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348 language of tourism
proposition of prospect and refuge theory which
suggests that individuals give high value to landscapes
which simultaneously provide an opportunity
to see and to hide and thus reflect prospects of
survival. However, this theory has not received
widespread acceptance.
See also: landscape; environmental valuation
References
Appleton, J. �1975) The Experience of Landscape,
Chichester: Wiley.
Further reading
Mitchell, B. �1979) Geography and Resource Analysis,
London: Longman. �Chapter 6 contains a
concise and perceptive overview of landscape
evaluation.)
language of tourism
GEOFFREY WALL, CANADA
The language of tourism covers all forms of
touristic communication at every stage of a trip.
Like other languages, it has several functions
linking the addresser, addressee, content and
context of messages. It is also structured in a
similar fashion to advertising, especially as
regards the use of tense and its promise to effect
magical transformations in the receiver. But this
language differs from others regarding the anonymity
of the speaker �the authorless brochure, for
example). Frequently, communication is a monologue
emphasising the greater knowledge of the
sender, while its content is replete with euphoria.
There is as well a tautological quality to messages,
since tourists generally filter their experiences
according to prior expectations, and the latter in
turn have been linguistically framed. Then too,
when tourists talk among themselves at the
destination and regale friends and relatives with
accounts of their travels on their return home, they
tend to do so using the imagery of earlier
promotional sources. Therefore, the language of
tourism assumes a cyclical quality reflecting the
circular nature of tourism itself.
However, perhaps the most important characteristic
of this language is its ability to manipulate
the attitudes and behaviour of tourists, both
individually and collectively. The need to exercise
social control over the client becomes clear with the
realisation that tourism is an ever-expanding
worldwide phenomenon and that, without constraint,
it becomes virtually impossible to manage.
Moreover, unless limits are imposed, negative
sociocultural and environmental consequences will
outweigh the benefits, and tourism could end up
destroying itself. Such control has been manifested
linguistically throughout all periods of tourism's
history in travellers' tales, political speeches,
lectures, guidebooks and so on. Nowhere, however,
are regulatory mechanisms more necessary than in
contemporary forms of mass tourism, where
they are evident in hotels, various types of
transport, tours, sites and attractions.
One way of controlling the tourist is through the
use of imperatives and hortatory language. Another
allied method is to place him/her in a
dependent childlike state. By treating the tourist
as child, the impression can be given that,
whatever the restrictions, personal freedom
nevertheless remains. Maternal images, scenes
evocative of infancy and themes of sun and fun are
hence routinely employed by the language of
tourism in order to resocialise the clientele while
maintaining an illusion of liberty. The language of
tourism additionally operates through several
media, which correspond to the five human senses
either singly or in combination. At one time, the
simplest channels of communication were the
written and spoken word which, before the
appearance of electronic media, were the traditional
ways of transmitting touristic messages. In a
postmodern age of the image, however, and
particularly since the advent of the Internet, the
emphasis has switched to multimedia presentations
focusing predominantly on the visual. Here it is
important to acknowledge that the science of signs
± semiotics ± can play an extremely useful role in
deciphering the complex messages of the language
of tourism. It should further be recognised that it
has the ability to alter its discourse according to the
topic at hand. Alternatively stated, the language of
tourism employs many registers, at least one for
every type of tourism in an increasingly diverse