This paper examines the discursive practices of sea turtle ecotourism that transform a beach in Hawai‘i into a popular sea turtle tourism destination. I analyze the circulation of an ecotourism discourse of spectacular nature that cycles through several distinct circuits of discursive remediation to produce Laniākea Beach as a sea turtle tourism destination. This ecotourism discourse entangles sea turtles and people into a discursive-material infrastructure of spectacular nature which the sea turtle tourism industry in Hawai‘i enlists to commodify human encounters with this charismatic species. Bringing complementary approaches in ecotourism studies and mediated discourse analysis that take human-nonhuman embodied (inter)actions as a starting point for discourse analysis, I trace how this ecotourism discourse itinerates across three distinct circuits of sea turtle tourism: (1) commercial tourism representations (on websites, guidebooks and street advertising), (2) in tourists’ embodied encounters with sea turtles (touching, pointing at, swimming with and talking about actual sea turtles), and (3) through online remediation of these embodied encounters (on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook). The study suggests implications for how embodied and material approaches to discourse analysis in applied linguistics can bring empirical focus to the (un)ethical dimensions of wildlife ecotourism practices.

This article argues that human–animal relationships are a key conceptual terrain for applied linguists to intervene in emerging interdisciplinary debates on how to address problematic human–environment relations in a time of growing ecological degradation. The scientific diagnosis of the Anthropocene has further generated critical discussion in the social sciences on the need to understand the diversity of local cultural responses to global environmental crises, ranging from climate change to species extinction. This article proposes that a ‘green applied linguistics’ can offer empirical insights into the role of language and discourse in mediating diverse human relationships with animals and nature. Taking human interactions with protected wildlife as one aspect of these wider socio-environmental debates, this article builds on recent embodied, materialist and posthumanist research in applied linguistics to suggest that nexus analysis offers a holistic methodology to examine the problematic ways people become caught up with threatened species through their semiotic practices. I illustrate these ideas through examples from my ethnographic research on the convergence of sea turtle conservation and ecotourism practices at Laniākea Beach, Hawai‘i.

No abstract

The transgressive use of language by out-group speakers, or crossing is used in a variety of ways to achieve both affiliative and disaffiliative ends among youths. However, crossing can also be used as an affiliative resource in asymmetrical power relations between teachers and students. Reporting on the findings of a 1.5 year ethnography of an English/language arts classroom at a multilingual and multiethnic public middle school in Hawai'i, this paper explores one teacher's use of stylization practices which take the form of crossing. The teacher stylizes students' voices through ventriloquizing, which is an affiliative resource when strategically embedded in ritual oppositional frames of interaction. However, when embedded in other interactional frames, this transgressive use of language results in acts of insult or mocking. I analyze audio recordings of naturally occurring interaction to explore how Hawai'i Creole (or Pidgin) is used transgressively in reported speech by the teacher, an "out-group" individual, for negotiating interactions in his English language arts classroom. Instances of transgressive language emerge as artfully performed strategies that provide a rich site for the construction of affiliative identities. The use of crossing allows the teacher to take liminal stances between offense and respect to strategically manage student participation in this diverse classroom. These findings point to the important role that crossing plays in acts of identity through reported speech where the performance of crossing within positively valued, jocular oppositional classroom rituals demonstrates the capacity for crossing as a contributing factor to the emergence of a shared sense of community in the classroom.

No abstract