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Descriptions of French-Based Creole Languages in Travel Guidebooks

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Descriptions of French-Based Creole Languages in Travel Guidebooks 64 “A picturesque language, humorous and very pliable”: descriptions of French-based Creole languages in travel guidebooks Philipp Krämer Magdalena von Sicard Viadrina University Frankfurt (Oder) University of Cologne [email protected] [email protected] Abstract This article examines the descriptions of French-based Creole languages in travel guidebooks for major tourist destinations in the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean. In a corpus of 63 guidebooks spanning over the past 20 years, we extract elements of metalinguistic discourse about the history and characteristics of Creole languages. We show that guidebooks draw on stereotypical and exoticizing views of these languages which can largely be traced back to colonial times. The analysis highlights three areas of tension which the guidebooks have to handle when trying to provide accurate descriptions while simultaneously answering to the desire for otherness in tourism. Ultimately, the metalinguistic comments in guidebooks are embedded in a logic of commodification of language which is widespread in the context of tourism. Keywords: Creole languages, travel guidebooks, tourism, language ideologies, stereotypes. 1. Introduction Many Creole-speaking countries and territories attract significant numbers of international travellers.1 For most tourists, travelling to these places is one of the very rare occasions to come into close contact with Creole languages; some of them may not even have heard of Creole languages before. Vacationers will most likely communicate with locals in another language such as English or French and not acquire any extensive knowledge of the Creole. Nevertheless, before and during their stay, they can form an idea of what these languages look and sound like. Apart from their direct auditory or visual impressions and conversations with locals, travellers may look for more detailed information. Even in the digital era, classical print guidebooks are still one of the most important sources of information about local life, languages included. In many Creole-speaking societies, linguistic insecurity and standard language ideology remain strong, with considerable consequences for social stratification and educational success (Migge, Léglise & Bartens 2010; Krämer 2017; Stein 2017: 51–53; 1 We would like to thank the editors of the journal and the two anonymous reviewers for their support and their helpful comments on the first version of this paper. This paper also greatly benefitted from the discussions at the 2019 summer conference of the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics in Lisbon where we had the occasion to present some preliminarly findings of this project. Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics, 3(2020), 64–88 “A picturesque language, humorous and very pliable”: 65 descriptions of French-based Creole languages in travel guidebooks Hüning & Krämer 2018: 10–16). Tourists are often speakers of the former colonial languages in their dominant standard form and as such, they may be seen as carrying a certain authority over the use of the prestigious languages. Especially when in contact with local speakers, their perspective on the local linguistic setup, the properties of Creole languages and their relation with the dominant languages can contribute to either rebalancing power relations or, in the worst case, to entrenching existing hierarchies. The metalinguistic views which tourists reflect when encountering Creole speakers can be an influential contribution to either enhancing or overcoming linguistic insecurity. Having a sound basic knowledge of the local historical, cultural and also linguistic specificities is paramount to a respectful and sensitive behaviour of travellers when interacting with Creole speakers. One decisive factor in this is the fact that guidebooks are usually authored by outsiders, many of them professional travel authors. Such a setting is reminiscent of the earliest metalinguistic sources about Creole languages which were typically written by missionaries and other travellers for a European readership (Chaudenson 1981; Hazaël- Massieux 2008; Valdman 2015: 410; Sousa, Mücke & Krämer 2019: 3–5). As a consequence, the speakers’ voices and perspectives will typically be represented indirectly, if at all. The authority to assess the properties of Creole languages, then, is claimed by non-locals and directed at a non-local public (the same is true for many other evaluations of local characteristics often included in guidebooks, see Peel & Sørensen 2016: 54). This is a significant difference from other efforts in tourism where communities themselves display “cultural distinctiveness”, for example linguistic difference, as part of a bulk of “attractions in which collective identities are represented, interpreted, and potentially constructed through the use of [...] culture” (Pitchford 2008: 3). Travel guidebooks “posit elements of knowledge as relevant” and provide “routines of orientation” according to the authors’ anticipation of their readership’s expectations (Fandrych & Thurmair 2010: 163). Peel and Sørensen (2016: 195–196) report that travellers value the information in guidebooks as reliable and thoroughly researched, making them an authoritative source as opposed to less trustworthy or subjective information to be found online. Since the way readers perceive the language—and in connection with it, its speakers—will be shaped by the way it is described in the guidebook, these sources are worth an in-depth analysis.2 A large body of research is available about the contents, functions and impact of travel guidebooks from many perspectives, stretching from tourism marketing to critical postcolonial analyses. Many works use approaches from linguistics such as corpus methods, concepts from text linguistics or semantics to analyze the books and the way 2 Previous research has shown that the popularity of travel guidebooks for the preparation of a trip differs from one culture to another: German travellers tend to use them more than French and British travellers (Gursoy & Chen 2000: 589), American travellers more than travellers from China (Osti, Turner & King 2009: 68). However, the goal of this article is not to quantify the effective impact of the language descriptions so that we will not take such differences into consideration in our study. Philipp Krämer & Magdalena von Sicard 66 they present places, people and cultures. However, the language descriptions in the books themselves rarely receive specific attention (Cordeiro 2011 is one of the rare exceptions). This paper systematically examines the passages in travel guidebooks which describe Creole languages. The analysis will revolve around two central questions: whether or not the books perpetuate stereotypes about Creoles and to what extent they contribute to notions of otherness (van Gorp 2012). Where appropriate, we will additionally show some lines of historic continuity in the way the languages are depicted. Our analysis sets out to show how the descriptions create several areas of friction between the aspirations to give an accurate account of the languages and the need to present them as part of a promising travel experience. In the conclusion, we will briefly connect the findings to previous research about the role of language in tourism, and more particularly the idea of a “commodification of language” in the travel industry (Heller, Jaworski & Thurlow 2014; Heller, Pujolar & Duchêne 2014). As previous research has shown, in the context of tourism, languages are frequently established as commodities, that is, as elements of commercial transactions. For instance, offering services or products in the customers’ preferred languages can contribute to increased profit. In the case of Creole languages, however, the languages themselves are presented as part of the destination’s specificities and this way integrated in the attributes of the product offered for consumption. Our analysis will show that this has consequences for the impact which the language descriptions can have. 2. Corpus and methodology The corpus under analysis in this article is built up from a total number of 63 books written in English, French, and German (see table 1). These books fit the definition of a travel guidebook as described by Peel and Sørensen (2016: 29): “A travel guidebook is a commercially distributed entity, made for transient non-locals to be used in the field. It contains place representations and is comprehensive as it includes practical information beyond that of a special interest subject. Yet, it is selective, and by evaluating more than just listing it facilitates a selection process. Authority is asserted through sender identity and through the potential to contend ‘official’ information.”3 Our paper focuses on books about territories and countries in which French-based Creole languages are spoken. The majority of the books feature islands in the Indian Ocean while the Caribbean is less represented. This is due to the fact that the French West Indies attract fewer tourists from English- or German-speaking countries than e.g. 3 The last criterion in the definition sets guidebooks apart from publications with a distinct marketing purpose such as brochures distributed by tourist boards and similar institutions. “A picturesque language, humorous and very pliable”: 67 descriptions of French-based Creole languages in travel guidebooks Mauritius or the Seychelles so that guidebooks written in these languages are relatively rare.4 The corpus comprises books from the past
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