Eleventh International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

Museums strive to be a platform open to multilingual audiences, both to accommodate international tourism and to situate themselves in a linguistically diverse society. In this scenario, the web may be an ideal medium to promote collections and activities more broadly and reach new, diverse audiences. European university museums mainly use English on their institutional websites to engage with an international audience and the content provided in English is expected to cater to a culturally-unspecified readership. A question arises on the extent to which those materials “translate” for and are felt as readable and “inclusive” by a broad range of users, including people who may not consider English their first language. Although a large body of literature has investigated communication on the web focusing on how to improve readability, little research has considered how to make online texts in English readable, accessible, and appealing to a multicultural audience. This study seeks to investigate how university museums in Europe use the English language on their websites to cater to audiences with different language skills. First, semi-structured interviews with some members of the staff of a selection of museums reveal processes and strategies behind the production of website texts in English. Second, a sample of texts are analysed by drawing on readability and web writing theories. Results provide insights on the extent to which monolingual online texts are written to be appropriate and appealing to a diversified multilingual audience.