Communicating tourism: language and media

Introduction 
1 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 
“The business of providing things for people to do, places for them to stay, etc. while they are on 
holiday” (2003: 1757). This is the definition of tourism provided by the LONGMAN Dictionary of 
Contemporary English. One might observe that this statement describes only one side, the one 
dominated by tour operators and other professionals, such as travel agents, tourism managers, the 
staff of a holiday resort, etc., i.e. all those people and companies who are in charge of help and take 
care of travellers and tourists. The side of tourism “purchasers”, which is not mentioned in the 
opening quotation, is represented by those people, alias the tourists, who move to destinations for 
pleasure, in general. An exhaustive definition of this side of tourism is given by the World Tourism 
Organisation (UNWTO) and available on its website: “the activities of persons travelling to and 
staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, 
business or other purposes.” Therefore, according to the UNWTO there are at least three kinds of 
tourism: leisure tourism, business tourism, and personal tourism, which are well known and 
established types of tourism, whose definitions do not need to be explained. Nevertheless, the 
evolution of marketing towards a closer relationship with customers, who then become the 
protagonists of the whole marketing mix, has led to an expansion of tourism and a customization of 
tourist products, in order to meet every single person‟s requirements. For instance, in the last few 
years, new types of tourism have been created, such as „ecotourism‟, i.e. a kind of sustainable 
tourism which includes travels into wildlife sanctuaries where the integrity of nature has been 
preserved from indiscriminate building, „spa tourism‟, that comprises weekends or weeks in spas or 
thermae where people go to improve their health and beauty through swing and other beauty 
treatments, and „wine tourism‟, which refers to people visiting wineries and vineyards in areas 
renowned for their wine of excellent quality.  
It can be deduced from its elaborated, twofold definition that tourism is a discipline which 
covers a wide range of domains, from Economics to Marketing, from Art to Social Studies. As far 
as these subjects are concerned, tourism has been the subject-matter of several articles, research, 
meetings and books. However, tourism related to language has been quite recently analysed by 
some famous scholars and researchers, such as MacCannell (1976), Castello (2002), Cohen and 
Cooper (2004), Nigro (2006) and Cappelli (2007). They described the language of tourism and 
above all emphasised the important role it plays in tourism promotion and communication. For 
instance, Cohen and Cooper (2004) complain of the lack of attention given to the language of 
tourism, whereas the translation of tourist texts is the focus of attention of the book written by
Introduction 
2 
 
Nigro (2006). The most influential work dealing with tourist language features is The Language of 
Tourism. A Sociolinguistic Perspective by Graham M. S. Dann (1996). His book represents, as can 
be read on the cover, “the first sociolinguistic treatment of tourism”. The properties of the language, 
used to persuade potential tourists to visit a place, and the social control this kind of discourse 
exerts over people are explained. Furthermore, every single concept is accompanied by examples 
taken from authentic tourist publications, so as to understand its meaning. Other useful works are 
those dealing with Marketing of Tourism, written by a large number of scholars, such as Reid 
(1989), Sinclair and Stabler (1991), Brent-Ritchie and Goeldner (1994), Middleton and Clarke 
(2001) and Horner and Swarbrooke (2005), to mention just a few names. Other commentators, such 
as Hall (1984), McIntosh and Goeldner (1984), Coltman (1989) and Cohen (1993), have written 
books concerning the methods adopted to classify tourism media. Two Italian scholars‟ works are 
very interesting: one, written by Erik Castello (2002), is a corpus-based study of four tourism text 
genres, i.e. brochures, guidebooks, magazines and websites, which also explains also their context 
of situation, whereas the other one is written by Sabrina Francesconi (2007) and describes how 
English is used in tourism promotion, focusing on the portrayal of Italy in British texts. 
 
I decided to write my dissertation about tourism and its communication for several reasons. 
The first one could be that I love travelling, travels and everything that concerns tourism in general. 
The second reason could be my love and curiosity for foreign languages, English in particular, and 
their linguistic features: every language differentiates from the other ones for its structure and 
vocabulary and thus it has different ways of describing reality: this is why I am very interested in 
the comparison among languages. Last but not least, the third reason is the internship I did last year 
from October to December in a travel agency, where I had the opportunity to come into contact with 
the whole tourism environment. I discussed prices and accommodation with tour operators, 
organized itineraries of trips and also talked with tourists. This precious experience was very 
interesting and useful for me, because I learned a large number of things concerning tourism and 
clerical work. 
 
