A Comparative Ethnopoetic Analysis of Sea-odysseys in Migrants' ELF Accounts and Ancient Epic Tales Translated into ELF: An Experiential-linguistic and Multimodal Approach to Responsible Tourism

This paper reports on an experiential-linguistic and multimodal model applied to a comparative ethnopoetic analysis of non-western migrants’ traumatic accounts of tragic voyages across the sea, reported in their variations of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), and epic narratives of Mediterranean dramatic odysseys towards ‘Utopian places’ translated from Ancient Greek and Latin into modern ELF variations, in the context of an Experiential Place-Marketing plan in Responsible Tourism. The objective is to ‘emotionally promote’ (premote) the seaside resorts of Salento, affected by migrant arrivals, by involving tourists and migrants in joint cultural activities so as to investigate ‘experientially’ how such ancient and modern oral tales are actually structured into natural ‘ethnopoetic verse structures’ reproducing the rhythms and emotions associated to dramatic odysseys across the sea and to the traumatic experience of violent natural elements. The ethnopoetic analysis, translation, and the multimodal rendering of such sea-voyage dramatic tales into a ‘premotional video’ for place-marketing purposes, intends to make both tourists and migrants aware of their common experiential roots, as well as of the shared socio-cultural values and narrative heritage of their respective different communities.