Study Abroad: Tourism or education? A multimodal social semiotic analysis of institutional discourses of a promotional website

Abstract

The rise in Study Abroad (SA) participation among college students has increased interest among educationalists wondering about the impact of SA on students, particularly when students return home without evidence of deep engagement and understanding of other cultures and people. The purpose of this case study was to locate one potential source of the meanings ascribed to the SA experience, through analysis of multimodal representations on the institutional website of a popular SA program provider. In this study, Kress’ model of multimodal social semiotic (MSS) communication was employed in the analysis of the ensemble of modes of communication (e.g. written language, layout, visual language) on the website, and their role in the production and dissemination of discourses of SA. Findings indicate that discourses of tourism prevail over discourses of education, and the representations enacted on the institutional website are mirrored in the discursive practices of students.

Keywords

Communication discourse analysis higher education multimodality promotional websites social semiotics study abroad tourism discourse

Introduction

This study takes a multimodal social semiotic (MSS) approach to examining discourses in a Study Abroad (SA) promotional website. Institutional websites are an important semiotic space not only where information is exchanged, but also where various discourses and ideologies are created and mobilized through multimodal (language, visual elements, layout, etc.) semiotic designs (Kress, 2010; Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2001). Taking the institutional website of a leading SA program provider, Arcadia University, this study applies Kress’ (2010) model of MSS communication to the analysis of the salient discourses of SA on Arcadia University’s College of Global Studies (CGS) website. The institutional context of SA has been selected as a site of analysis based on assertions that students often return home without having achieved the expected learning outcomes of deep understanding of other cultures and people. As Kinginger (2008) notes, ‘[i]n the literature on students’ perceptions of study abroad … all too often the participants recount these [cross-cultural] incidents not as learning opportunities but as unpleasant encounters in which interpretations of the other through stereotypes are confirmed’ (p. 7). While some have suggested that this problem could be addressed through greater intervention in student learning (Paige et al., 2004; Vande Berg, 2007) or more strategic program design (Council on International Educational Exchange, n.d.), we argue that learning ultimately depends upon the meanings that students ascribe to their SA experiences, and that these meanings are created, in part, in discourses that circulate through institutional websites. In the article that follows, we provide an analysis of the modes and messages that are materialized on Arcadia University’s CGS website in order to uncover ideological discourses underlying the program. We begin with an explanation of Kress’ (2010) theory of MSS communication and continue with an analysis of modes and messages created by both program administrators and student participants, followed by a presentation of the most salient resulting discourses.

An MSS view of communication

Social semiotics delves into how meanings are made and structured in processes of communication and acknowledges that semiotic acts and products are constituted and shaped through historical, cultural, and social uses of signs (Kress, 2010). Multimodality is concerned with the use of several modes of communication, their relationships, and the ways they are combined in processes of communication and representation (e.g. Jewitt, 2009a; Kress, 2010; Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2001; O’Halloran and Smith, 2011). Modes are meaning-making resources that include, among others, written or oral language, image, gesture, gaze, layout, and color. One assumption of multimodal research is that multimodal ensembles such as those found on websites orchestrate meaning-making through the intentional selection, interaction, and configuration of communicational and representational modes (Hawisher and Selfe, 1998; Jewitt, 2009a, 2009b; Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2001).

Communication in the MSS theory is a rhetorical process, where the ‘rhetor’ – the initiating agent of the meaning-making process – intends to achieve a particular political purpose through the construction of signs in any communicational act (Kress, 2010). Meaning is initially orchestrated by rhetors who choose and assemble modes (e.g. layout, image, color, written text) based on their particular histories, motivations, interests, and their assessment of the interests and social contexts of their intended interpreters. Meaning-makers use the semiotic resources available to them in interrelation with conventions and norms governing their social environment (Jewitt, 2009b; Kress, 2010; Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2001). Sign-makers do not represent complete signs; instead, they choose a ‘criterial aspect’, or singular characteristic of a sign based on their ‘interest’ (Kress, 2010). For instance, while one sign-maker may choose to represent the sign ‘ocean’ through a drawing depicting a ‘large expanse of water’, another sign-maker might represent it as a ‘blue expanse of water’. Each sign-maker refers to the same signified, however with a different signifier that draws upon his or her respective interest, each focusing on a distinct criterial aspect: ‘largeness’ or ‘blueness’.

In Kress’ (2010) model, communication involves the act of representation by a rhetor who sets an initial message (the ‘ground’) that prompts an interpreter to respond, based on his or her interest. In shaping a particular representation, a rhetor-designer assesses the communication situation, that is, the semiotic resources available (modes), the means for message dissemination (media), and the social context (i.e. social and cultural roles of interlocutors). This assessment constitutes the basis for ‘designing’ the message in which the rhetor-designer chooses and shapes the modes, the discourse, and the genre for the production and dissemination of his or her representation(s). ‘Production’ is the implementation of design: using available resources, meaning is made material. Once realized materially, the ‘ground’ (message) becomes a ‘prompt’ for interpretation. In turn, the interpreter selects a criterial aspect from the ground and engages in a process of ‘framing’, or transforming the message into a new sign. This process continues in a ‘ceaseless chain of semiosis’ (Kress, 2010: 53).

