Conference Report
Recent Research in the Field of the Interrelation of Foreign Languages and the Field of Tourism: Report from the 3rd International Conference Foreign Languages and Tourism
Tina Orel Frank
University of Primorska, Faculty of Tourism Studies - Turistica, Slovenia tina. orel@fts. upr.si
Languages and tourism are two highly interrelated topics connected through many aspects. Specifically, foreign languages intertwine in everyday spoken communication among visitors and locals, in written creation or translations of texts in foreign languages, in marketing texts and many other areas that the language of tourism reaches. It is undoubtedly an intriguing topic to be studied, especially because of the specifics the language of tourism has to offer as the tourism lexis is characterized by 'the interaction of the general lexicon and multidisciplinary terminology within the field of tourism' (Mikolič, 2015). The multidisciplinary nature of tourism enables researchers to study it from many different viewpoints and perspectives. That makes the scope of research of the connections among foreign languages and tourism vast, which was clearly visible at the third international conference titled Foreign Languages and Tourism this September held in Portorož, at The Faculty for Tourism Studies - Turistica. The conference was organized by three institutions working in the field of tourism: the University of Rijeka, the Faculty of Tourism and Hospitality Management Opatija from Croatia; the University of Primorska, The Faculty of Tourism Studies Turistica from Slovenia; the University of Applied Sciences Burgenland Eisenstadt from Austria.
The multidisciplinarity of tourism and its scope of research combined with the language study field invited a diverse range of research touching on the topics of foreign languages and tourism from many distinct viewpoints. Thus, the conference offered a view into recent and innovative research from the fields of linguistic analysis of tourism language and its texts,
pedagogical practices and research from the fields of foreign language for specific tourism purposes teaching and shed light on connecting linguistic, tourism and cultural research. This report intends to present the main highlights of the conference by dividing conference reports into the two main categories that presented papers dealt with: the linguistic view, as well as pedagogical and didactic views on the connection between foreign languages and tourism.
Linguistic analyses offered a vast range of innovative research. Bait and Folgieri (2016), for example, spoke of the of innovative cloud-based tools and procedures on Natural Language Processing which enable researchers to extract sentiments from content and analyse them in a human manner. They used the method to analyse an Alitalia in-flight magazine. Other reporters presented their research on different language phenomena inside the specific field of language for tourism. Blazevic and Kosuta (2016) analysed collocations appearing in texts of the official Croatian tourist board websites and tour guides, especially focusing on descriptions of tourist destinations in Croatia. As non-equivalent collocations have proved to be problematic in foreign languages production, their results could be used to develop guidelines for translators as well as teachers of foreign languages in tourism. Following that, two contributions analysed anglicisms in tourism texts. Strezovska (2016) contrastively analysed their use in a corpus of Macedonian and German tourism texts and elaborated on why they come to be used. Whereas Bosnar-Valkovic and Mlacovic (2016), researching anglicisms in the German language of tourism, concluded that the decli-
Academica Turística, Year 9, No. 2, December 2016 | 119
Tina Orel Frank
Conference Report
nation of the nominal anglicisms takes place according to the German model, most adjective anglicisms retain their original form, and the verbal anglicisms seem fully integrated into the German morphological system.
The category of linguistically oriented researches presented at the conference continues with reports on studies on various linguistic tools. One of them was researched by Papp (2016), who dealt with the linguistic tools of psychological strategies in advertisements of tour agencies. She specifically focused on the strategies of persuasion and pointed out those most widely used. Tóth (2016) also dealt with advertising materials. She researched German hotel brochures in Austria, the Czech Republic, and Hungary in an intercultural comparison. Key differences among the brochures were highlighted next to the reasons these differences originate. According to Toth, they tend to arise due to the influence of one's own language and culture on the target language. Fabijanic and Krpan (2016) touched upon the terminology of cultural tourism in Italian and German languages in teaching materials for tourism purposes at the tertiary level. In the contrastive linguistics perspective, the contribution highlighted similarities and differences among expressional language equivalents with the Croatian language. Further, Lozo and Susac (2016) dealt with naming in the language of tourism. More specifically, their contribution presented the current tendencies in tourism brand names and the motivation for their creation. They also researched different linguistic tools and identified those currently most often used in the domain of tourism.
Pedagogical and didactic views on foreign languages and tourism were the second most discussed topic at the conference. In a more general sense, the topic was examined by Misiunaite, Patackaite, and Ze-maitiene (2016) who discussed the concept of mul-tilingualism and its importance in the tourism sector with the purpose of defining how many students speak how many foreign languages in Lithuania as well as whether they are willing to learn more. Within the scope of pedagogy and didactics, the presenters also dealt with various viewpoints within the interrelation of the topics and presented the newest innovative
examples of good practice in a foreign language for tourism purposes teaching. Brecelj and Lovec (2016), for example, spoke of student presentations that they implemented in their course as a good motivational source of language learning. As types of other speaking activities, Gudelj (2016) observed the connection among role-playing activities, identity formation and language learning in a classroom of language for tourism. In contrast to speaking activities in class, Ce-pon (2016) investigated silence in English classes. She claims speaking anxiety is a critical factor in foreign language learning and a quarter of the participants in her study, who considered themselves to have low anxiety when speaking general English, were prone to elevated levels of speaking anxiety when performing complex speaking tasks in business English class. Motivation was also mentioned by Orel Frank (2016) who discussed student autonomy and taking responsibility inside and outside the classroom. Based on her research in language for tourism purposes classrooms, she proposed a model by which activities are done in the free time of students, when student feel most autonomous, are to be introduced into classroom work. This should increase their motivation in learning. In a similar manner, Majorosi and Peres (2016) touched upon the responsibility of students and further proposed a model in which ideas and ways of how the reflexive ability of learners can be promoted, especially in the field of subject-specific teaching in higher education.
