Tourist guidebooks: a hybrid genre

1
Tourist guidebooks a hybrid genre

• Tourist guidebooks
• are addressed to different targets ( e.g.
  nationality, age, education, income, specifici
  interests)
• are multimodal (e.g. include verbal language,
  pictures, interactive links)
• include expository parts (e.g. to describe
  places and to provide historical information),
  instructions (e.g. advice on eating and
  entertainments) and, often, evaluation /
  promotion
• can be consulted in different ways, e.g from
  cover to cover, or to find answers to specific
  questions
• can cover different areas (e.g. a whole country
  or a city, specific activities and interests e.g.
  hiking or gardens)

2
UNIT 3 English for Tourism

• English for Tourism is a relatively new area of
  study.
• It includes different genres
• 1. highly technical anf globalized text types,
  e.g. travel/hotel documents issued by travel
  agencies
• 2. advertising brochures more affected by
  cultural assumptions and expectations,
• e.g. leaflets, in specialised magazines or on
  web sites
• 3. Tourist guidebooks

3
Modern tourist guidebooks

• have developed from previous genres which reflect
  changes in travelling ( from pilgrimages to
  thermal holidays, from the Gran Tour to mass
  tourism and package holidays)
• have become established as a genre since the
  I9th century
• follow different traditions in different
  countries, e.g. the Italian Touring Club Italiano
  (1895), the British Murray (1836), the German
  Baedeker(1828), the French Michelin (1900)
• range from traditional ( e.g. Guide Bleu) to
  new guidebooks (e.g. Lonely Planet, Rough
  Guides, Le Routard)

4
Interesting types of research on tourist
guidebooks

• Diachronic, e.g. to compare guidebooks of
  different periods
• Intercultual, e.g. to compare an Australian
  guidebook and a German guidebook to the same
  place
• Cultural adaptation e.g. to compare the source
  text (e.g. in English) and its translation (e.g.
  in Italian)
• Study of specific guidebooks (e.g Lonely Planet
  or The Rough Guides)

5
DOSSIER TEXT 9 and 10 (and 11)

• Text 9 Torino from Italy, Lonely Planet 1998
• Text 10 and 11 Introducing Turin from Best of
  Turin, Lonely Planet 2005 (and its translation
  into Italian)