Discourse: A critical perspective

In MSS, ‘[d]iscourse deals with the production and organization of meaning about the world from an institutional position’ (Kress, 2010: 110). Institutions that are part of the social contexts of education, law, science, or religion assemble, enact, maintain, and distribute discourses in the form of social knowledge (Kress, 2010; Mills, 1997). Since social knowledge materializes in spatially and temporally located social practices (Van Leeuwen, 2008), often governed by institutional norms, it is necessary to examine discourse as ‘a dialectical relationship between a particular discursive event and the situation(s), institution(s), and social structure(s), which frame it’ (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997: 258). Discourses pass from one person to another through communicative sign systems such as language and other modes through semiotic acts, where ideological contents operate in order to legitimize certain values associated with, for example, identity, race, gender, power, status, or solidarity. Thus, discourses enacted through texts are value-laden and contribute to the production or reproduction of ideologies (see Hodge and Kress, 1988; Van Dijk, 2008).

Methodology

This study follows the principles of case study designs (e.g. Stake, 1995) in terms of the sample size and depth of inquiry. Case studies are selective and focus on specific aspects in order to give a full account of the phenomenon under examination (Stake, 1995; Yin, 2003). In this study, the SA website constitutes the ‘case’. One approach to examining online material is to concentrate on discursive and rhetorical analyses of content (i.e. written text, image) (Schneider and Foot, 2003). A discursive analytical approach allows for the integration of qualitative and quantitative techniques and befits the multimodal nature of websites, as some content is better addressed from qualitative perspectives (e.g. relationship between elements in a visual composition), while other content calls for quantitative strategies of systematization and analysis (e.g. number of occurrences of elements in visual compositions).

Data and method

Arcadia University was chosen because of the long tradition and success of its SA program, which is corroborated by its prominent position among the top US sending institutions (IIE, 2000, 2013). A single website was chosen because the data from this sample offered substantive analytical units and allowed for deep examination of discourses from the perspective of multiple rhetors. After perusing the overall structure of the SA website, three distinct spaces were identified: (1) the About Us pages, (2) the program pages, and (3) the student network, an Arcadia-based social networking site in which students post content. From each of these three spaces, we selected sets of pages that would become our data (Table 1).

Table 1.

Website spaces that comprise the data set.

About Us page	Program pages	Student portal
About the College Pages: History of The College of Global Studies Mission Professional Affiliations Life of the Mind Co-curricular Learning Certificate Student Handbook	University of Cape Town Arcadia in Rome Arcadia in Chile	Megan (Rome; includes written entries and photos) Kelly (Cape Town; includes written entries and photos) Allison (Cape Town; includes written entries) Adam (Cape Town; includes video-montage) Leslie (Chile; includes photos)

Data selected

In the About Us pages, we focused on the About the College section (Table 1). Included in this section were: History of The College of Global Studies, Mission, Professional Affiliations, Life of the Mind, Co-curricular Learning Certificate, and Student Handbook (Arcadia University, 2011). Given the recurrent structure of the program pages, we purposefully selected three regions (Africa, Latin America, and Europe), then selected three programs at random, with the intent to yield a geographically varied sample. On the program page, data set refers to the complete set of available program pages for Arcadia in Rome, the University of Cape Town (UCT), and Arcadia in Chile (Arcadia University, 2011), each of which contains a landing page, practical and logistical information about the host institution, the city where the program is located, and information about dates and fees. The third section, the student network, consists of blogs and photos created by SA students in Rome, Cape Town, and Chile (Arcadia University, 2011, 2015).

Data analysis

Data analysis proceeded through two distinct processes. First, we examined the website through Kress’ (2010) MSS model of communication (see earlier). Departing from the assumption that a website constitutes a communicative act, we carefully examined each page, identifying the actors, their social roles, their implied communicative actions, and the design underlying the website’s composition and content. Based on this analysis, we focused on four components of Kress’ model: rhetor, design, ground, and interpreter. Next, we conducted a microanalysis of individual pages’ language, image, and layout order to examine underlying discourses conveyed through overt and covert messages. We chose these modes because of their prominence within the website’s semiotic design, and because other modes such as color and font are typically institutionally determined and outside the control of these pages’ assumed rhetor-designers. First, we conducted a general layout analysis and determined that each page consisted of three vertical panels designed from a standard template (Figure 1): a navigational menu (left); a body of written text, photos, and links (center); and a menu of icons (right).

