Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Simona BUCSA
Abstract:
The paper is grounded on two distinctive theoretical frames: discourse and tourism. Discourse has been
approached from different theoretical and analytical perspectives such as speech acts theory,
ethnography of communication, conversation analysis or text analysis. Nevertheless, despite the
various aspects of language use, each and every approach views language as social interaction.
Tourism, on the other hand, has fallen under the preoccupations of sociolinguists, anthropologists or
sociologists since it has turned out to be more than selling a destination; tourism has become a social
interaction with the destination. Bringing the two theoretical frames of reference together, the aim of
this paper is to analyse tourism experiences through discourse and to show how tourists’ experiences
shape tourists’ discourse. The research method is semiotic analysis of discourse, with focus on the
stereotypical image of Romania and Romanian people as represented in travelogues written by British
and American tourists. The semiotic analysis enables the study into the significance of stereotypes at
both discourse and representation level. Carrying out an in-depth research into these stereotypes, we
understand Romania's image in the eyes of British and American tourists and, thus, we may consider or
re-consider the promotional tourism discourse.
Key words: discourse analysis, semiotics, stereotypes, tourism discourse
3. Corpus
Travelogues are a special discursive genre within the tourism discourse, being considered, the same
way tourist guides, brochures, or adverts are, a hybrid between different types of discourse, i.e.
narrative, descriptive, argumentative and instructive (according to the structural types of discourse presented by
D.R Frumusani, 2004:69).
• Narrative type “focused on temporal deployment and chronological causality";
• Descriptive type “focused on spatial deployment, consumption of a paradigm (geographical
nomenclature, music, architecture, etc.)”;
The Oxford definition of travelogues is “a film/movie, broadcast or piece of writing about travel”.
Travelogues are a mixture between travel and monologue, playing the role of a public diary shared with
other travellers. Travelogues combine both the text, which is usually prevalent, and the image. They may take the form of
articles published in the travel sections of newspapers and magazines or trip reports written by tourists
and posted on travelogue sites on the internet. The present study considered the travelogues written by
British and American tourists on http://www.travelblog.org/.
5. Stereotypes
Stereotypes are analyzed on two levels: discourse representation and stereotypical discourse procedures (for instance, Margarito M, 2001, advances the
textual analysis of stereotypes: quotations, clichés name or comparisons) and the stereotypical representations.
In order to unveil the stereotypical procedures of travelogues writing we have chosen two techniques
that are used in almost all travelogues we have analysed: indirect speech and dialogues, on the one
hand, and comparisons, on the other hand.
Prior to analyzing these particular techniques, it is important to have a general view of the 20
travelogues we analysed. They have the same evaluative structure: general description of the country,
some historical and geographical considerations, route description. The destinations are almost similar
with very few exceptions. Tourists follow the same stereotypical trail Bucharest-Sinaia-Brasov-Sibiu-
Sighisoara, the explanation being the very reason why most tourists come to Romania or Transilvania,
to discover Dacula's land.
5.2. Comparisons:
Comparisons create links between the object that is compared and the comparing object and emphasize
social-cultural references. By using comparisons, tourists place the compared object within their own
frame of reference in order to give signification to the markers of the destination visited.
“ a street in England is actually narrower”
“mountains, like back home, are covered with trees”
“trains looked like in the 1970’s and 1980’s in Ireland”
“Ballymun flats”
“Bucharest has the very same feel as the Celtic Tiger in Ireland”
“how nice the Romanian language sounds, even nicer than French”
“Bucharest, like London, has been continually built on top of its historical past throughput the decades”
“Romanian ‘Champ Alysee’”
“much higher standard than what you would get on the motorway in the UK.
Table 1
Stereotypes on Romania Romanian experience Discourse Assessment
get robbed or beaten up beautiful and civilized country
+
Endemic corruption confirmed
-
Stray dogs confirmed
-
Transylvanian region – picturesque mountain, Horse drawn carts and farmers in their fields with
castles and palaces pitchforks collecting and stacking hay. +
Nadia
+
Dracula Not like imagined
-
Other than the t-shirt vendors outside, almost
nothing had to do with Dracula at all
Bran castle – spectacular Simple
-
Mass amounts of tourists shops on your way
Horror stories about the trains in Romania The train trip was pleasant and the views were
stunning +
Common image everyone has of Romania People dress very stylishly
+
Peasants confirmed
Table 2
Romanian experience Discourse Assessment
Horse-drawn carriages
neutral
Old world way of life
-
People hospitable, warm and generous
+
Internal beauty of the Romanian people
+
Hollywood-style BV sign: kitch, massive, tacky
-
Abandoned factories that litter the stunning countryside
-
Monstrous Palace of Parliament
-
Coping with the Romanian Italian driving was a bit of an issue
-
6. Conclusions
The hypothesis is confirmed: Tourists re-interpret the signification of markers (information about a
sight) in the light of their own experience.
Tourists have a pre-formed image on Romania created by reading guidebooks, brochures, or even by
word-of-mouth. These texts have their own meaning and message but it is the tourist that re-interprets
the signification of these texts in the light of his/her tourist experience.
“The producers of texts encode them with meanings and messages, but if there are no humans to
interpret them, they are just another meaningless object of the material world. Texts have no intrinsic
meaning independent of the process of conscious interpretation; in other words, meaning is (re)created
at the point of reception, and ``the [human] subject [is] the source or producer of meaning'' (McGregor
A. (2000:29). McGregor adds, by citing Lew, 1991:126: The texts provide ``a framework for
experiencing a place'' but it is the actual experience that shapes the final tourist discourse.
The tourism discourse is generally a positive one, as compared to the negative stereotypes on Romania.
This means that Romania is still looking for its identity, stereotypes are continuously changing and an
appropriate portrait of Romania is not shaped yet.
7. References
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discursives de l’identité et de l’altérité. Paris : L’Harmattan
2. Culler, J. (1989). The Semiotics of Tourism. În: Framing the Sign: Criticism and Its Institutions.
University of Oklahoma Press.
3. Frumusani, D (2004). Analiza discursului.Ipoteze si ipostaze. Bucuresti: Editura Tritonic.
4. Grabe, W (1985). Written Discourse Analysis In Annual review of applied linguistics, pg.101-
123
5. Jaworski, A, Pritchard, A (eds). 2005. Discourse, Communication and Tourism. Clevedon:
Channel View Publications
6. MacCannell, D. (1999). The Tourist, A New Theory of the Leisure Class. Berkeyl. UNiversity
of California Press.
7. McGregor A. (2000) "Dynamic Texts and Tourist Gaze. Death, Bones and Buffalo", In: Annals
of Tourism Research, vol.27, nr.1, p.27-50.
8. Stalpers J. (1988). The Maturity Of Discourse Analysis (Review Article).In: Language In
Society, nr.17, pg.87-97.
9. Urry, J (2002). The Tourist Gaze. London: Sage.
10. Van Dijk, Teun (2009). Society and Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
11. http://www.travelblog.org/.