This dissertation aims, although quite ambitiously, at exploring the vast topic of the 
communication of tourism, firstly proving that a language of tourism exists with its own peculiar 
features and techniques, and secondly focusing on the most common media used in the tourism 
industry, their communicative strategies and the typical characteristics which make each publication 
different from others. Another objective is that of seeing the differences between English and Italian 
publications, by comparing authentic materials.
Introduction 
3 
 
My dissertation is both theoretical and empirical. The former adjective refers to the first two 
chapters because they describe the theoretical background of my work. In chapter 1 a broad 
overview of the language of tourism is provided. At the beginning, some terms of linguistic theory, 
i.e. discourse, genre, register and text type, which are important for an analysis of a specialised 
language, are explained; then a description of ESP (English for Specific Purposes) makes it possible 
to understand the definition of tourism discourse and its peculiar features, preceded by an analysis 
of three similar expressions, that are: microlanguage, special language and specialised discourse. 
In the following section, the aims of the language of tourism are described by examining an extract 
taken from Graham Dann‟s seminal work, The Language of Tourism. A Sociolinguistic Perspective 
(1996). Afterwards, in the section about the lexical aspects of the language of tourism, the typical 
features of specialised language lexis, i.e. specific terminology, monoreferentiality, conciseness, 
emotional neutrality, key words and languaging, are explained, always maintaining a fixed gaze on 
tourism discourse and its particular characteristics. This section about specialised lexicon is 
followed by a section about the morphosyntactic aspects of the language of tourism, i.e. 
nominalization, passive forms, modal verbs, superlative forms, simple present, imperative, non-
finite clauses and pronouns: recurring grammar and syntax features are analysed and every 
definition contains the comparison with tourism discourse. Both the section about the lexical 
aspects and that concerning the morphosyntactic aspects contain examples, in order to make notions 
clear. Finally, the verbal techniques of the language of tourism, i.e. comparison, key words and 
keying, testimony, humour, languaging and ego-targeting, are revealed to understand the strategies 
used by the tourism industry to attract people‟s attention and promote a place.  
 Chapter 2 deals with communication and promotion of tourism. At first, the role of 
promotion is analysed and the four marketing strategies constituting the tourism 
promotion/communication mix, i.e. advertising, personal selling, public relations and sales 
promotion are described. Then, the reason why tourism can be considered as a language of social 
control is explained. The following sections clarifies the communicative strategies of the language 
of tourism and the four theoretical perspectives used to approach correctly to the different kinds of 
travellers, i.e. the authenticity perspective – authentication, the strangerhood prespective – 
differentiation, the play perspective – recreation and the conflict perspective – appropriation. 
Afterwards a macro-section deals with tourist publications: it is divided into several subsections, 
discussing respectively the models used to classify media of tourism (both the traditional methods 
and the suggestion by Dann (1996), which is new because it divides the tourist experience into 
stages, i.e. the pre-trip, the on-trip and the post-trip stage), the tourist publications, its identifying 
parameters (preceded by a general introduction about the common features of specialised texts), the
Introduction 
4 
 
context of situation of tourist publications, including the concepts of field, tenor and mode, and, 
finally the description of the most common tourist text types, i.e. the brochure, the guidebook, the 
leaflet, the travelogue, and the website. 
 The latter adjective, i.e. empirical, relates to the third and last chapter of my dissertation. It 
presents my critical analysis on tourist-information texts and other multimedia resources about the 
Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. A comparison of English and Italian publications will be provided, both 
at a linguistic and a content level. I borrowed Italian guidebooks written both in English and Italian 
about Padua from the bookshop in the Chapel and my supervisor Fiona Dalziel kindly lent me two 
English guidebooks about Venice and the Veneto. After visiting the Chapel in January, I picked up 
two brochures: one general about noteworthy tourist attractions in Padua and the other, more 
specific, about the Scrovegni Chapel and the City Museums of Padua, both having an English 
translation. Furthermore, I read all the pages of the Scrovegni Chapel website, not only in Italian, 
but also in English. Finally, thanks to the collaboration with the Direzione Musei Civici of Padua, I 
hired the audioguides of the Chapel and I wrote down the transcription of the English and Italian 
audioguides’ tracks, which is provided in the Appendix. I read, watched and listened to every 
resource carefully, paying attention to the language used. I focused on the words that the authors 
had chosen to obtain their aim of communicating the various features of the chapel.  
 
