Title

‘A taste of this lively language’: attitudes towards languages other than English in lonely planet phrasebooks

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-3-2017

Abstract

This paper addresses language attitudes towards non-English, mostly non-Western, languages in the phrasebooks published by Lonely Planet for English-speaking travellers to multilingual regions of the Global South. Specifically, this paper examines attitudes towards the languages exemplified in Lonely Planet’s second edition of Africa: Phrasebook and Dictionary (2013), second edition of India: Phrasebook and Dictionary (2014), fourth edition of Pidgin: Phrasebook (2015), third edition of Hill Tribes (2008), second edition of South Pacific Phrasebook (2008), and third edition of Southeast Asia: Phrasebook and Dictionary (2013). In so doing, this research argues that the phrasebooks describe these languages and their speakers as exotic, monolithic, simplistic, and deterministic; and construct the traveller’s efforts to use these languages as acts of benevolence.

DOI

10.1080/17447143.2017.1343830

Publication Title

Journal of Multicultural Discourses

Volume Number

12

Issue Number

3

First Page

214

Last Page

230

ISSN

17447143

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