INTRODUCTION
The aim of this dissertation is to carry out a contrastive analysis of a corpus of tourist
promotional texts in English taken from the Web, nowadays‟ major source of information.
The tourist texts which I have collected are promotional and concern different types of
accommodation (i.e. hotels, hostels, cottages, B&B and castles) in two English-speaking
countries: the United Kingdom and the United States of America. My investigation aims to
highlight some similarities and differences in the use of evaluative adjectives between the
texts that introduce the typologies of accommodation which belong to the two different
cultures. In doing so, some of the most distinctive proprieties of the language of tourism will
be researched and analyzed.
The reason why I decided to focus on the tourism industry is my genuine interest in
the world of tourism and travels. In fact, one of my goals is to find a job in this interesting and
dynamic sector. Another reason is that I have often looked for information about my holiday
destinations and reserved my accommodation online. It is necessary to say that I have always
been fascinated by the language of tourism and I think that the language used on the Web has
a very important role in order to sell a product. Therefore, the focus of my dissertation is on
lexis and, in particular, on the use of evaluative adjectives in online tourist texts.
The corpus analysis has been realized with the assistance of corpus processing
software, AntConc 3.2.1 w.
The first Chapter of this paper deals with the topic of tourism and, in particular, with
the importance of the Web source in today‟s tourism industry. In addition, some of the most
important properties of the specialized discourse of tourism have been introduced.
In the second Chapter evaluation is defined and the reason it is made clear why it is
strictly connected with my work. The works of authoritative scholars are reviewed and
reference is made, in particular, to studies on adjectivisation on the web.
The third Chapter is devoted to the corpus analysis. A brief introduction of AntConc
software is given and the methods of corpus linguistics are described. Subsequently, a study
of the frequency of adjectives for each type of accommodation is provided and evaluative
adjectives are analyzed. Through the analysis of the frequency lists of adjective for each
accommodation types, cultural and linguistic differences are pointed out.
Other aspects on which the investigation is focused are evaluative clichés and pre-
modification of the noun phrases.
At the end of the paper, the Web References are given as well as the Web-pages in which the
texts have been extracted.
CHAPTER 1 THE LANGUAGE OF TOURISM
In this Chapter a general overview will be given of the concepts of tourism: definition of
tourism, tourism and the Web source, main features of this particular specialized discourse.
1.1 What is tourism?
The practice of tourism has a very long history, people have always been travelling around the
world for centuries and for the most different reasons: to explore or conquest new lands, for
trading or for curiosity, to relax, to enjoy, etc. In the Ancient Rome the traditional countryside
vacation was initiated, and also the thermal passion was borrowed from the Greeks. During
the obscure Middle Ages the most widespread phenomenon of tourism was the pilgrimage.
It is clear that the idea of travel was connected especially with adventure, richness,
risk, faith and leisure. In the seventieth century culture become an important factor: the
tradition of the Grand Tour become very popular among wealthy, young boys who were
searching for an appropriate education. The most famous destinations were: Italy, France,
Germany and Switzerland. Although a large number of people had travelled during these
centuries, this practice has been considered very expensive until the Industrial Revolution
began. Only in the Twentieth century things changed, when middle and working classes‟
economical possibilities went hand in hand with the increased industrial and transport
development.
This is the beginning of “mass tourism” , an era in which the tourist is automatically
guided to a set of given mass-destination. Francesconi (2007: 15) describes the individual
mass tourist as “one who follows „mass‟ routes, visit „mass‟ sites and uses a tourist agency to
have the holiday planned.” Although nowadays the phenomenon of mass tourism can be said
to be out-of-date, it is in fact not extinct. On the one hand, the tourism industry has the
relevant power to organize and promote most of the package tours around the world through
different means. On the other hand, it is necessary to point out that the contemporary tourist is
usually searching for a different, independent way of travelling. For instance, he/she wants to
organize his/her own itineraries, want to see his/her favourite museums and choose his/her
preferred accommodation.
Over the years, new and different kinds of tourism have appeared, all of which are
described with a special, descriptive adjective in attributive position. For example: heritage
tourism, cultural tourism, religious tourism, slum tourism, etc. In addition, the definition of
some type of tourism come from the phenomenon of blending, such as geotourism or
agritourism.
1.2 Tourism and the Web-source
The appearance of new terms and the development of modern varieties of tourism are surely
connected with the spread of the Internet.
The World Tourism Organization‟s features and all the scholars expert in tourism are
in agreement on the fact that tourism is the largest industry of the world, especially in the
Western society. As the opportunities to travel and communicate worldwide are constantly
increasing, it has become an ever-growing trade. It is estimated that millions of people are
travelling everyday around the world, and do so for very different reasons, such as study,
sport, leisure, business, etc. It seems not to just a matter of chance that the World Tourism
Organization and the World Trade Organization have the same acronym. Interestingly, in the
WTO website (http://www.unwto.org/facts/menu.html), I have found some captivating
features showing that International tourist arrivals grew by nearly 7% in 2010 and that
tourism receipts exceed US $ 900 billion. Also, according to the forecast prepared by
UNWTO, there are no significant changes in the global 2011 expectations. In short, the
industry of tourism is very unlikely to fail.
