Scarica Travelling-words-GloriaCappelli e più Tesine universitarie in PDF di Linguistica solo su Docsity! Travelling words: Languaging in English tourism discourse. Gloria Cappelli Dipartimento di Anglistica Università di Pisa cappelli@cli.unipi.it This contribution analyses instances of the use of languaging in a small corpus of English tourist materials about Italy. The term is here intended in the sense used in Dann (1996) as the use of local language, which, even though not identical to the use of the word in Cortese and Hymes (2001), parallels it in a number of ways. The use of languaging is investigated in three written genres – guidebooks, expatriates’ travel blogs and travel articles, or travelogues – with main focus being on the lexical level. The main goal of the paper is to evidence once more the fundamental role of language in tourism (Dann 1996) and to present cases of Italian-English language crossing in tourism discourse and their functions. First, the Italian expressions retrieved are classified according to the discursive environment in which they occur in the three genres (expert talk, phatic communication, naming and translating – Jaworski et al. 2003) and to the main topic areas to which they belong. Then, the question of whether the individual examples can be considered as cases of language crossing (Rampton 1995, 1998) or real code-mixing (e.g. instances of insertion or congruent lexicalization – Muysken 2000) is addressed. The differences in the use of languaging in the three genres at issue are presented in order to support the hypothesis that this technique is intended to attain several important pragmatic effects, which are fundamental in the specialised type of discourse represented by the language of tourism (Cappelli 2006, Nigro 2006). The mix of English and Italian expressions is shown to a) add some local linguistic flavour to the experience of the writer, who becomes a sort of ‘role model’ for his readers; b) give authenticity to the destinations and to the episodes described by creating a sort of “linguascape” (Jaworski et al. 2003) that contributes to the multi-sensory nature of tourism discourse; c) reduce the cultural gap between the two cultures by providing translations or paraphrases for cultural-specific linguistic elements and concepts, thus making the “exotic” more familiar (Cronin 2000) and the contact with the local language a ludic experience; and, finally, d) to act as in-grouping or out-grouping devices (Jaworski et all. 2003), that is, to draw the boundaries between the ‘self’ (the community of actual or implied English-speaking tourists/expatriates) and the ‘other’ (Italians, the locals), by underlining similarities and differences. References Cappelli, G. (2006), Sun, Sea, Sex and the Unspoilt Countryside. How the English language makes tourists out of readers, Pari: Pari Publishing Cortese G. and Hymes, D. (eds.) (2001), Languaging in and across Human Groups. Perspectives on Difference and Asymmetry, Textus. English Studies in Italy, 14-2, Genova: Tilgher . Cronin, M. (2000), Across the Lines: Travel, Language and Translation, Cork: Cork U.P. Dann, G. (1996), The Language of Tourism. A Sociolinguistic Perspective, Wallingford: CAB International. Jaworski, A., Thurlow, C., Lawson, S. and Ylänne-McEwen, V. (2003), “The Uses and Representations of Local Languages in Tourist Destinations: A View from British TV Holiday Programmes”, Language Awareness 12-1, 5-29. Muysken, Pieter (2000), Bilingual Speech: A Typology of Code-Mixing, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Nigro, M.G. (2006), Il linguaggio specialistico del turismo, Roma: Aracne Editrice Rampton, B. (1995), Crossing: Language and Ethnicity among Adolescents, London: Longman. Rampton, B. (1998), “Language crossing and the redefinition of reality”. In P. Auer (ed.), Codeswitching in conversation, London: Routledge, 290-317.
