UNIVERSITÁ DEGLI STUDI DI PADOVA

Transcription

1 UNIVERSITÁ DEGLI STUDI DI PADOVA Dipartimento di Lingue e Letterature Anglo Germaniche e Slave Laurea in Discipline della Mediazione Linguistica e Culturale A corpus-based analysis of on-line texts promoting tourist accommodation in the UK and in the USA Relatore: Prof. Erik Castello Anno accademico2010/2011 Laureanda: Sara Salmaso

2 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 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 premodification of the noun phrases.

3 At the end of the paper, the Web References are given as well as the Web-pages in which the texts have been extracted.

4 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

5 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 ( 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.

6 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

7 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 Lexical properties In this section some of the main lexical features of the language of tourism will be introduced.