Refiguring Asianness in tourism advertising
A translanguaging perspective
Identities are often reshaped, in translanguaging contexts, to fit narratives circulating in target environments.
Analysis of parallel tourism data shifts is a rich resource for tracing how space identities may travel cross-culturally. The
study tackles representations of Asianness as manifested through English and Greek parallel texts, in tourism advertising, to
reveal locally internalized ‘speaker positionings’ which significantly affect the ‘package of identity features’ attributed to a
destination. The analysis first takes into consideration the visibility of Asian spaces in the Greek press and points to features
which may allow a unified account of media and travel discourses, drawing on tourism theoretical accounts. Discursively conveyed
representations of Asian spaces are assumed to immensely affect perception of Asian destinations and sensibilities in
audiences.
Article outline
- 1.On tourism, identity construction and research questions
- 2.Methodological considerations
- 2.1The press data sample
- 2.2The tourism data sample
- 3.A news reporting account of Asian space visibility
- 4.The data: On tourism advertising
- 5.‘Mobile’ destinations
- 5.1The ‘further away’ brought nearer and vice versa
- 5.2Opaque tourism destinations?
- 6.On manufacturing spaces: A unified account
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
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References