Teaching the Sociolinguistics of Tourism

Introduction

In the spring semester of 2012 the author taught a new course in the graduate program in linguistics at a comprehensive state university in a large American metropolis: Language and Tourism. For the first time in the history of the Linguistics Department at this university, a graduate course focusing solely on the analysis of tourism materials, e.g. official tourism websites, travel programs, brochures, etc., was offered as an elective to students who had previously taken a more general sociolinguistics course. Thirteen students pursuing their Master of Arts (MA) degrees, i.e. twelve in the MA Program in Linguistics and one in the MA Program in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL), enrolled in and successfully completed this course. This chapter, which provides an overview of a new Language and Tourism course based on the author’s critical reflections on teaching (Brookfield, 2017), offers suggestions for how sociolinguistic concepts can be taught through the study of tourism and encourages more linguistic-based research in the instruction of tourism studies. The author hopes that teaching the sociolinguistics of tourism will address the issue of cross-cultural competencies raised by Sheldon, Fesenmaier, Woeber, Cooper, and Antonioli (2008). Moreover, the author seeks to promote more cross-disciplinary research in the seemingly disparate areas of tourism and linguistics.