Travel And Intercultural Communication

This volume brings together the proceedings of “Going North: An Interdisciplinary Conference on Travel and Intercultural Communication” held in Halden, Norway, in 2016. Today’s world is akin to a global network where spatial, linguistic and cultural mobility reshapes our identities. This mobility is unprecedented in its scope, and is caused by a multitude of reasons, from purely leisurely travel to desperate flight. The “Going North” conference addressed the role of travel – past and present – and intercultural communication connected to travel. The book brings together texts focusing on going north from several geographical points of departure, from a wide range of genres, and explores a range of intercultural aspects such as issues of identity, othering, the crossing of borders, and cultural perceptions of the north.

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject Tourism - Miscellaneous, grade: 2,0, University of Cooperative Education Ravensburg, language: English, abstract: Tourism is the most superficial way of an intercultural encounter1 and one of the biggest industrial sectors in the world. "The WTTC (World Travel and Tourism Council) estimates that over 230 million jobs in world are supported by the tourism industry, which equates to 8.3 per cent of total global employment, or one in every 12 jobs."2 Furthermore, the latest statistics from 2008 show that tourism has not reached its peak yet. Over 80 countries earned more than 642 billion through international tourism in 2008, while in 1990 it had only been 207 billion.3 Another statistic representing and pointing up the booming tendency is the one showing the international tourist arrivals: while there had only been 25 million arrivals in 1950, the number constantly rose to 922 million in 2008 and by 2020 1.6 billion international tourist arrivals are expected.4 With so many tourists spending time abroad every year it is a logical consequence that different culture groups meet. From time to time, people may spend two weeks in Turkey, Dubai, Cancun or on Bali. This unfortunately might happen without the people even getting the local culture rudimentarily. But if they try to get to know the local culture, difficulties may occur. It is not only the language which is different and causes troubles and misunderstandings in communication; attitudes and the way people think vary greatly. Tourists often do not prepare themselves properly for their stays abroad; just reading a travel guide may not be sufficient at all. When going abroad people need to be aware of different behavioural rules and patterns. But not only tourists have to face this problem. In the tourism industry many people work abroad which not only leads to multicultural teams but also to misunderstandings going back to cultural differences. These groups, both

The ability to recognise and understand your own cultural context is a prerequisite to understanding and interacting with people from different cultural backgrounds. An intercultural learning approach encourages us to develop an understanding of culture and cultural difference, through reflecting on our own context and experience.

Based on the commonly held assumption that we now live in a world that is ‘on the move’, with growing opportunities for both real and virtual travel and the blurring of boundaries between previously defined places, societies and cultures, the theme of this book is firmly grounded in the interdisciplinary field of ‘Mobilities’. ‘Mobilities’ deals with the movement of people, objects, capital, information, ideas and cultures on varying scales, and across a variety of borders, from the local to the national to the global. It includes all forms of travel from forced migration for economic or political reasons, to leisure travel and tourism, to virtual travel via the myriad of electronic channels now available to much of the world’s population. Underpinning the choice of theme is a desire to consider the important role of languages and intercultural communication in travel and border crossings; an area which has tended to remain in the background of Mobilities research. The chapters included in this volume represent unique interdisciplinary understandings of the dual concepts of mobile language and border crossings, from crossings in ‘virtual life’ and ‘real life’, to crossings in literature and translation, and finally to crossings in the ‘semioscape’ of tourist guides and tourism signs. This book was originally published as a special issue of Language and Intercultural Communication.

Essay from the year 2011 in the subject Communications - Intercultural Communication, grade: 1,3, Stralsund University of Applied Sciences, language: English, abstract: “McDonaldization” (GeorgRitzer), “Cocacolization” (Zdravko Mlinar) and “Mc-World” (Benjamin Barber) are just a few key words of a topic that has gained worldwide interest today. The Globalization is on the roll and seems to be unstoppable. [1] One by one, the world has become a ‘global village’ with multicultural societies, where it is unavoidable for us to get in greater contact with the rest of the world and other cultures. Our daily lives develop an increasingly international orientation. Globalization produced a demand for intercultural communication and awareness for both the tourism industry and many different commercial sectors. The travel and tourism industry has experienced a growing internationalization during the past decades. Especially here people are exposed to cultural different societies. In the tourism industry it is substantial to know cultures in its various forms and dimensions since it has a significant impact on tourism planning and development, management and marketing. Companies in the tourism industry have to understand the influence of national cultures on their consumers to be able to compete for market share successfully. Intercultural communication helps tourists to keep the quality of the interaction with different nationalities high and therefore contribute to their holiday experiences and perceptions of the visited destination. Many intercultural problems within the tourism industry arose during the past years and are becoming more and more threatening for both the host destinations and the tourist himself. This paper describes, analyzes and also discusses some of those problems in the tourism industry and try to find a possible solution for them in order to eventually smoothing the way from a global village to a global community.

This collection critically examines tourism as a site of intercultural communication, drawing on the analytical tools afforded by the discipline toward better understanding contemporary tourism discourses and the broader societal structures of power and ideologies in which they are situated. The volume interrogates culture and interculturality in tourism in detailed analyses of discursive details in tourism interactions and focuses on the notion of culture as a process or phenomenon engaged in or enacted on by individuals. Drawing on discourse analytic and ethnographic approaches, the book brings together perspectives from the lived experiences of residents, hosts and ethnographers to explore the extent to which linguistic and cultural differences are constructed, identities negotiated, and power relations maintained and perpetuated in tourism encounters. The volume draws on insights from those working across a range of geographic contexts and explores the interplay of these issues in English as well as other languages and language varieties used in tourism interactions. With its focus on critical approaches to understanding language and culture, this book will appeal to students and scholars in intercultural communication, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, discourse analysis, and tourism studies.

The essence of this second edition, under the revised title Teacher as Traveler: Enhancing the Intercultural Development of Teachers and Students, is to examine the development of intercultural competence through various dimensions of student travel, study abroad and intercultural encounters. Cushner, who has traveled with students and teachers to all seven continents for more than 40 years, uses his firsthand experiences as the foundation to introduce essential concepts related to cross-cultural communication and intercultural interaction and to point out strategies educators can employ to enhance intercultural learning. This second edition reflects the considerable research that has occurred in recent years that has helped us better understand the impact and design of international travel experiences that have the potential to enhance intercultural development. In addition to updated research, the chapters examine new study abroad initiatives while looking closely at the critical role that guided teacher-led experience plays in facilitating intercultural growth and development.

As worldwide travel and contact increase, intercultural communication competence becomes a powerful imperative that goes beyond traditional approaches. The authors' travel experiences in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America and their interactions with people during their travels echo in the book through stories and ideas that have enriched their perspectives. Their firsthand experiences combined with their scholarship offer readers insight into and knowledge of the field of intercultural communication. Offering a unique treatment of intercultural communication culled from the global experiences of its authors, Intercultural Communication: Roots and Routes examines intercultural communication against the background of a rapidly-transforming world, both culturally and linguistically. This book focuses on the inseparable relationship between cultural roots and the communicative consequences of humans' confrontation with diversity. Using the metaphors of process and movement-- "roots and routes"-- to capture the ongoing dynamism of intercultural communication, this book demonstrates how theory animates intercultural performance. These metaphors are used as powerful tools for understanding how primary places and things such as home, family, experiences, immigration, food, prejudices, perceptions, popular culture, race, gender, and customs and traditions, help to shape what people think, feel, and do as they interact in an increasingly complex world. Anyone interested in expanding their knowledge of intercultural communication on a personal or professional level.