Study of the Language of Tourism in English and Spanish: their lexicographic treatment

Abstract

This thesis is at the heart of the research project, The Multilingual and Electronic Role of Tourism as an Intercultural Mediator: the legal, translatory and terminological aspects (HUM- 892, 2006-2009). The perspective of the thesis is didactic, in that it aims to characterise the language of tourism in peninsular Spanish and British English with a view to analysing specific examples in (mainly bilingual) touristic dictionaries. The aim is to compare and, in some cases, to suggest alternatives, but above all, to highlight the significance of one of the most important economic sectors of Spain. There are four specific goals: 1) to establish a linguistic and discursive matrix that characterises the language of tourism in English and Spanish; 2) to establish a typology of dictionaries in both languages that could include touristic terms; 3) to suggest a systematic and united template for lexicographic recension; and, finally, 4) to catalogue and analyse the specialised dictionaries of tourism. To achieve these goals, and working from the assumption of the existence of a language of tourism as a specialised language, the thesis examines the different linguistic characteristics of the language of tourism in English and Spanish. It then establishes a united textual typology for both languages.

The thesis is in two parts: Part I, ‘Study of the language of tourism in English and Spanish’ and Part II, ‘Study of the lexicographic repertory for tourism’, and each part consists of two chapters. In the first chapter, ‘Lexical-morphological aspects’, the thesis presents a detailed study of the lexis and the language of tourism. In chapter two, ‘Discursive-textual aspects’, I present a typology of the most frequent text types in the field of tourism, such as travel guides, brochures, advertisements. The second part of the thesis begins with the third chapter, ‘A general typology of dictionaries’, in which I examine the general typology of dictionaries, including the many parts that make up a lexicographic work, a classification of existing lexicographic works published to date and concluding with an analysis of the method created to realise chapter four, ‘Analysis of touristic dictionaries in English and Spanish’. In this chapter, one of the main objectives is the analysis of touristic dictionaries, based on the method of analysis described in chapter three. The concluding chapter summarize the main ideas of the research.