 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 
 
 
I would like to thank Dott.ssa Marilena Varotto of the Direzione Musei Civici of Padua and Dott.ssa 
Bassi for their willingness to help me in finding the audioguides of the Scrovegni Chapel and their 
kindness to let me hire and use them for my research work. The staff of the bookshop in the Chapel 
was also very kind with me for having let me borrow several guidebooks. Furthermore, heartfelt 
thanks go to my supervisor, Fiona Dalziel, who has always supported and encouraged me and who 
also lent me the Lonely Planet Guide and the Rough Guide about Venice and the Veneto, which 
were rich in examples of the language of tourism in English tourist publications and so very useful 
to compare Italian guidebooks with authentic English ones.
Chapter 1 – The Language of Tourism 
 
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1. THE LANGUAGE OF TOURISM 
 
 
1.1. Introduction  
 
Can we talk about a language of tourism? In this chapter an answer to this question will be 
given and a number of arguments will be provided, preceded by a short theoretical outline 
containing the notions which are essential to understand the peculiar aspects of the language of 
tourism. Furthermore, the relationship between tourism and language will be examined, 
overviewing firstly the specific lexical and morphosyntactic features and secondly the verbal 
techniques which characterize the language of tourism and justify for its inclusion among the wide 
and ever-growing range of Languages for Special Purposes (LSPs). 
Tourism is “the largest industry in the world” according to Dann (1996: 1), being studied 
and influenced by several disciplines, such as Economics, Marketing, Geography and Sociology. 
Nevertheless, despite the centrality and the pervasiveness of tourism, scant attention has been paid 
to the importance that language has on it. Only recently have some researchers and scholars 
examined tourism from a linguistic perspective: just to mention a few names, MacCannell (1976), 
Urry (1990), Castello (2002), Cohen and Cooper (2004) and Nigro (2006). A plausible reason for 
this lack of attention could indeed be the complexity of this sector and the difficulty to define the 
specific features of such a varied field.  
First of all it may be useful to explain the definition of some keywords whose understanding 
is essential to grasp the link between tourism and language. These terms are: discourse, genre, 
register and text type and they will be thoroughly explained in the following four subsections. 
 
1.1.1. Discourse 
 
Discourse is a complex term used in linguistics and in social studies: the „complexity‟ 
derives from the fact that each discipline gives its own definition of this word. For instance, 
linguists employ the term discourse with its original meaning, i.e. “the study of conversation units 
produced in a particular speech community” (Cappelli, 2007: 330), whereas it “is used in systemics 
to refer either (untechnically) to „spoken text‟ or (more technically [...]) to the level of meaning 
above the lexico-grammar, the level concerned with relations of meaning across a text” (Eggins, 
2007: 24). However, the definition given by philosophers recalls that given by linguists: in fact, the 
former identify discourse with the interactions occurring among people who share the same
Chapter 1 – The Language of Tourism 
 
6 
 
opinions and ways of thinking.  In this respect, the philosopher Foucault (1972) takes the credit for 
having “proposed a new concept of discourse and exported the term from linguistics to the social 
sciences” (Cappelli, 2007: 14). His definition of discourse is reported by Weedon (1987), who 
writes that it refers to: 
  
 ways of constituting knowledge, together with the social practices, forms of subjectivity and power 
relations which inhere in such knowledges and relations between them. Discourses are more than ways 
of thinking and producing meaning. They constitute the „nature‟ of the body, unconscious and 
conscious mind and emotional life of the subjects they seek to govern. Weedon (1987, in Pinkus, 1996).   
 
According to both linguists and philosophers, discourse represents a sort of social boundary 
describing the main points and the modality to deal with a specific topic. Discourse influences 
outlooks and ideas and thus it can be inferred that it is closely connected to every lexical, structural 
and stylistic choice that is made in oral or written communication. Therefore, since words and 
phrases are chosen according to the aim and the subject of texts, types of texts can be classified 
depending on their discourse. For example, 
  
academic discourse is one type of discourse that is built up through the interaction of members of the 
academic community: teachers, researchers, students, etc. Individuals belonging to this “idealized” 
speech community share a common knowledge of the rules and conventions of this type of discourse 
[...], such as a relatively high level of formality and the argumentative or expository nature of texts 
(Cappelli, 2007: 15). 
 
