Register variation in tourism terminology

1. Register variation in tourism terminology Virginia Pulcini Università degli Studi di Torino THE STUDY OF LEXICON ACROSS CULTURAL IDENTITIES AND TEXTUAL GENRES University of Verona, 11-13 November 2010

2. Outline • focus on the language of tourism • lexis and terminology • English loanwords in the Italian language of tourism • register variation in tourism discourse • Anglicisms and Italian equivalents in a B2B corpus

3. the specialized discourse of tourism • a type of discourse which “possesses all the lexical, phonetic, morphosyntactic and textual resources of general language” (Gotti 2006: 19) • ‘scientific journalism’: brochures, advertisements, tourist guides, newspaper articles • geography, architecture, cuisine, transport, entertainment, fitness, beauty care (B2C), business, economics (B2B)

4. the terminological principle • ‘terms’ identify a single concept and unambiguously serve the communicative purposes of professionals in a specialized field (Cabré 1999) • monoreferentiality • word  a unit of language referring to an element in reality • term  a word referring to an element in a specialized domain

5. hub (mech.) the central part of a circular object (as a wheel or propeller) (tech.) a central device that connects multiple computers on a single network (aer.) an airport or city through which an airline routes most of its traffic focus, core or central part of sth (adapted from Merriam Webster online)

6. repeater someone that repeats or recites (tech.) a device for receiving communication signals and delivering corresponding amplified ones (tech.) a watch or clock with a striking mechanism that upon pressure of a spring will indicate the time in hours or quarters and sometimes minutes etc. (tour.) a ‘repeater’ or ‘repeat tourist’ is a tourist who returns to a destination or purchases a product from the same supplier on a regular basis

7. concept designation reality (or term) discourse (Cabré 1999:81) concept-oriented

8. register variation (field & tenor) • “If we extend terminology to include professional or sports vocabularies, or those vocabularies related to some human activity, the number of terminology users increases and diversifies substantially and at the same time the degree of specialisation of these uses decreases considerably.” (Cabré 1999: 144)

9. ‘flouting’ the terminological principle • booking / reservation • book: to reserve in advance <book two seats at the theater> <were all booked up> • reserve: to set or have set aside or apart <reserve a hotel room> • ‘to make a booking = to make a reservation • ‘airline booking’ or ‘airline reservation’ • ‘holiday booking’, not *‘holiday reservation’

10. The English element in the Italian language of Tourism • tour operator/ operatore turistico check-in/ accettazione low cost/ basso costo all inclusive / tutto compreso • the coexistence of a foreign term along with the a native equivalent can be regarded as a case of multiple terminology

11. a corpus of B2B tourist language • weekly magazine Il Giornale del Turismo • 56,161 tokens / 8,976 types • 300 non-adapted Anglicisms (3.3%) • 145 (1.6%) general language • 80 (0.8%) business and economics • 50 (0.5%) tourism • tour operator: 35 occurrences (0.06%, 6.2% per 10,000 words)

12. Table 1. Occurrences of anglicisms and their Italian equivalents in the GdT corpus

13. Table 2. Occurrences of anglicisms and their Italian equivalents in the La Repubblica corpus

14. Table 3. Occurrences of anglicisms and their Italian equivalents in the ItWac

15. conclusions (1) • ‘tour operator’ is preferred in all registers • in the GdT corpus tour operator, resort, all inclusive, low cost, last minute and repeaters are used consistently with no Italian equivalents • in the GdT corpus ‘prenotazione’ is preferred to ‘booking’ • in the LRep corpus Italian equivalents are general words and phrases also widely used in contexts different from tourism • in the web corpus tour operator, incoming, resort and business travel are more frequently used than the Italian equivalents. Italian equivalents are general words and phrases widely used in contexts different from tourism

16. conclusions (2) • Anglicisms are used and often preferred for stylistic reasons in all registers and styles • Anglicisms are more frequently found in web language than in newspaper language • Anglicisms are favoured by experts because they better answer the need for monoreferentiality and conciseness • linguistically Anglicisms are better suited to be used as terms in specialized discourse

17. resort • semantic process of narrowing and metonymic extension • English: “a place where a lot of people go on holiday/vacation” • Italian: Albergo situato in spazi aperti, al di fuori di un centro urbano: un r. nel deserto Propr. “luogo di vacanza, luogo di soggiorno”║ 1989. (Devoto-Oli)

18. resort, hotel and villaggio • appear not to be interchangeable L'offerta riguarda tutte le tipologie di vacanza quali week end nelle capitali europee, villaggi, soggiorni presso hotel e resort, settimane bianche, crociere, gift e tour di medio e lungo raggio. Resort is semantically better suited to refer to holiday complexes because of its monosemin semanti status, hyperonymic value and specificity

19. low cost – basso costo • several grammatical functions in Italian: compagnia aerea low cost, voli low cost, le low cost, vola low cost

20. codeshare, codesharing • no equivalent in Italian Accordo commerciale tra due compagnie aeree che operano sulla stessa tratta ognuna con il proprio aereo e decidono di mantenere uno solo dei due voli vendendo ciascuna anche per conto dell’altro i posti disponibili a bordo: accordo commerciale di c.s. Comp. di code ‘codice’ e sharing ‘compartecipazione’ ║ 2000. Oltre agli accordi di codeshare, la collaborazione tra Alitalia e Jet Airways prevede partnership su programmi frequent flyer, su attività di scalo e su servizi cargo.

21. prenotazione - booking • Advance booking, advanced booking are preferred to prenotazione anticipata Prenotazione fatta con notevole anticipo, spec. per l'acquisto a prezzo scontato di biglietti o viaggi. CFR. First minute, last minute. (Zingarelli)

22. last minute – ultimo minuto • vacanza last minute, domanda last minute • semantic preference: offerte, occasioni (deals) • semantic prosody in Italian: positive • in English: something done “before it is too late” (negative prosody)

23. check-in • accettazione is never used in the GtD corpus • fare il check-in, check-in online, zona check-in • metonymic extension of “check-in desk” Evitare file ai check-in, controlli e scanner oltre a lunghe attese nelle sale di imbarco e viaggiare come degli executive manager di grandi multinazionali è il sogno di molte persone.

24. leisure – tempo libero • important sub-sector in tourism: leasure tourism vs business tourism • settore leisure, turismo leisure • tempo libero has a more generic value

25. all inclusive – tutto compreso • usually hyphenated in English (all-inclusive) • patterns: formula all inclusive, in all inclusive Le prime pagine del catalogo sono dedicate a vacanze mare in destinazioni decisamente adatte alle esigenze dei turisti italiani, con 26 soluzioni di soggiorno in resort e villaggi in formula all inclusive o in pensione completa in località di lungo raggio come Maldive, Cuba, Mauritius, Kenya, Zanzibar…

26. neologisms: • Voyage designer Il ‘Voyage Designer’, lo stilista dei viaggi (una figura professionale sviluppatasi negli Stati Uniti), ha nel nome la propria missione: la soddisfazione del cliente attraverso la ricerca dello stile in una vacanza tailor made. • Fam trip / familiarization trip. A low-cost trip or tour offered to travel agents by a supplier or group of suppliers to familiarize the agents with their destination and services.