Intercultural Learning


Book Description

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.




Language and Intercultural Communication in Tourism


Book Description

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.




Travel and Intercultural Communication


Book Description

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.




Teacher as Traveler


Book Description

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.




Travelling Languages


Book Description

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.




Tourism and Intercultural Exchange


Book Description

This book asks the question; why is it that tourism matters? It looks at how it is we do tourism and learn to be tourists when we are on holiday. Tourism is a dynamic way of being that may facilitate or hinder intercultural exchange. The ways in which we do tourism and the places in which we are tourists raise practical, material and emotional questions about tourist life. These questions are at the heart of this book. This book draws on both empirical work and a range of theoretical frameworks, arguing that tourism matters precisely because of the lessons it can teach us about living everyday life with others.




Intercultural Foreign Language Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Contexts


Book Description

While research into intercultural teaching has grown exponentially during the past two decades, the research has primarily resorted to the use of quantitative data collection instruments and the interpretation of scores calculated through them. As such, studies in the field can seem somewhat decontextualized, ignoring in some cases setting-specific parameters. Therefore, further study is needed to bring together theory, research, and practice demonstrating how this teaching is reflected in research design and how it is undertaken in different settings. Intercultural Foreign Language Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Contexts is an essential reference source that provides a series of rich insights into the way intercultural education is practiced in numerous international contexts and showcases practical examples of teaching situations and classroom activities that demonstrate its impact within the classroom. Featuring research on topics such as higher education, multilingualism, and professionalism, this book is ideally designed for educators, researchers, administrators, professionals, academicians, and students seeking pedagogical guidance on intercultural teaching.




Language and Cross-Cultural Communication in Travel and Tourism


Book Description

This new volume illustrates how one of the most rapidly evolving industries in the world—travel and tourism—has transcended its immediate economic concerns and has become a major signifier for cultural patterns and cross-cultural communications. It discusses how the function of language has become the subject of scrutiny in the context of intellectual deliberation vis-à-vis travel and tourism. Drawing on discourse analytics and ethnographic approaches, this volume brings together perspectives from the lived experiences of residents, hosts, and ethnographers to explore the extent to which linguistic and cultural differences are identified, constructed, negotiated, and maintained in tourism encounters.




International Tourism


Book Description

In recent years there has been a considerable interest in the cultural aspects of tourism such as the impacts of culture on tourism planning, development, management, and marketing. However, the focus has been on material forms of culture such as arts, music, or crafts. The impacts of national culture on tourist behavior and travel decision-making have not been paid much attention. Only in the last two years have cross-cultural issues begun to generate significant interest among academics. An examination of cultural characteristics and differences is extremely important to the tourism industry because today’s tourism environment is becoming increasingly international. Information on the nature of the cultural differences between international tourists and locals is not readily available in tourism literature. The concept of culture is very complex and includes such abstract concepts as satisfaction, attitude and loyalty. International Tourism brings these concepts to the undergraduate student in tourism, as well as students in the related fields of marketing, management, international business, and cross-cultural communication. Designed as a textbook, it isorganized and presented in an integrated and relevant way for the benefit of a worldwide audience.




Tourism and Intercultural Communication and Innovations


Book Description

This volume presents the results of Bulgarian and international tourism research, and brings together selected papers from the international conference “Tourism and Innovations” held in Varna, Bulgaria, in 2018. It contains theoretical and empirical approaches towards various aspects of tourism concerning both innovations in tourism development and in foreign languages education. As a whole, the book presents innovative solutions and processes in tourism, including management and staff training, provoked by today’s opportunities and challenges for future tourism development. The first part is dedicated to issues in tourism innovation, ranging from those provoked from the changing global environment and tourism demand, through to social innovations concerning tourism products and human resources management. The second section of the book deals with traditions and innovations in foreign language education oriented to managers, operational staff and decision-makers in tourism.