Is Travel Journalism more similar to Newspaper Language or the Language of Tourism? A corpus-based study

ABSTRACT

The Travel section of a newspaper is composed of texts which purport to at least partly comply with the ethical value of journalistic objectivity, yet the border between this type of writing and the overtly promotional texts produced in the tourism sector is somewhat blurred. This paper compares linguistic features in samples of text from Tourist Board websites and the Travel section and nine other sections of The Guardian to determine whether Travel Journalism can be categorised as a type of journalism, or whether it bears distinct similarities to Tourism Discourse. The results suggest that Travel Journalism differs from the other newspaper sections and is quite similar to the Language of Tourism on the basis of some features. However, in relation to others, it is decidedly different, thereby suggesting that Travel Journalism can be cleared of the allegation of being unduly influenced by the texts produced by the tourism industry.

KEYWORDS:

• Travel Journalism
• Language of Tourism
• Newspaper Language
• corpus linguistics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.