Stayhome: Language in Tourism Advertisements on Instagram
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#Stayhome: Language in tourism advertisements on Instagram GUYANNE WILSON, ESTHER ZAPPE, JONAS SILBERMANN–SCHÖN, KAI GUILLIAUME, REBECCA ALTWICKER, MARIANA TAPARI, MARINA WOLF, MERCEDES BENITEZ TORREJON, MUSHTARIY MAMADALIYEVA AND ANNA LUCIA BUSSKAMP CASTRO1 Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany English dominates in online tourism ads from multilingual societies, but local languages are used to create local authentic effect GUYANNE WILSON is a Introduction postdoctoral researcher and In Fiji, Ghana, Jamaica, and the Maldives, the tour- lecturer at the Ruhr-University Bochum. Her research interests ism sector is an important source of economic include World Englishes, wealth. For example, in the Maldives tourism language use in diaspora accounts for around a quarter of total GDP and is a communities, and research main source of employment (Meierkord, 2018:5). methods in English linguistics. Similarly, the role of tourism as one of Jamaica’s During the Covid-19 pandemic main industries has been stated in Deuber in 2020, participants in Guyanne Wilson’s course on (2014: 29), and Hundt, Zipp and Huber (2015:691) World Englishes grew interested in World Englishes on also mention that tourism is one of the key industries the internet. This paper is a result of their sustained and employment sectors in Fiji. While many of these interest and effort. All co-authors were MA students destinations use traditional channels of advertising of English at the Ruhr-University Bochum. Email: [email protected] such as print magazines, a considerable amount of advertising is carried out online via social media. The increased popularity of social media web- sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter has brought with it an attendant interest in how language, specifically English, is used in these contexts (cf. Seargeant & Tagg, 2014). However, with a few exceptions (cf. Lee, 2014; Shakir & Deuber, 2018), social media studies tend to over- look social media language in what Kachru (1985) calls Outer Circle countries. In this paper, we examine how English and other languages are used in tourism advertisements on Instagram in four different countries in which tour- The student authors of this paper were involved in all aspects of producing this article: data collection and ism plays an important role, i.e. the Maldives, Fiji, analysis, writing, and editing. Ghana, and Jamaica. Specifically, we investigate doi:10.1017/S0266078421000274 English Today page 1 of 10 (2021). Printed in the United Kingdom © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press1 This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.40, on 30 Sep 2021 at 05:26:44, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266078421000274 the range of languages used in Instagram posts in important marker of local identity and group mem- advertisements geared towards tourists from these bership and can increasingly be heard in political destinations. We consider the effect of the use speeches and campaigns. of different languages in these posts, and we The only official language in the Maldives is investigate how features typical of social media, Dhivehi. English does not have the status of an offi- specifically hashtags, are employed in tourism cial language and is therefore absent from the advertisements on Instagram. The paper begins domains of administration, law, and politics. with a brief overview of the role of English in However, English is employed in education, the each of the selected territories, before moving on media, and tourism, and is also frequently used in to contextualise these varieties in terms of major the workplace (Meierkord, 2018:4–5). The import- models of World Englishes. The data and methods ance of Islam and the Qur’an in the country suggests used in this study are then presented, followed by that some Maldivians have command of Arabic. the quantitative and qualitative results. Though several models have been proposed for describing World Englishes and the ways in which World Englishes and online tourism they relate to one another, the older models, such as Kachru’s(1985) Three Circles Model and advertising Schneider’s(2007) Dynamic Model, do not allow Ghana is a multilingual country in which over 80 us to study the varieties at hand on equal terms. indigenous languages are spoken (Adika, 2012). For example, in the Kachruvian model, Fiji, English is used as the primary medium of instruc- Ghana, and Jamaica are traditionally placed in the tion in schools, and is also widely used in the news Outer Circle, whereas the Maldives would fall media, government (Huber, 2008: 73), and as a into the Expanding Circle. In reality, the Maldives language of cross-ethnic communication (Adika, appears to be transitioning from the Expanding 2012: 152). In spite of the predominance of to Outer Circle, and Meierkord (2018: 2) notes English, Ghanaian languages are actively pro- that the Maldives represents ‘a rapidly transforming moted in television and radio media and society, in which English is fast establishing Ghanaian identity is closely linked to the ability itself as a second language in large parts of the to speak a Ghanaian language. In addition, population’. Similarly, while Fiji, Ghana, and Ghanaian Pidgin English is also spoken as a lingua Jamaica (as former colonies) can be dealt with in franca and is a marker of local identity. Schneider’s postcolonial model, the Maldives In Fiji, English was introduced in the late 19th have never been a colony, and the development of century in the course of colonisation and is cur- English there differs considerably from the three rently a second language variety that has been postcolonial Englishes because of the lack of a set- institutionalised (Hundt et al., 2015: 690). As a tler population (Meierkord, 2018: 4). Consequently, consequence of the establishment of sugar planta- a key component of Schneider’s(2007) Dynamic tions and the recruitment of indentured labourers Model is missing. from India, English has been in contact with Buschfeld and Kautzsch’s(2017:113)Extra-and other languages for a long time. English can be Intra-territorial Forces (EIF) Model makes use of the found in domains such as administration, the edu- ‘notion of extra- and intra-territorial forces’ that are cation system, and the media. Furthermore, at work at all times in the development of post- English is used as a lingua franca between different colonial and non-postcolonial Englishes. The pair ethnic groups (ibid.) Apart from English, the other propose that tourism, as a largely extra-territorial two main languages spoken in Fiji are Fijian and influence, might be a key factor in the expansion Fiji Hindi (Schneider, 2007: 116). and development of English, particularly with In Jamaica, a local emerging variety of Standard respect to the general role of tourism in a given English, Jamaican English (JE), is spoken along- country. They also acknowledge an intra-territorial side an English-lexicon Creole, Jamaican Creole dimension, especially ‘with respect to the question (JC). Since English is Jamaica’s official language, of how readily a country’s inhabitants make use JE is widely used in formal domains such as gov- of English in interchanges with tourists’ ernment, education, and the media, while JC is (Buschfeld & Kautzsch, 2017: 115). relegated to private and informal domains. In each of the countries studied here, English is However, in recent times the division has been the main language of tourism, and has become less clear-cut, and JC is increasingly used in con- ‘the default language of choice for brochures, sign- texts that were previously reserved for JE, particu- posts, websites and other text-based information larly news media (Westphal, 2017). JC is an material for tourists’, as well as the main language 2 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.40, on 30 Sep 2021 at 05:26:44, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266078421000274 for spoken interaction with tourists (Schneider, Data and method 2016: 2). In spite of this, local languages remain central to tourists’ travel experience in another The data here comprise Instagram posts created by country. Jaworski and Thurlow (2010: 262) note tourism organisations from the Maldives, Fiji, that ‘tourist consumption is organized around the Ghana, and Jamaica during the period March to recognition and interpretation of various signs’ June 2020. For each of the countries, we collected and that ‘[t]hese signs are frequently linguistic’. 20 Instagram posts from Instagram accounts such In their study of a guided tour in the Maori village as Tourism Fiji, Visit Maldives, Visit Jamaica, and of Whakarewarewa, Rotorua, NZ, the authors Ghana Tourism Authority, all pages hosted by the demonstrate that it is the place name itself that is official tourism authorities of the respective coun- the object of tourist consumption. Similarly, we tries. In addition to these, posts from official airlines could say that Instagram users adopt the tourist such as Fiji Airlines were used. A selection of these gaze when they look at pictures of beautiful posts is reproduced below. Since Instagram’sfairuse scenery or cultural artefacts in the posts that guidelines (Instagram, 2021) allows for the use of are offered by tourism organisations online. copyrighted work for education and research pur- Together with expressions in local languages, poses, and since all the posts used were public, i.e. Instagram posts may constitute objects of tourist visible even to people without Instagram accounts, consumption.