Figure 1.

Three vertical panels as the general layout of the program pages (Arcadia University, 2011).

Based on this review, we focused on Panel 2 as this is where designs contained variation, while Panels 1 and 3 contained fixed and general content. We determined that Panel 2 broke down into distinct modules and mapped content in terms of design modes (linguistic – written and spoken language, hyperlinks; visual – images, icons; spatial – textbox; audio – music). Occurrences of each mode were quantified, and the linguistic and visual modes emerged as most prominent. Linguistic data were analyzed through inductive coding of themes. Visual data were analyzed through a second matrix designed to focus on the salience of carriers of connotation in photographs (poses, objects, setting, photogenia; see Machin, 2007). Salience was determined by looking at features such as size, foregrounding, color, overlaps, and repetitions (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996; Machin, 2007).

Findings and discussion

We present our findings in two parts, first through the lens of four major components of Kress’ (2010) theory of multimodal communication: rhetor, design, ground, and interpreter, drawing examples from our data to illustrate each component. Next, we discuss the salient discourses underlying the SA program offered through Arcadia University that emerged from our analysis.

Kress’ multimodal communication model as exemplified by the CGS website

Rhetor

When a visitor to a virtual space such as the Arcadia University website navigates the site, she or he engages in a process of communication which already began when the website was created: the website user (interpreter) engages with a message (ground) that was designed by an institution (rhetor(s)). Beyond this superficial presentation lie complex questions such as the rhetor’s identity in this communication process, and how the roles of rhetor, designer, producer, and disseminator materialize in this virtual environment. At first glance, it could be said that the institution itself – Arcadia University – is a macro-rhetor who is complicit in typical processes of materializing institutional discourses. These discourses, subtly or overtly, govern the individual actors (deans, program directors, professors, and counselors, among others) who ultimately conform to the ongoing nature and dynamics of the Institution’s underlying system and become participant rhetors of the institutional discourse. For example, the CGS’ mission defers to the university’s mission: ‘The College of Global Studies at Arcadia University advances the University’s mission to prepare students for life in a rapidly changing global society’ (emphasis added) (Arcadia University, 2011: Mission). By drawing heavily on the same mission, the CGS is complicit in the creation and dissemination of messages in service of an institutional discourse.

Design

Design is central to the MSS model: it is here that decisions about genre, mode, discourse, and medium are made (Kress, 2010). In a conversational exchange, identifying rhetor, designer, producer, and disseminator of a message seems straightforward because a single interlocutor assesses the communicative situation and designs and produces a message. In communication through institutional websites, however, each of these functions might be performed by different actors; therefore, different people contribute to the design of the messages and discourses of the CGS’s website. CGS capitalizes on the ‘dynamism and change, functionality, convergence of different technologies and multimodality’ (Villanueva et al., 2008) of the digital genre that is the organizational homepage (Askehave and Nielsen, 2005; Stein, 2006). Genres determine design modes and, often, also the medium of production. A website allows for the integration of multiple modes (e.g. audio, image, written language, spatial distribution), and their affordances (e.g. hyperlinks, color, typography). The CGS primarily makes use of image and written language; however, emphasis is placed on the image, as the spatial distribution of semiotic elements on the SA homepage exemplifies (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

CGS Study Abroad home page (Arcadia University, 2011).

The composition of this page combines two spaces: pictorial and textual. The upper and central position of the photo (participants of the SA program in Mallorca) is the first indicator of the paramount role of image throughout the website. The choice of image as the most prominent mode on the site coincides with discussions about ocularcentrism (Jay, 1993) where ‘the visual is central to the cultural construction of social life in contemporary western societies’ (Gillian, 2001: 6). As will be shown in the following, choices of genre (website) and mode (visual, written) are informed by decisions about the discourses (institutional visions of the world) that the rhetor-institution is trying to mobilize.

Different discourses underpin the messages conveyed through the semiotic design of the website, specifically, discourses of globalization, capitalism, and education. The photo depicts American students as citizens of a globalized world characterized by mobility, and the opportunity for an educational experience in the Mediterranean. Furthermore, the photo is used as an advertisement. The semiotic design makes use of pictorial integration in which written text (e.g. ‘Experience the Mediterranean MALLORCA’) is integrated into the pictorial space (Van Leeuwen, 2005). Van Leeuwen elaborates, ‘in the case of advertising, pictorial integration absorbs text into the dream, the fantasy’ (p. 12), a fantasy which is conveyed through the deep blue Mediterranean sea and landscape, intensified by the promise of happiness and well-being through the students’ smiling faces. The relation between the pictorial and textual is one of extension and complementarity, where ‘the content of the image adds further information to that of the text and vice versa’ (Van Leeuwen, 2005: 230). Written language communicates to an interpreter where the photo is taken (Mallorca) and what a traveler can do there (experience the Mediterranean), while the pictorial image suggests the dreaminess and fancifulness of the experience in that place.

