Civilizational and Pragmatic Factors of Tourism Discourse Development

Abstract

The article illustrates the correlation between the stages of tourism discourse development and the historical and socio-economic conditions, as well as functional features of texts of various genres. The author reveals that the mode of tourism discourse existence has undergone multiple transformations, associated with changes in the scope of tourism organizations activities, the social roles of communicants, which in turn affected the genre specifics. Determination of tourism discourse functionality within the scope of this research involves the analysis of communicative intentions of the addresser actualized in individual genres and texts, and subjected to gradual changes in the scope of tourism development. The author points out three stages of tourism discourse development, each of which is associated with certain factors of civilizational development of society and the transformation of addressers' pragmatic attitudes: travel literature, tourism discourse presented in printed advertising texts, online tourism discourse. The material of the study is based on the texts of the domain “travel and tourism”, selected in accordance with the chronology of the revealed stages of development – travel blogs, brochures, tourism hypertexts. The author makes conclusion on the progressive development of tourism discourse since the 12th century up to date, as evidenced by the expansion of the genre spectrum and the transformation of traditional print genres into internet-mediated tourism resources.

Keywords

• tourism discourse
• genre
• genre system
• function of text
• communicative aim
• historical transformations