Unspeakable discrimination: underlying concerns in instrumentalizing English as Lingua Franca in tourism Research

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The globalizing process, as well as the industries of tourism, rests on the needs of adopting a “lingua franca” in order for nations to understand each other. Historically, empires have interposed their own language as a sign of civilization, and education. What is equally important, ruling elite tried systematically to incorporate foreign language to distinguish themselves from lower classes. French aristocracy spoke Russian with fluency, while the British ruling elite was enthusiastic in speaking French. Roman aristocrats devoted serious resources to improve their Greek. The imposition of a lingua franca, no matter than its nature, divides the world in two parts, the native and the non-native speakers. This conceptual essay-review enumerated and analyzed a set of problems which revolve around the adoption of English as a global language in the constellations. We hold the thesis that tourism research replicates the same epistemological model originated in the economic-based paradigm, incorporating a business English grammar. Nowadays, English acts as a gatekeeper marking the radical selection in the papers quality. Echoing Dann and Gretzel, English has cemented a centralized form of production which excludes many other voices and knowledge while shaping the Anglophone hegemony over other idioms. The commercial-based vision is leading the epistemology of tourism to a gridlock very hard to reverse. We offer a diagnosis on a short study-case based on the CONICET repository and the ethical dilemmas around the paid-for journals and editorial rankings. The expansion of great publishers worldwide and the concentration of financial resources in Anglophone editorial in-house publishers have been successfully supported by English as a global tongue, locating English speaking scholars as the masters of a game where the non-English speakers will never win. The monolinguism, far from embracing universal theories, is ultimately ended to protect the dominant discourse orchestrated by the economic-centered theory. Keywords: Tourism Research, English, Epistemology, Hospitality.