Ground

Once a rhetor-designer has given material shape to a sign, she or he must select the medium of production and dissemination. Through the stages of design, production, and dissemination, the rhetor-designer has initiated a process of meaning-making. The material form of this representation constitutes the message (‘ground’) from which the process of communication departs (Kress, 2010). ‘Interest’ is pivotal in the process of sign-making and involves rhetors choosing a specific ‘criterial aspect’ to highlight in representing their meanings. The contents of the CGS website serve as the ground from which visitors (interpreters) engage in a process of communication. In turn, various meanings carried by the ground are understood through the interpreter’s ‘interest’. The criterial aspects of SA foregrounded in the CGS’ web spaces will become clear through our treatment later of the discourses which emerge across this semiotic space.

Interpreter

Interpretation takes place when any of the elements of the ground become a prompt to the interpreter (Kress, 2010). Although meaning-making is motivated by the interest of the sign producer, ideologies always mediate communication, often subjecting the interpreter to the meanings produced by a rhetor. For example, rhetors commonly create messages whereby a particular criterial aspect is strongly emphasized through semiotic designs, such that it alone becomes the prompt that yields a certain expected reaction. Advertising uses this strategy, which explains why a song, a motto, or a product image often get stuck in our minds. This semiotic practice is evidenced in the CGS website where certain discourses of SA are mobilized and fostered through the robust use of image and the repetitive depiction of messages associated with tourism and recreation, as will be elucidated.

Accessing the perspective of the interpreter in the study of websites is a challenging task. From the perspective adopted in this study, we consider students to be the interpreters in the communicative process of exploring the website created by the rhetor-institution. The CGS website materializes messages which form the ground to which student-interpreters respond, thereby initiating communication. Student-interpreters become rhetors in turn through the production of their own content on the student network. The contents of the students’ blogs constitute a new sign in response to institutional discourses of SA both in the semiotic space of this website and in other discursive contexts within and outside of the institution.

Ideological discourses of SA in the CGS

Drawing on Machin (2007) we looked at the most salient carriers of connotation that co-occurred across modes. In our image analysis, three categories emerged: actors, locations, and activities. As ‘actors’ we found students, local people, institution (referring to icons of the receiving university, such as a building facade or a university seal), public space, faculty, and program setting (depicting the host university’s physical spaces). In terms of ‘locations’, the following emerged: cityscape, exterior space, interior space, landscape, monument, field site, around town, and sites of historical, natural, or cultural interest (i.e. a cave, a game park, a winery). Interior and exterior space referred to images displaying students at the program site (i.e. in a classroom, outside an academic building, etc.). Once coding was completed, we grouped these into two categories: sites of learning (exterior space, interior space, field site) and sites of tourism and recreation (monument; landscape; cityscape; sites of historical, cultural, or natural interest; around town). Finally, ‘activities’ referred to students gazing, participating in a local event, posing for a photograph, recreating, shopping, socializing, studying, and walking. Next, we looked for intersemiotic relationships (Jewitt, 2009a) between pictorial representations and written language. Through this analysis, two distinct messages materialized: (1) SA is an opportunity for leisure and relaxation, and (2) SA is a commodity. Both of these messages are characteristic of a discourse of tourism, which we will demonstrate is the criterial aspect of the macro sign ‘SA’ on the Arcadia University SA website.

SA as leisure and relaxation through engagement with place

According to Urry (1990), inherent in tourist practices is the notion of departure, of ‘a limited breaking with established routines and practices of everyday life and allowing one’s senses to engage with a set of stimuli that contrast with the everyday and the mundane’ (p. 2). The ‘everyday and the mundane’ consists of regulated and organized work; thus, tourism involves finding and engaging with work’s opposite: leisure and relaxation. These latter desirable experiences are primarily achieved through various types of a tourist gaze, fixed upon specific places. Urry explains, ‘Places are chosen to be gazed upon because there is an anticipation, especially through daydreaming and fantasy, of intense pleasures, either on a different scale or involving different senses from those customarily encountered’ (p. 3). The tourist gaze is complicit in an effect that Urry refers to as the consumption of place, a symbolic consumption with capitalist undertones. The rhetor-institution on the Arcadia SA website plays upon this presumed desire for leisure and relaxation of the intended interpreter in designing a website which seeks to engage students first and foremost through photographic images. This is especially evident in this front page photo of the CGS SA home page (Figure 3).

Figure 3.

Front page photo on the CGS SA home page (Arcadia University, 2011).

