Um sofá por vez: aproximações entre a voz institucional da rede couchsurfing e concepções teóricas de hospitalidade

Abstract

The present paper has as object of study a worldwide network of travelers, entitled Couchsurfing, to which it is proposed to reinterpret its institutional voice with theoretical propositions of hospitality / welcoming. This project appeared in 2003 as an initiative of Professor Casey Fenton and currently has 12 million members, spread over 200 thousand cities (COUCHSURFING, 2017). Therefore, this research is characterized as predominantly qualitative, with a hermeneutic approach. The researched field is defined as an “institutional voice” that includes the network's mission, its values and its ambassador users in Brazil. As data collection method, it is chosen to apply an interview, via questionnaire sent by Google Forms, to the group of 10 ambassador members, from which eight of them answered. The proposed interpretative understanding is aligned to Bakhtinian enunciative perspectives where the enunciative / discursive context has value (the position of the speakers in the speech, the ways of saying). According to the voice of the interviewed subjects, Couchsurfing “is a network of relationships”, or “a pleasant tool providing the traveler to know the colors and flavors of different cultures”. In the terms used to define Couchsurfing, it can be observed the existence of terms that focus on an idea of relationship sharing (network, opening, exchange and discovery), as well those that have a more utilitarian character (tool, form of hosting, instrument). The ambassadors' speech makes it possible to identify ruptures and disagreements between the propositions of the concepts presented on the CS website, when they present their motivations that tend more towards personal goals and not to the global motivations that are defended in the online speech. Another point refers to the motivation of the other users, since the ambassadors indicate a growing demand of people wanting to save money, who see the network only as a way to obtain free hosting. In this sense, come together evidences of the emergence of a possible new demand and of conflicts between the institutionalized discourse of the network and the discourse of its ambassador users.