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Language-learner Tourists in Australia: Problematizing 'The Known' and its Impact on Interculturality

Stanley, Phiona

Authors



Contributors

Damien J. Rivers
Editor

Abstract

Think of ‘typical’ Australian scenes, and what springs to mind? Likely images include blond surfers on sun-drenched beaches, Indigenous faces patterned with paint, Sydney Opera House, cricket and rugby, dangerous wildlife and outback terrain, and curious marsupials. All of this is ‘true’ in that it does exist, and all of it is ‘authentic’ in that such images do lie (pun intended) in Australian history, popular culture, fauna and geography. But such images are also manufactured by the tourism industry and by social imaginaries, both inside and outside Australia. And when language education intersects strongly with tourism, as it does in the contexts discussed in this chapter, such images operate as a tyrannical ‘known’ that shapes the experiences that students imagine, and so expect, from their Australian sojourn. Language education providers are then under pressure to provide, indeed to manufacture, Australian ‘authenticity’ as this is imagined by cultural out-groups: the students and their friends and families back home, to whom the experience is displayed on social media. This chapter considers the impact of this on English language education in contexts particularly affected by this (imagined) ‘known’: language schools in Australian cities that are very much on tourism’s beaten path.

Citation

Stanley, P. (2015). Language-learner Tourists in Australia: Problematizing 'The Known' and its Impact on Interculturality. In D. J. Rivers (Ed.), Resistance to the Known: Counter-Conduct in Language Education (23-46). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137345196_2

Acceptance Date Feb 1, 2015
Publication Date 2015-02
Deposit Date Feb 18, 2019
Publicly Available Date Feb 20, 2019
Publisher Palgrave Macmillan
Pages 23-46
Book Title Resistance to the Known: Counter-Conduct in Language Education
Chapter Number 1
ISBN 9781349466351
DOI https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137345196_2
Keywords Emotional labour, destination marketing, English Language Teaching, Australia, stereotypes, staged authenticity.
Public URL http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/1556801
Contract Date Feb 20, 2019

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