"Go Where Ireland Takes You": a multimodal analysis of a tourist video

The present dissertation aims to analyze a tourist video promoting the city of Galway, by the means of multimodal analysis. I decided to deal with this topic for two main reasons: first I really appreciated the English course of second year, about tourism promotion and its texts, hence I am very interested in this subject. Then, I fell in love with Ireland and Irish people, when I went to Dublin, in 2009. When I had to decide the subject of my degree thesis, I put these elements together and I started visiting Tourism Ireland’s website, in order to get the most fascinating promotional text. Finally, I chose a multimodal one, as I found this field of enquiry very interesting and inspiring.
In the first chapter I will give a theoretical framework in order to clarify what major scholars think about multimodality. My starting point is Hallidayan Systemic Functional Linguistics, which refers to a semiotic approach to language. Accordingly, meaning can be expressed by diverse and simultaneous semiotic resources, or modes, aimed to create a multimodal text. Then, my study illustrates three different approaches on multimodality and it ends discussing about modes (visual, audio, verbal) and metafunctions, since all modes realize three functional components: ideational, interpersonal and textual.
In the second chapter my attention focuses on tourism promotion, its language and its texts. In fact, the language of tourism is considered a specialized language, which involves many genres that has to be organized, according to Calvi (2010). Likewise, the sociologist Dann (1996), who first developed a socio-linguistic perspective on tourism, has a key role in suggesting a classification of tourism texts. Furthermore, these texts aim to persuade and manipulate the reader, enacting a gaze through different modes and channels of communication, which verbally and visually re-present the tourist destination. That is the notion that Urry (2002) calls tourist gaze, which represents the end of the second chapter.
Chapter three is devoted to the advertising campaign my case study is connected to: “Go Where Ireland Takes You”. It has been launched in 2009 by Tourism Ireland, the Irish tourist board which promotes the island overseas and its aim is to advertise the Country as a unique experience, thanks to its character (stunning landscapes) and characters (friendly people). Indeed, this campaign is part of a tourism promotional plan and its purpose is to persuade its audience to go on holiday in Ireland, adopting carefully planned images, colours and words.
Finally, the fourth chapter illustrates the analysis of my case study, made up by a multimodal transcription. First, I pointed out the theoretical framework I adopted. Then, I explained the parameters involved in my tourist video: the visual mode, the mode of sound and the verbal language, adopting Kress & Van Leeuwen theories. The model of my transcription belongs to Baldry’s approach to multimodal analysis (2004), while the terminology I used comes from Kress (2006, 2009, 2010), Van Leeuwen (1999, 2005, 2009) and Iedema’s (2001) works. This chapter ends by an appendix, that is a table, which analyses the above mentioned features.
My study intends to clarify three main points: (i) what multimodality means and how it can be analyzed, (ii) the main characteristics of tourism promotion, (iii) the tourist video as a multimodal tourism promotional text.