ABSTRACT
Travel journalism has a significant role in defining foreign cultures to audiences at home. In particular, television coverage of external perspectives can show audiences a mirror to a “generalized elsewhere” (Meyrowitz, 1989), from which they can better reflect upon their own locality. Through an application of conversation analysis—a form of textual analysis—this chapter identifies a series of nuances of the travel beat’s intercultural meaning-making evident in Parts Unknown, the CNN travel show presented by the late Anthony Bourdain. It reveals that the presenter takes a very different approach to cultural mediation than traditional descriptions of travel hosts: first, Bourdain investigates cultural topics in spaces popular among locals through interviews with experts and people with local ethos as drawn out by the host’s unique persona and expertise; second, he represents the ‘ordinary’ of a featured location through an exploration of the interplay between social structures and the cultural practices of common citizens, merging entertainment and journalism through a balance of his own perspectives with an objectivity in the reporting of local voices; third, Bourdain constructs representations of ‘otherness’ through conversations about everyday life with locals, contextualised by documentary-style historical narratives and accompanied by the host’s self-reflective commentary.