In this multimodal composition, the use of the word ‘explore’ constructs the implied meaning ‘visit the beautiful scenery of Sicily’. The picture is itself an invitation to this exploration, achieved through its overall semiotic design. Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996) assert that pictorial images are designed so that the reading path proceeds from left to right, the left side pointing at the given information (information familiar to the viewer or with which he identifies), and the right side pointing at the unknown information (unfamiliar to the viewer). In this image, viewers assume that the person on the left is a student who has participated in the program advertised; she is the given information. Meanwhile, the right side of the photo features the encounter of the blue sea with urban life; this is the unknown that viewers are invited to explore. Additionally, the vertical reading path usually presents the ideal sphere on top (that which is desirable and idealized) and the real at the bottom (often a way to reach the ideal) (Kress, 2010; Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996, 2001; Van Leeuwen, 2005). This semiotic strategy is employed in this image through the positioning of the phrase ‘Explore Sicily’ in a large white font, followed by the institutional identification: ‘Mediterranean Center for Arts & Sciences’. This text is placed in the sky, representing the ideal. The real is presented at the bottom where viewers can make the ideal (‘Explore’) come true by clicking on the real: ‘Information for (undergraduates, graduates …)’.

Framing, gaze, and gesture are other relevant compositional elements in pictorial images. Framing of people through close-ups such as the student in this photo seeks to bring about an imaginary relation of admiration or identification between the represented and the viewer (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996: 121). When a represented actor looks directly at the viewer’s eyes, she or he is demanding something from the viewer. Through her gaze, the student in this photo is demanding the viewer to enter into an imaginary relation with her. Her smile contributes to this invitation by shaping the relation into one of social affinity (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996). In this way, the semiotic composition pulls viewers into its signifying effects, positioning them in the imagined social place that lies behind the contents represented in the photo (Gillian, 2001; Jenks, 1995), thereby offering them the possibility to take on a certain identity (student-tourist). By and large, the word ‘explore’ is ambiguously used to create a double semantic representation, that is, meanings associated with education and learning, backgrounded by semiotic designs that activate representations of relaxation (blue sky and sea), pleasure, and happiness (posture and facial expression of the student).

Framings of location – the program pages

Place is further foregrounded throughout the program pages through written language, image, and layout. On all three home pages for Rome, Cape Town, and Chile, the top and center module contains a picture slideshow associated with the program. Across most pages in this section, photographic images constitute a head banner that serves as an immediate point of entry for the interpreter’s gaze. A closer look at the image content reveals that each program foregrounds particular types of locations. In the case of Rome, 31% of images feature sites of learning (21% exterior spaces, 10% interior spaces) while 69% feature sites of tourism and recreation (20% cityscapes, 5% landscapes, 31% monuments, 13% sites of historical, cultural, or natural interest). Among these sites of tourism, monuments are most prominently featured (Figure 4).

Figure 4.

Locations depicted on Rome program pages by rhetor-institution.

Monuments symbolize history and tradition, and constitute a set of ‘iconic’ landmarks which an Italy-bound tourist would presume to have on a must-see list. This attention to history and tradition is similarly reflected through written language: ‘Rome, an energetic, fast-paced metropolis with a profusion of fashion, style, music, and motorcars, is a city in constant motion with a stunning background of historical architecture and artifacts’ (Arcadia University, 2011: Rome (emphasis added)). Furthermore, ‘Throughout Rome and its neighborhoods, the trappings of modern life flourish beside Etruscan tombs, Imperial temples, early Christian churches, medieval bell towers, and Renaissance palaces’ (Arcadia University, 2011: Rome). Attention is called to the juxtaposition of ancient and modern and the presumed interpreter is later promised that she or he will be able to ‘distinguish monuments by the age to which they belong’ (Arcadia University, 2011: Rome) as well as point out examples of the Middle Ages and Baroque Rome. The rhetor-designer(s) use(s) monuments as a criterial aspect of the sign ‘Rome’, reflecting popular tourist discourses about Rome.

In the case of Cape Town, images consist of 36% sites of learning and 64% sites of tourism. By contrast to Rome, the most prominent location featured is landscapes (40%), and sites of learning also include field sites (12%) (Figure 5).

Figure 5.

Locations depicted on Cape Town program pages by rhetor-Institution.

The accompanying language on the Cape Town program pages also foregrounds landscapes, focusing predominantly on the aesthetic that this place can offer the student-tourist: the beauty of its natural environment whose ‘beaches, mountains and forests on your doorstep’ (Arcadia University, 2011: Cape Town) will practically envelop you as you walk outside. The remaining two paragraphs on this page highlight Cape Town’s natural setting and beauty through an enumeration of recreational sites (emphasis added):

after class you may head to the beach to surf or play volleyball. On the weekends hike up Table Mountain or run the three peaks with a group of friends. Walk through 1000-year-old indigenous forests or go horseback riding on Nordhoek beach …

continuing with references to taking the requisite safari, visiting winelands, seeing the whale migration, and attending live performances ‘in a beautiful mountain setting’ (Arcadia University, 2011: Cape Town). Landscapes and beautiful natural settings present opportunities for the student-tourist to escape from the monotony of the routines of daily university life and instead engage in interesting recreational and sightseeing activities.

