Vietnam in Ten English-Language Travel Blogs by Western-Origin Writers:
A Critical Discourse Analysis of Affordability and Cultural Spectacle
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.60087/ijls.vol3.n3.006Keywords:
Vietnam, travel blogs, Critical Discourse Analysis, tourism discourse, representation, digital travel writingAbstract
Vietnam has become a familiar subject in English-language travel writing, often presented through images of affordability, natural beauty, and cultural difference. This study examines how Vietnam is represented in travel blogs using Critical Discourse Analysis, with particular attention to two recurring narratives: affordability and cultural spectacle. Drawing on a corpus of ten popular travel blogs, the study identifies repeated lexical choices, phrases, and discursive strategies that shape these portrayals. The findings show that Vietnam is commonly constructed as an affordable destination through language that emphasizes low prices, good value, and budget-friendly travel. At the same time, it is represented as a place of vibrant, exotic, and visually striking cultural experiences, often described through sensory and aesthetic details. These representations reveal underlying ideological assumptions and reinforce unequal power relations by positioning Vietnam as a space to be consumed by international tourists. Accordingly, the study seeks to better understand how travel discourse produces a simplified and selective imagined identity of Vietnam. In doing so, it contributes to both discourse studies and tourism research.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Nguyen Thi Nguyen (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright: © The Author(s), 2026. Published by IJLS. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
© 2024–2026 The International Journal of Language Studies (ISSN 3078-2244), Open Knowledge. Articles are published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.