Tertiary educational programs were dealt with in detail by Miskulin (2016) who discussed the topic of updating hospitality language programs through content and language-integrated learning implementation. She discussed the need for changes in times of globalization and proposed the uses of Content and Language Integrated Learning (clil) as the method to increase motivation and reach higher standards of language proficiency in hospitality students' language courses. Sinkovic and Trdan Lavrencic (2016) remained on the topic of higher education and spoke of the need to advertise learning of German as a foreign language in Slovenia, which is nowadays often put aside due to the increase in the need to learn English as a lingua franca.
120 | Académica Turística, Year 9, No. 2, December 2016
Tina Orel Frank
Conference Report
The conference offered a view into current research in the field of connecting foreign languages and tourism. Presenters reported many new as well as innovative pedagogical practices in the field of foreign languages for tourism purposes education, while the other papers dealt more with purely linguistic research based on various types of tourism texts. It was an event that proved a high connection between the areas of research of languages and tourism. This was even further enhanced by the fact that the conference was organized in four official languages: English, Slovene, Croatian, and German. The third gathering of this kind organized by three faculties of three different countries was a success on many levels as it managed to put the (often neglected) connection between languages and tourism into focus.
References
Bait, M., & Folgieri, R. (2016, 15-16 September). Up in the air: A linguistic and computational analysis of Alitalia inflight magazine. Paper presented at the 3rd International Conference Foreign Languages and Tourism, Portorož, Slovenia.
Blaževič, N., & Košuta, N. (2016,15-16 September). Kollokationen in der beschreibung einer Touristischen Destination. Paper presented at the 3rd International Conference Foreign Languages and Tourism, Portorož, Slovenia. Bosnar-Valkovič, B., & Mlacovič, M. (2016, 15-16 September). Besonderheiten der Morphologischen Integration der Anglizismen in der Deutschen Tourismusfachsprache (tfs). Paper presented at the 3rd International Conference Foreign Languages and Tourism, Portorož, Slovenia.
Brecelj, S., & Lovec, N. (2016, 15-16 September). Oral presentations as a strategy for learning a foreign language. Paper presented at the 3rd International Conference Foreign Languages and Tourism, Portorož, Slovenia. Čepon, S. (2016, 15-16 September). Silence in a business English class. Paper presented at the 3rd International Conference Foreign Languages and Tourism, Portorož, Slovenia.
Fabijanič, M., & Krpan, T. (2016,15-16 September). Terminologija kulturnog turizma u njemačkom i talijanskom jeziku. Paper presented at the 3rd International Conference Foreign Languages and Tourism, Portorož, Slovenia.
Gudelj, A. (2016, 15-16 September). Role-play, identity, and language learning. Paper presented at the 3rd Interna-
tional Conference Foreign Languages and Tourism, Portorož, Slovenia.
Lozo, I., & Sušac, V (2016,15-16 September). Naming in the domain of tourism. Paper presented at the 3rd International Conference Foreign Languages and Tourism, Portorož, Slovenia.
Majorosi, A., & Peres, A. (2016,15-16 September). Förderung der Reflexionsfähigkeit im Sprachunterricht. Paper presented at the 3rd International Conference Foreign Languages and Tourism, Portorož, Slovenia.
Mikolič, V. (2015). Splošna leksika in večpodročni termini v govoru turizma. Slavia Centralis, 8(1), 188-202.
Misiunaite, M., Patackaite, J., & Zemaitiene, V (2016, 1516 September). The role ofmultilingualism in Lithuanian tourism. Paper presented at the 3rd International Conference Foreign Languages and Tourism, Portorož, Slovenia.
Miškulin, D. (2016, 15-16 September). Updating hospitality language programmes through content and language integrated learning implementation. Paper presented at the 3rd International Conference Foreign Languages and Tourism, Portorož, Slovenia.
Orel Frank, T. (2016,15-16 September). Testing the students' autonomy in teaching foreign languages for tourism purposes process. Paper presented at the 3rd International Conference Foreign Languages and Tourism, Portorož, Slovenia.
Papp V. (2016, 15-16 September). Psychological strategies and their linguistic tools in advertisements of tour agencies. Paper presented at the 3rd International Conference Foreign Languages and Tourism, Portorož, Slovenia.
Sinkovič, L., &Trdan Lavrenčič, M. (2016,15-16 September). Werbung für Deutsch als Fremdsprache. Paper presented at the 3rd International Conference Foreign Languages and Tourism, Portorož, Slovenia.
Strezovska, J. (2016, 15-16 September). Anglizismen in der Fachsprache des Tourismus. Paper presented at the 3rd International Conference Foreign Languages and Tourism, Portorož, Slovenia.
Toth, É., (2016, 15-16 September). Was enthalten Deutschsprachige Hotelbroschüren in Österreich, Tschechien und in Ungarn? Ein interkultureller Vergleich. Paper presented at the 3rd International Conference Foreign Languages and Tourism, Portorož, Slovenia.
@0®©
This paper is published under the terms of the Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (cc by-nc-nd 4.0) License.
120 | Académica Turística, Year 9, No. 2, December 2016