chapters, a bibliography and a glossary. Finally, the chapters focus on various topics of tourism and travel discourse, namely genre, verbal language, visual semiosis and so on.

As the considered text genres have revealed, a multifunctional and multidimensional framework encompasses a range of semiotically influential aspects, such as actors, medium, stage of trip, mode, communication function, genre value and lexico-grammar strategies. These shall be henceforth taken into account.

Actors

According to Gotti (2006), attention should first be given to the actors or agents involved in the communication system and to the roles and functions they play. In Calvi's framework, this component is particularly relevant in the category of the family of genres, which relies on the message sender's profile. Gotti (2006: 20) claims that the language of tourism ha...