The picture for Chile differs slightly from the above programs in that sites of learning constitute 56% of locations depicted, while sites of tourism make up 44%, the latter primarily consisting of cityscapes (35%) (Figure 6).

Figure 6.

Locations depicted on Chile program pages by rhetor-institution.

While monuments and landscapes could have been selected to represent Chile, the choice to foreground cityscapes could be a decisive move to promote Chile as a developed country, countering stereotypes traditionally associated with Latin American countries. The attention to sites of learning (56%) as compared to that of Rome (31%) and Cape Town (36%) can potentially be understood as compensating for the newness of the program, and a desire to unveil academic learning spaces not yet encountered by students.

Framings of location – the student network

The themes represented by rhetor-institution in the About Us and program pages recurred across language and image in the rhetor-student blogs, leading to a portrayal of SA as leisure and relaxation through recreational activities undertaken against the backdrop of natural beauty.In the case of Rome, Megan’s photo collection depicts only sites of tourism,representing cityscapes (54%), monuments (33%), and around town (13%) (Figure 7).

Figure 7.

Rome locations depicted on student network.

Her particular focus on cityscapes and monuments (as opposed to landscapes or sites of historical, natural, or cultural interest) mirrors the types of locations depicted in the program pages, suggesting that the criterial aspects of Rome are its monuments, buildings, and urban streets. Through this collection, Megan responds to typical tourist discourses associated with Rome. Kelly’s and Adam’s Cape Town photos include both sites of learning (30%) and sites of tourism (70%), with the most prominent tourist locations being landscapes (28%) and sites of historical, cultural, or natural interest (38%) (Figure 8).

Figure 8.

Cape Town locations depicted on student network.

The choice to frame landscapes above all in the representation of places reflects tourist discourses about Cape Town in a similar way in which monuments reflect Rome discourses. Having interpreted multiple signs – from popular media, promotional websites, and so on – students as rhetors have taken certain framings of place to be the criterial aspects of Rome and Cape Town, respectively. Leslie’s Chile photos are slightly less reflective of the locations framed by rhetor-institution. In her case, all 31 images are sites of tourism, where cityscapes (43%) are most prominent, followed by landscapes (39%) (Figure 9). While rhetor-institution depicts sites of learning in its portrayal of Chile, Leslie’s interest leads her rather to frame sites of recreation and tourism: lakes, beaches, statues, and Valparaiso’s iconic ascensor.

Figure 9.

Chile locations depicted on student network (Arcadia University, 2015).

In addition to student photo collections, two students’ Cape Town blogs accord central focus to the beauty of the environment. Kelly notes, ‘I spent [winter] taking in the beauty that is South Africa’, and furthermore, ‘Cape Town is truly a breathtaking and awe-inspiring city’ (Arcadia University, 2011: Student network). She highlights Cape Town’s fun recreational activities, including concerts on the plaza, celebrating before a rugby game, mountain climbing, lounging on the beach, and dancing with the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) mascot. Allison’s blog is entirely centered around Cape Town’s natural beauty, a criterial aspect of her host city’s identity: ‘the sunshine of the southern hemisphere will be a welcome sight’, making reference to ‘blue skies’, ‘warm breezes’, and ‘crisp air’, concluding, ‘I was once again out and about, enjoying the seasonal beauty’ (Arcadia University, 2011: Student network). However, Allison warns future students about false expectations of perennial warmth: ‘you get pretty cold wearing shorts in 50 degree weather’ (Arcadia University, 2011: Student network). Although the student-tourist seeks to leave her comfort zone to engage with the unfamiliar, she still wants the creature comforts of home. Her message plays into the discourse of tourism and oft-made promises by industry representatives of a home away from home, where packages are presented so as to reassure the tourist that ‘however exotic and adventurous their destination, it comes with many of the familiar comforts of home’ (Thurlow and Jaworski, 2010: 44).

In his discussion of the anticipation of leisure, relaxation, and intense pleasures afforded by travel, Urry (1995) asserts that this anticipation is sustained by non-touristic practices (i.e. popular media), noting that ‘such practices provide the signs in terms of which the holiday experiences are understood, so that what is then seen is interpreted in terms of these pre-given categories’ (p. 132). By presenting landscapes of Cape Town and monuments of Rome, students’ photo collections and written blogs reproduce the particular tourism discourses that they have taken as the criterial aspect of the locations being promoted on the SA website.

SA as a commodity

The SA experience as packaged on the website is caught up in a relationship of exchange – between money and services, between student and institution. The success of the entire enterprise – like tourism – relies on consumers’ willingness to enter into this exchange. Across this website, rhetor-institution and interpreter-student are implicated in a capitalist dialectic of producer and consumer, materializing the rhetor-institution’s interest in attracting students to these places, to buy a particular experience, and by extension, to buy the services associated with facilitating the experience. In terms of layout, the program pages (Figure 1, Panel 2) follow a reading path from left to right in the navigational bar where rhetor-institution first attempts to draw in potential tourists through enticing descriptions of place (‘Rome’), and second, describes the services that this travel-facilitating institution offers. The next navigational link is ‘Housing’, which is presented as a set of options (consumer choice). The written text is introduced with a new banner of images at the top of the page which frame similar locations as we have previously seen: monuments (Rome), landscapes (Cape Town), and interior space and cityscapes (Chile). These image-banners give coherence to the notion of pleasure and leisure associated with traveling to these places and anchor the reading experience in this aesthetic. To the right of the housing link are navigational tabs providing information about courses and faculty, the next set of services that constitute this travel-learning package. Following these links to the end of the navigational bar finally leads to ‘Fees’. This package is no longer merely an experiential learning opportunity for students, but a commodity to be sold and purchased. By packaging the experience in this way, this SA website distances itself from typical practices in higher education, aligning itself instead with typical tourist industry practices.

Furthermore, there is a certain social capital that is derived through participation in these experiences, participation which is ratified through the semiotic act of photography. Both the About Us and program pages (174 photos) and the student network (155 photos) rely heavily on the visual mode in most of their pages’ semiotic designs. An analysis of students’ actions depicted in the About Us and program pages’ photos shows that the most frequent action is posing for a photograph (38%) followed by recreating (18%), studying (15%), and socializing (10%) (Figure 10). The About Us and program pages display students posing for pictures in the different locations they have visited (e.g. monuments, particular spots around town, or natural landscapes). In other pictures, students appear engaged in recreational activities such as playing basketball or in particular actions such as having a coffee or chatting (‘socializing’). Besides representing SA as a joyful experience associated with visiting tourist spots and having fun, rhetor-institution also presents SA as an educational endeavor by showing students immersed in academic activities, discussing assignments, or in class. Of all programs, Chile foregrounds studying the most (14/17 photos). Although the portrayal of SA as an educational activity is downplayed in the actions on those pages where rhetor is institution (‘studying’ comprises 16% on the About Us and program pages; see Figure 10), other Institutional pages seem to mitigate this orientation: pages with program descriptions, syllabi, faculty bios, and administrative procedures for enrollment attest to the educational nature of the SA experience. This is equally enhanced through the emphasis placed on visual imagery of locations (e.g. Figure 6) that frame interior spaces (classrooms, auditoriums, laboratories, etc.), and exterior spaces (sports fields and other facilities). Despite the interest in foregrounding the educational dimension of SA, the student network content (2% ‘studying’; see Figure 11) suggests that students’ construction of SA does not always align with this aspiration, but instead assigns values of tourism to the SA experience.

Figure 10.

Actions depicted on About Us and all program pages (rhetor-institution).

Figure 11.

Actions depicted in student network (all programs, rhetor-student).

In the student network (Figure 11), posing for a photo comprises 63%, while recreating and participating in a local event represent 13% and 12%, respectively. The predominance of ‘posing’ in these two spaces further aligns with the discourse of SA as a tourist activity that materializes through the act of sightseeing. Indeed, the act of sightseeing has little credibility if the experiences, as well as the sites photographed, are not commodified by making them objects of consumption. MacCannell (1999) states, ‘the individual act of sightseeing is probably less important than the ceremonial ratification of authentic attractions as objects of ultimate value …’ (p. 14). Elsewhere Percy (2000) notes, ‘[t]he term of the sightseer’s satisfaction is not the sovereign discovery of the thing before him; it is rather the measuring up of the thing to the criterion of the preformed symbolic complex’ (p. 47). In our data, this ceremonial ratification is evidenced by students frequently ‘posing for a photograph’. The acts of gazing at a landscape (Figure 3) or monument and documenting this experience through a photograph affords a material and visual representation of what would otherwise be a non-material experience, or a ‘semiotically embedded service’ (Thurlow and Jaworski, 2010). The authors go on to say that ‘[l]ike advertising and marketing, a key part of what is actually produced and consumed in tourism is the semiotic context of the service’ (pp. 7–8). What these SA students have consumed is commodified through a production of virtual postcards that can be disseminated almost limitlessly. Furthermore, these photographs have become markers, or signposts (MacCannell, 1999), signaling to others that the site is worthy of the tourist gaze.

