Projecting a definition of risk situation: travel advice and the prudential traveller

The projected situation as it relates to risk has not been widely addressed, yet it remains in our view a key problematic in the communication of risk. In this chapter we focus on how risk situation is projected in the field of international travel. The right to travel is increasingly hampered by a heightened concern over risk. In the global risk environment the ‘prudential traveller’ is the ‘informed traveller’ and a core aspect of this information process is the issuing of a particular type of risk communication account to travellers, known as travel advisories. Travel advisories are key risk communication technologies, through which a risk communicator renders visible the risk situation evident in particular countries to ‘the traveller’. Travel advisories essentially enable governments to assert some form of control or influence over the destinations their citizens may travel to and as such are motivated in their design to influence the traveller’s decision-making processes. The issue we consider in this chapter is how travel advisories linguistically direct the traveller to evaluate the risks involved in travelling to a particular country. Our discussion proceeds from an analysis of a small corpus of Travel Advice texts taken from the ‘Smart Travellers Website’ (Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade).