Phraseology and Culture in English

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The phraseology of tourism: A central
lexical field and its cultural construction 
Andrea Gerbig and Angela Shek 
1. Introduction 
Assumptions about the relationship between language, cognition and cul-
ture have long been discussed from various angles. Corpus linguistic work 
has brought a new, empirical perspective to the discussion. Cultural experi-
ence is accessible through culturally shared cognitive schemata. Such cog-
nitive schemata go along with habitual language use that can be documented 
with corpus linguistic methods. These routine linguistic patterns can be 
described as semantic schemata with their attendant pragmatic evaluation. 
This is a quantitatively based, qualitative approach, showing patterns and 
regularities in language use that would otherwise, without the help of cor-
pus methods, hardly be perceptible and which therefore opens new views 
on cultural concepts and conventions. 
Mobility is a cultural keyword these days, just as important as global-
isation. The concepts of ‘tourism’, ‘travel’, or ‘holiday’ are a substantial 
factor in our cultural system of values. To be able to travel, or to go on a 
holiday, is not least a question of status. Our time is divided into work 
and leisure, accompanied by common expectations about possible ways 
to spend one’s free time. A network of related language use represents 
and at the same time construes the topic in our culture. These linguistic 
representations are related with our views on good and bad holidays, 
fascinating or boring travel, ecological or detrimental tourism and, ac-
cordingly, how we evaluate people and institutions involved in one or the 
other.
We will investigate collocational patterns around the major keywords 
tourist/tourists and TRAVEL
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and in particular those around the phrase 
package holiday in the British data. As database, we will use the Lancaster-
Oslo-Bergen (LOB) corpus (1960s), its corresponding, contemporary Frei-
burg-version, i.e. FLOB (1990s) and the British National Corpus (BNC) 
plus the internet (KWIC-Finder). This will cover the diachronic develop-
ment of approximately 40 years from the 1960s to today. 

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Andrea Gerbig and Angela Shek