Furthermore, tourist-information texts belong to the tourism discourse, which is a type of 
discourse per se, since it has specific norms and values that are conventionally used within tourism-
related matters and situations. This particular kind of discourse will be thoroughly analysed in the 
section entitled “Defining tourism discourse: from ESP to specialised discourse”, § 1.2. .  
 
1.1.2. Genre 
 
Genre is a term which relates to many disciplines, including cultural and literary studies, art 
and film. Traditionally, it has been used to indicate a grouping of both oral and written text types 
within a specific discourse community. These texts are classified according to extralinguistic 
criteria, which are related to the speaker‟s or the author‟s communicative purpose; using Biber‟s 
words, “[genre categories] are assigned on the basis of use than on the basis of form” Biber (1988, 
in Cappelli, 2007: 17). The categorization process, whose function is to clarify what the 
communicative aims are, is “based on social action, that is, approved and shared by a discourse 
community” (ibid.: 27). Martin (1984) provides a definition of genre as a “staged, goal-oriented,
Chapter 1 – The Language of Tourism 
 
7 
 
purposeful activity in which speakers engage as members of our culture” (Martin, 1984 in Eggins, 
2007: 55). This notion has two main focuses of attention: firstly, the dynamicity of genre, related to 
the fact that it makes meaning in stages. In fact, a text representing a particular genre can be divided 
up into a certain number of steps, each of which performs a particular function and thus contributes 
a part to the overall meanings that must be made for genre to be accomplished successfully. 
Moreover, as genres are goal-oriented, they typically move through these stages to a point of 
closure and are considered incomplete if culmination is not reached. Furthermore, these stages, 
which make up the schematic structure of a text, can be either obligatory or optional or also 
recursive. The predominance of a kind of stage is a useful criterion to identify genres: for example, 
in analysing the transactional genre, Hasan distinguished the obligatory elements as sale request, 
sale compliance, sale, purchase and purchase closure and the optional elements as greeting, sale 
initiation, sale enquiry and finis. Secondly, the essential role played by culture within genre. The 
latter, in fact, brings the context of culture to a text. More precisely, 
 
genre is a cultural abstraction. The members of a community, acting on their experience of 
communicative events and attendant texts, operate generalizations so as to be able to recognize a new 
specific communicative event (but of a known kind), and to match to this an ideal genre in order to 
know how to engage themselves properly in the interaction implied by this new communicative event 
(Torsello, 2000: 7; my adaptation and translation from Italian). 
 
In this regard, it may be argued that genre is cultural-specific, because when people 
belonging to a certain speech community label a new genre, they give an insight of their own 
community. Furthermore, in the course of time cultures evolve and genres are also transformed: 
they change and while some of them disappear, new genres emerge. However, the initiators and 
protagonists of this evolution are the language speakers, i.e. the members of a culture: thus, it is 
important to highlight the essential role played by people in broadening, moulding and re-
configuring genres. Finally, unlike the traditional definition of genre, “today genre is quite easily 
used to refer to a distinctive category of discourse of any type, spoken or written, with or without 
literary aspirations” Swales (1990, in Torsello, 2000: 1). Hyon (1996) supports this opinion, by 
saying that: 
 
genre has become a popular framework for analyzing the form and function of non-literary discourse, 
such as the research article, as well as a tool for developing educational practices in fields such as 
rhetoric, composition studies, professional writing, linguistics, and English for Specific Purposes. Hyon 
(1996 in ibid.: 1).
Chapter 1 – The Language of Tourism 
 
8 
 
Therefore, genre is still a concept under definition and it can be applied to a large number of 
sectors and subjects and today its scope keeps on expanding. With reference to the tourist field, 
guidebooks, travelogues and brochures are all examples of genres. 
 
1.1.3. Register 
 
 The context of situation is reflected in a text by register, which is considered as a subset of a 
language. According to Halliday (1985), a renowned linguist and anthropologist, it  
 
is a semantic concept [and it] can be defined as a configuration of meanings that are typically associated 
with a particular situational configuration of field, mode, and tenor. But since it is a configuration of 
meanings, a register must also, of course, include the expressions, the lexico-grammatical and 
phonological features, that typically accompany or realise these meanings (Halliday, 1985: 38-39). 
 