The spread of the Web permits new strategies of sale for a wide range of commercial
products. For instance, a person could easily buy commodities ( such as a T-shirt, a computer
or a book) produced in Australia from Italy, or vice versa. The only thing needed is an
appropriate credit-card. The Web allows for a different, new and rapid possibility to buy all
one needs. Nowadays, most of the companies involved in the tourist field own a web-site,
from those who sell flight tickets to those that write guidebooks and so on. Similarly, the
Internet is a fast way to obtain information about a place or a possible destination for one‟s
next journey. Undoubtedly, the Internet changes our life and also the way of travelling. In the
past, in order to organize their holiday, our parents had to go to a travel agency or to make a
lot of phone calls, maybe relying on a family friend‟s advice. What is more, travels abroad
were really too expensive. In contrast, today we can relax on the sofa and surf the Net to find
not only information about our interests but also about possible destinations and
accommodation which can suite our needs. What is more, a large number of web pages can be
visited, and usually free of charge. To conclude, the Internet has been changing the industry
of tourism in all its strategies in a very rapid and fascinating way.
1.3 The language of tourism as specialized discourse
The tourism industry is very successful and well-organized. In spite of that, the language used
to communicate in the tourism field is, as Cappelli (2006: 9) reminds us, still to be researched.
In particular, this field has recently been investigated from a linguistic perspective. Although
this complex and wide area is characterized by different ranges of disciplines (e.g. art,
history, economics, sociology) and different communicative functions (e.g. persuasive,
informative, vocative), the main purpose of this „specialized discourse‟ is the promotional
one. In my view, the linguistic perspective of tourism should be studied and researched in
order to create new experts who are able to sell tourist products, and this is the reason why I
will focus on a linguistic analysis. In this respect Gotti (2006 :19) says that:
“the language of tourism is a specialized discourse because it possesses all the lexical, phonetic,
morphosyntactic and textual resources of general language. Such resources are commonly employed ( and
sometimes hyper-employed) in the construction of specialized text, including those typical of the language of
tourism.”
To summarize, the language of tourism organizes its discourse by making specific
lexical, syntactic and textual choices. It must also be noted that there are different kinds of
text types in tourism (such as brochures, leaflets, travel guides, tourism promotional texts,
etc.) which Nigro (2006: 64) has defined as “hybrid genres”. As lexis is the most visible and
capturing feature of specialized discourse, I decided to focus my attention on it.
The language of tourism is “a very special type of communication” (Dann 1996: 1)
and tourism has a discourse of its own. Dann (1996: 2) said that:
“the language of tourism attempts to persuade, lure, woo and seduce millions of human beings and, in so
doing, convert them from potential into actual clients. […] The language of tourism gently talks to them
about the possible places they can visit by introducing various pull factors or attractions of competing
destination. Each tourist has his own way of constructing images from the information that is supplied to him
by the tourism industry and other independent sources. He builds up his own system of expectation.”
Thus, when we talk about tourism discourse we are referring to a whole set of codified
rules, norms and values used in order to exchange information about the matter. Gotti (2006:
20) also draws a clear distinction between three different situations in which tourism
specialized discourse can occur. The first is when a specialist addresses another specialist; the
second is when a specialist talks to a non-specialist about some notions pertaining to their
domain. The third, which is the one that most interests my research, is the situation in which a
specialist (in my case the writer of tourism advertising web pages) provides information of a
professional nature mainly through general language. To sum up, the degree of specialization
varies according to their readership (Francesconi 2007: 26) .
This paper concern with the language of tourism as used in tourism accommodation‟s
websites, the privileged and most convenient pre-trip source of information. According to my
focus on adjectival use and evaluation, the most frequent properties of the language of
tourism in tourism advertising web-pages should be selected. It is important to remember that
the “promotional English” used in these type of texts is very highly pursued and researched in
order to obtain the encoders‟ aims and the best results, especially for the search engines‟
rankings. These texts should be very persuasive in order to describe exactly what the reader
might be interested in buying. Generally, special attention is given to the idea of an authentic,
genuine and exclusive experience. According to Maci (2007: 43), “the tourism industry has
always exploited texts characterized by a network of interrelations in which verbal and iconic
elements are interwoven so as to meet the requirements of today‟s tourist.”
Another relevant point is that the subject of my study, the online tourist text, is
distinguished by a high number of information, all connected by links. On the one hand, the
„net-surfer‟ has the illusion to „guide‟ his/her research path by reading different pages. On the
other hand, the encoder of the tourism text, who represents the tourism industry, has total
control of the communication by using appropriate and persuasive language. One of the most
persuasive features of such texts which most captures my attention is the high usage of
evaluative adjectives on tourism promotional texts on web-sites.
1.4 Main features of the language of tourism
After a preliminary study on the field, I have selected the most frequent properties of the
language of tourism that occur in my corpus.
1.4.1 Lexical properties
In this section some of the main lexical features of the language of tourism will be introduced.
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