Malta Tour Guides as Critical Ambassadors Ruth Azzopardi

Institutional Background As a teacher of French as a foreign language in a vocational institute (the Institute of Tourism Studies, Malta), my primary concern is to transmit linguistic skills to students with rather specific needs, such as using the language in settings associated with food and beverage services, hospitality and tourism management or tour guiding. I generally vary my schemes of work according to the requirements of the classes I deal with. The task of making education relevant in a language class includes: carrying out a needs analysis about the specific places of work that students are training to work in, and helping to improve listening and speaking skills that could catch the attention of potential employers or broaden career options locally as well as overseas.

...but does a language teacher only teach a language? At ITS, first year tour guiding students are taught language functions like speaking skills, vocabulary, grammar, and Maltese culture. Students are first introduced to Maltese culture rather than that associated with the language they are studying because it is felt that it is better for students to get to know their own culture before understanding that of others. During the second year of the course, students study all the historical and cultural sites they would normally visit with tourists around Malta and practise language skills. In the third year, fieldwork is conducted on site to make students experience directly the use of a foreign language in its daily use. In the last semester of this third year, students also follow a course as part of their language study in foreign cultures, for instance, French culture in the case of students studying French.

...and what do people think about tour guides? Tour guiding has been described as “one of the oldest human activities” (Rabotić 2010), existing two and a half millennia ago, but this activity clearly became more organised with the rise of mass tourism in modern times. Indeed, the tour guide today is one of the central players in the tourism industry, which itself plays a key role in the economies of many countries around the world. In some developing countries, particularly in Southeast Asia, guiding and tourism employment enjoy a relatively high social status and a good salary, to the extent that they are “seen as a desirable alternative to traditional occupations” (Wall 1998: 76). In contrast, tour guides in the West are often perceived as having a rather trivial job.

The tour guide’s job involves many skills! In fact, the tour guide’s job can be very challenging and requires a variety of skills ranging from leadership and social skills to a thorough knowledge of the history, geography and language of a place. This relationship between the guide and all others involved in the industry carries various duties and responsibilities. In an early analysis of the roles of the guide, Cohen (1985) referred to this occupation as a socially mediating job, linking the tourists under the guide’s responsibility to the local population.

Tour guides are not ‘innocent’: they influence tourists’ perceptions! Guides can influence tourists’ attitudes towards the visited country and its people, which shows that the guide’s position also has political and representational implications. Guides help to construct representations of places in visitors’ minds. Tour guiding is about representing a place and speaking about it in a given language; like a story-teller, the guide condenses the essentials of a place into a week-long trip or even a few days. But what are the “essentials” of a place’s history and culture? Who decides?

Are tour guides ambassadors? Do tour guides present visitors only with tourist- brochure versions of culture? “In some parts of the world, guides are chosen by government officials to project a specific image or political philosophy and, in the extreme, to recite a prescribed message...Such guides are even trained to respond in specific ways to controversial or probing questions... In light of the personal connection they create between places and visitors, tour guides are frequently called ambassadors. If guides are ambassadors, who do they represent? Are guides expected or obliged to present their region in a favorable way? Should guides avoid showing visitors impoverished sections of their cities? Should they avoid mentioning scandals or problems of the region?” (Lingle Pond 1993: 81)

Tour guiding combines languages with cultures A language cannot exist in a geographical or cultural vacuum. Languages bring people into direct contact with cultures inhabited and experienced by themselves and/or others. Speaking a foreign language means learning how to shift one’s own cultural position and ideas in line with another culture. Tour guides need to be interculturally competent. Intercultural competence gives people the intercultural skills to become aware of stereotypes and inbred perspectives and move beyond skin-deep understandings of “difference” based on dress codes or the exotic.

Comparing cultures critically You can reflect about different cultural features that come together to mould your identity and compare them to a target culture: language, religion, politics, gastronomy, and values. This will help you understand how we are culturally determined to some extent, and can be applied to very specific everyday situations like housing, dating customs, and so on, This comparative methodology is sometimes referred to as the principle of “contrastivity” in cultural studies, in which “phenomena of intercultural relevance are pointed out and described from the point of view of both the foreigner and the native” (Ertelt-Vieth in Buttjes and Byram 1991: 175).

Comparing past and present Another relevant exercise is to compare past and present. How has the city changed? Has it changed for the better? If so, how? Have pollution and urban congestion increased? How have the commercial aspects of city life changed? How have changes in the economy affected people’s lives?

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