SA has become further commodified by everyday rituals and practices being turned into a new form of object used as a device to fuel consumption. Sojourners do not merely want to consume through gaze iconic representations of place, they desire to take part in the experiences so they can ‘share in the real life of the places visited …’ (MacCannell, 1999: 96). Such a desire leads to a quest for experiences which surpass the superficial (gazing at landscapes, cityscapes, and monuments) and open the door to what MacCannell (drawing on Goffman, 1963) calls ‘back spaces’. The resulting effect is that tourists’ desire becomes demand, and authentic back spaces are in turn supplied in the form of ‘staged events’ (MacCannell, 1999: 98). In Adam’s Cape Town photo montage the experiences represented extend beyond the mere tourist gaze into the ‘back spaces’ where students can experience the ‘authentic’. This is particularly revealing through consideration of the photos depicting ‘participating in a local event’ (i.e. students engaging in festivals or social service with members of the local community. In Adam’s case, we see several photos of an African drum performance at the UCT orientation. Urry (1990) describes these as ‘pseudo-events’ stating,

Isolated from the host environment and the local people, the mass tourist travels in guided groups and finds pleasure in authentic contrived attractions, gullibly enjoying the ‘pseudo-events’ and disregarding the ‘real’ world outside. As a result tourist entrepreneurs and the indigenous populations are induced to produce ever-more extravagant displays for the gullible observer who is thereby further removed from the local people. (p. 7)

The host university has become complicit in the tourist experience by developing a ‘staged back region’ (MacCannell, 1999: 99) for the student-tourists in Cape Town in order to facilitate the sought-after authentic experiences. Not only is the SA program package a commodity, now culture is commodified by being offered as an experience to be ‘consumed’, and by photographic images used as tools to further commodify culture.

Conclusion and implications

Based on our premise that facilitating deep learning in SA requires a critical look at the meanings ascribed to SA, and their locus of construction, we investigated one of the principal sources where meanings about SA are constructed – the institutional website taking Arcadia University’s SA website as one case. We saw that SA was represented as a tourist activity across the three distinct spaces studied: the CGS About Us page, the program pages, and the student network. Where the rhetor is the institution, a discourse of tourism is realized through a combination of different modes of communication, most prominently the visual mode (through photographs and spatial layout) and the linguistic mode, through written language. Together their messages persuade students to enroll in the SA program through the creation of desire, pleasure, and recreation. Students, having been sold touristic experiences, seek to have these ratified through their SA experience by displaying their adventures to others. The students’ posts in the student network ratify and replicate the discourses of tourism and the commodification of education that underlie the semiotic design of the CGS website. A discourse of tourism creates certain expectations about the SA program, potentially distracting from institutional learning outcomes purported to help students develop intercultural and linguistic competences. By foregrounding the touristic experience, and thus downplaying SA as an educational experience, SA programs subtly reinforce the fact that discourses of education are finely ingrained with discourses of capitalism, consumerism, and the market (Fairclough, 2006). These discursive interrelations have a direct impact on how international education is conceived by industry representatives and students alike.

In looking toward future research on SA discourses, it is essential to critically examine the meanings that administrators, students, advisors, professors, and other members of the academic community attach to the SA experience, and the media across which these meanings are circulated – in talk or written text, informal or formal contexts. A look at how these meanings originate, mobilize, and materialize can provide insight into the disconnect between curricular goals and student expectations, and serve as a catalyst for reflection about how SA is represented in promotional materials. Further research should expand on how the representations enacted in these materials are adopted as discursive practices by SA students. Additionally, a broader selection of institutions and promotional materials, including institutionally managed social networking sites and photo contests, independently maintained student blogs, and other (non-web) print-based media, will enhance the initial findings of this study. Finally, this study highlights the need for interdisciplinary approaches, as the multimodal nature of semiotic production of the current communicational landscape requires the conjunction of concepts and methods from various knowledge areas to account for the ways contemporary societies make meaning. Using the novel lens of MSS and grounding our findings in tourism literature from the field of sociology and semiotics, we have been able to demonstrate how multimodal communication within genres such as the institutional website works to circulate discourses about the institutional practice of SA.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author biographies

Kristen Michelson is an Assistant Professor and coordinator of the French program at the University of Oklahoma. Her research centers around multiliteracies approaches to culture and language teaching, experiential learning, digital social reading, teacher professional development, and discourses in educational contexts. She has 14 years of experience in Study Abroad program advising and administration.

José Aldemar Álvarez Valencia is an Assistant Professor of English in the Department of Foreign Languages and Cultures at Universidad del Valle, Colombia. He has published in the areas of discourse analysis, language teaching approaches, teacher education, intercultural communication and multimodality. His current research focuses on social networking sites for language learning from a multimodal social semiotic perspective.

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