The theme of this essay arises from problematic pictures which travel journalism can bring about foreign countries, and in this specific case Mexico. These pictures can be problematic in the way that they can carry colonial elements and form colonial discourses. The main purpose of this study is therefore to investigate the Swedish travel magazines, Vagabond, RES and Allt om resor, and how they portray places and people in the written texts and photographs. This was done with a postcolonial and discourse theoretical framework, whereas empowerment of certain pictures can lead to formation of discourses, myths and stereotypes about places and people in Mexico. The method used to reveal different aspects of the travel reports was semiotic analysis, Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis and critical linguistics. These together allowed a closer reading of the texts and the photographs, with regards to the context of the text and the magazine’s development. The analysis was conducted with help of linguistic tools such as transitivity and lexical structure, and a thematic structure consisting of themes such as metropolis Mexico city, Mexico’s hinterland and Mexico’s coast. The result showed on many differences and similarities in the nine travel reports which have been studied, depending on the theme, magazine and publication year. The articles published in the 1980’s and 1990’s focused more on people as Indians and Mexicans which mostly were described by their attributes rather than their actions, and therefore objectified and stereotyped as Indians and cowboys, poor and childish. In articles from the 20th century there has been a shift in focus from people to places, these places were often beaches and the sea, constructing the myth of the relaxing paradise. Sometimes these pictures were combined with the Mayan culture to show a variation of destinations, and to meet new tourism trends such as ethnic and culture tourism.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-98940 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Sophia, Åström |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Institutionen för kultur- och medievetenskaper |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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