Mapping the travel blog : a study of the online travel narrative

Abstract

Blogs are generally described as self-presentational and comprising multiple discourses, and travel blogs are often studied for what tourists say about themselves and places they visit. Yet, little is written about the discourses of travel and tourism informing the narratives of travel blogs or how they influence the presentation of travel bloggers and their travel experiences. Also, much contemporary research uses the terms ‘travel’ and ‘tourism’ interchangeably despite evidence of a dichotomy of traveller and tourist manifest in discourse. Travel is generally regarded as being more authentic, adventurous, and worthy of admiration than tourism, which is perceived as being superficial, passive, and has commercial motivations. Several discursive analyses of forms of travel-related communication indicate that authors use specific narrative techniques to present the self as a traveller and associate their texts with a travel experience as opposed to a touristic one. Conversely, the narrative style of tourist discourse has commercial associations and a promotional purpose.Against this background, this thesis examines the discursive tension between travel and tourism and analyses how narrative techniques negotiate this in travel blogs. The central research question this thesis asks is: How do travel blogs negotiate the tensions between discourses of travel and tourism? The response to this involves a discursive analysis of a travel blogs using various theories of narrative and self-presentation, particularly Bakhtin’s heteroglossia, polyphony, and speech genres, Goffman’s theories of self-presentation, and Graham Dann’s framework for tourist discourse.Through this analysis, the thesis extends previous studies of the discursive construction of the traveller/tourist debate to a recently evolved form of travel-related communication. It finds that the underlying discursive tensions in travel blogs indicate a need for a more flexible approach to defining and analysing this form of communication.