The analysis of meaning between language and culture in the tourism domain

The relationship between language and culture is an interplay between linguistic choices and cultural filters; if we accept that language is an expression of culture, i.e. of the beliefs, customs, behaviours and rituals constituting the cultural identity of a group of people, then it is crucial that phraseology and cultural features are not separated in the analysis and production of meaning.

This paper aims to combine two different methodological approaches to the study of meaning (Manca 2008, 2009): the Corpus Linguistics approach within the framework of John Sinclair’s view of language (1991, 1996) and the Intercultural Studies approach based on Hall’s ([1976] 1989) theories and Katan’s (2004, 2006) framework of High and Low Context Cultures features in transactional communication. The two levels of analysis allow the researcher to carry out both a quantitative and qualitative analysis.

Examples that show the validity of this combined approach will be derived from a number of corpora of different subsections of the British and Italian languages of tourism. We will see that the two cultures tend to adopt different types of promotion in terms of linguistic devices (for example use of concrete nouns vs. abstract nouns) and features of description along a continuum which sees at one extreme explicitness and simple facts and at the other extreme implicitness, feelings and opinions.