Register is determined by the particular purpose or the particular setting in which a 
communicative act is performed. In fact, “register reflects [the] social order, in terms of social 
process (ibid.: 43), i.e. the various social activities that people usually do. There are several kinds of 
register: for instance, a formal register, characterized by politeness and hedging forms, would be 
used within official, serious occasions, such as the work environment, whereas an informal register, 
whose typical features are simple forms and colloquial phrases, would be suitable for ordinal 
conversations or letters to friends. Furthermore, a register can be closed or restricted, when they 
show “no scope for individuality, or for creativity” (ibid.: 39), e.g. “the International Language of 
the Air, which air crew have to learn in order to act as pilots and navigators on the international air 
routes today” (ibid.: 39), or open, which are used by more people, such as “the registers of 
headlines, and of recipes, [...] of technical instructions, [...] of buying and selling in an auction [and] 
the language of the classroom” (ibid.: 40). Nonetheless, there are no completely open registers: 
“there is no situation in which the meanings are not to a certain extent prescribed for us. [...] Even 
the most informal spontaneous conversation has its strategies and styles of meaning” (ibid.: 40). In 
addition to this, it may be argued that both registers and dialects are varieties of a language, but the 
former is a “variety „according to use‟, [...] i.e. determined by what you are doing (nature of activity 
in which language is functioning)” (ibid.: 43), whereas the latter is a “variety „according to user‟, 
[...] i.e. determined by who you are geographically or socially (region &/or social class of origin 
&/or adoption” (ibid.: 43). A comparison between register and genre becomes interesting if they are 
considered to be two different angles of looking at the same subject. Lee (2001) describes genre and 
register and their point of view, depending on how a text is viewed.
Chapter 1 – The Language of Tourism 
 
9 
 
Register is used when we view a text as a language: as the instantiation of a conventionalised, 
functional configuration of language tide to certain broad societal situations, that is variety according to 
use. Here, the point of view is somewhat static and uncritical: different situations “require” different 
configurations of language, each being “appropriate” to its task, being maximally “functionally 
adapted” to the immediate situational parameters of contextual use. 
Genre is used when we view the text as a member of a category: a culturally recognised artifact, a 
grouping of texts according to some conventionally recognised criteria, a grouping according to 
purposive goals, culturally defined. Here, the point of view is more dynamic and, as used by certain 
authors, incorporates a critical linguistic (ideological) perspective: genres are categories established by 
consensus within a culture and hence subject to change as generic conventions are contested/challenged 
and revised, perceptibly or imperceptibly, over time. Lee (2001, in Cappelli, 2007: 19). 
 
Thus, register concerns with the linguistic level of a text: it imposes linguistic constraints, 
especially regarding vocabulary and syntax; genre, on the contrary, refers to the level of discourse 
structure: the latter is determined by the former. Nonetheless, genre is defined by Swales (1990) as 
an “extremely slippery” term, because “register is a well-established and central concept in 
linguistics, while genre is a recent appendage found to be necessary as a result of important studies  
into text structure” (Swales, 1990: 41). This “superfluousness” of the term genre might be 
recognized also in the opinion of Hasan (1978), a famous linguist and professor, who thinks that 
register and genre are two interchangeable terms. In this respect, she affirms that: “In the SF 
[systemic functional] model the concept of register is a ready-made link between context and 
generic structure, since for most material purposes, register and genre are synonymous.” Hasan 
(1978, in Torsello, 2000: 4). However, regardless this statement, Halliday (1985) uses almost 
exclusively the term „register‟, whereas Hasan prefers the term „genre‟. 
 
1.1.4. Text type 
 
Finally, text type is the fourth and last but not least key word. There is no agreement upon 
the notion of text type: for example, according to Paltridge (1996) it is based on rhetorical patterns, 
but the majority of scholars think that text types are to be defined according to the internal linguistic 
features some texts share and the functions they perform. Therefore, the classification criterion that 
is used is mainly linguistic. 
Nonetheless, a long debate has developed upon text types and their classification. Kinneavy 
(1971) writes a seminal work about text types; her categorization is based on genres and their 
realization in text. She singles out four types: expressive, referential, literary and persuasive, which 
are closely linked to Roman Jakobson‟s communicative functions (emotive or expressive, conative 
or appellative, metalinguistic, poetic, referential or denotative and phatic). Werlich (1976) 
distinguishes five text types: description, narration, argumentation and instruction, belonging to 
three levels: the ideal type, which exists in the speaker‟s or writer‟s mind only, the text form, i.e. a