MACMILLAN Labour Policies, Language Use and the ‘New’ Economy: The Case of Adventure Tourism (Language and Globalization)

This book provides an in-depth analysis of language and tourist mobility within an adventure tourism context. It uses a critical and ethnographic approach, contributing to poststructuralist perspectives of social life that are currently undergoing considerable changes on social, political, cultural and linguistic levels. Drawing upon an array of data sources collected over five years on two continents, it examines and compares the way language and communication (e.g. speech, written texts, visual resources) are used within the production of place-making practices in two of the world’s top adventure tourism destinations: Interlaken, Switzerland and Queenstown, New Zealand. It centres on issues such as cross-cultural discourses, transcultural texts, and semiotic landscapes.  Review “Engagingly written and loaded with illuminating case studies across two hemispheres, this book provides new insights into the sociolinguistics of tourism that will enrich every reader’s understanding of the complex relationship between language, mobilities, tourist work and globalisation. The book is empirically rich and theoretically comprehensive. Combining ethnographic fieldwork with personal reflections, Kellie Gonçalves also shows how to navigate qualitative research processes and reflectively engage with established research practices.” (Sari Pietikäinen, University of Jyväskylä, Finland) “Read this book and next time you bungee jump, or – like me – watch it on YouTube, you will understand that there’s more to it than the adrenaline rush and the force of gravity. As Kellie Gonçalves brilliantly demonstrates, adventure tourism is a nexus of global mobility, discursive formations of selfhood, and mediatized lifestyles.” (Adam Jaworski, University of Hong Kong) “Take a leap off a cliff – holding firmly onto this book – into the extreme sociolinguistics of adventure tourism. In this fascinating, important and carefully-researched study, Kellie Gonçalves takes us to two global adventure meccas – Interlaken and Queenstown – and shows how (precarious) labour, (plenty of) leisure and (devotion to) lifestyle intersect with language, place, mobility and gender.” (Alastair Pennycook, University of Technology Sydney, Australia) From the Back Cover This book provides an in-depth analysis of language and tourist mobility within an adventure tourism context. It uses a critical and ethnographic approach, contributing to poststructuralist perspectives of social life that are currently undergoing considerable changes on social, political, cultural and linguistic levels. Drawing upon an array of data sources collected over five years on two continents, it examines and compares the way language and communication (e.g. speech, written texts, visual resources) are used within the production of place-making practices in two of the world’s top adventure tourism destinations: Interlaken, Switzerland and Queenstown, New Zealand. It centres on issues such as cross-cultural discourses, transcultural texts, and semiotic landscapes.  Kellie Gonçalves is SNSF Marie Heim-Vögtlin Fellow at the English Department of the University of Bern, Switzerland.  About the Author Kellie Gonçalves is SNSF Marie Heim-Vögtlin Fellow at the English Department of the University of Bern, Switzerland.