29.1971, Review: Sociolinguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics; Translation: Manca (2016)
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LINGUIST List: Vol-29-1971. Tue May 08 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.
Subject: 29.1971, Review: Sociolinguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics; Translation: Manca (2016)
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Date: Tue, 08 May 2018 14:34:59
From: Richard Hallett [R-Hallett at neiu.edu]
Subject: Persuasion in Tourism Discourse
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/28/28-245.html
AUTHOR: Elena Manca
TITLE: Persuasion in Tourism Discourse
SUBTITLE: Methodologies and Models
PUBLISHER: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
YEAR: 2016
REVIEWER: Richard W Hallett, Northeastern Illinois University
REVIEWS EDITOR: Helen Aristar-Dry
SUMMARY
In the ‘Introduction’ (1-4) to “Persuasion in tourism discourse”, Elena Manca
claims that tourism represents the cultural identity of a country. Her aim ‘of
the different analyses described in this volume is to understand what the many
modes of communication used in tourism discourse tell us about Italy, Great
Britain and Australia from a linguistic and socio-cultural perspective’ (2).
In Chapter 1, ‘Systemic functional linguistics, visual grammar and tourist
promotion’ (5-63), she employs Halliday’s (1978, 1985) Systemic Functional
Grammar to analyze how ‘language, images and sounds are strategically combined
together to inform, attract and persuade the potential tourist at the pre-trip
stage’ (7) in tourist discourse. Accordingly, she explains and exemplifies the
material, mental, behavioral, verbal, existential, relational, attributive,
and identifying processes of the ideational metafunction. Likewise, she
discusses the interpersonal metafunction where ‘language is not seen as a way
of reflecting reality but as a way of acting’ (12), as well as the themes,
rhemes, and information structures (both given and new) of the textual
metafunction. She then discusses three components of Kress and van Leeuwen’s
(2006) visual grammar: representational meaning, interactive meaning, and
compositional meaning. Near the end of this chapter she presents the three
tourist websites that provide the corpora for her present study:
www.italia.it, www.visitgreatbritain.co.uk, and www.australia.com. She finds
that the Italian homepage offers predominantly declaratives, while the
Australian homepage is the ‘essence of interactivity and of visual meanings’
(61), and the British homepage is a ‘balanced alternation of demand and offer’
(61).
In Chapter 2, ‘The AIDA Model, corpus linguistics and tourist promotion’
(64-103), M employs the Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action (AIDA) Model
(Lewis 1899, Strong 1925) to analyze the (cultural) promotional language used
to promote Italy, Great Britain, and Australia as tourist destinations. Using
corpus linguistics, M presents the most frequent nouns, verbs, and adjectives,
along with their semantic fields, in the British corpus (VisBrit), the Italian
corpus (VisIt), and the Australian corpus (VisAus). In the following chapter,
‘Concordances, cultural dimensions and tourist promotion’ (104-141), she
provides further analysis of nine words (three nouns, three verbs, and three
adjectives) from each corpus: ‘park’, ‘home’, ‘city’, ‘find’, ‘see’, ‘take’,
‘great’, ‘top’ and ‘national’ from VisBrit; ‘provincia’ (province), ‘città’
(city/cities), ‘territorio’ (territory), ‘offre’ (third person singular
offers), ‘(si) tova’ (is set), ‘perdere’ (miss/lose), ‘grande’ (great/big),
‘storico’ (historic), and ‘tipici’ (typical/local) from VisIt; and ‘park’,
‘beach’, ‘island’, ‘see’, take’, ‘visit’, ‘national’, ‘aboriginal’, and
‘great’ from VisAus. M then analyzes the modal operators, but – as she notes –
not the mood adjuncts, prepositional phrases, or interpersonal metaphors:
‘can’, ‘could’, ‘may’, ‘might’, ‘should’, ‘will’, and ‘would’ in VisBrit;
‘can’, ‘could’, ‘may’, ‘might’, ‘must’, ‘should’, ‘will’, and ‘would’ in
VisAus; and ‘dovere’ (must/should/have to), ‘potere’ (can/be able to), and
‘volere’ (want/would like) in VisIt. Following this presentation, she analyzes
the each corpus according to the five manifestations of culture proposed by
Hofstede (1980, 2001) and Hofstede and Mooij (2010): power distance,
individualism/collectivism, masculinity/femininity, uncertainty avoidance, and
long-/short-term orientation.
Chapter 4, ‘Translation and tourist promotion across languages and cultures’
(142-174), introduces some consequences and implications for translators of
tourism websites. Pym’s (2010) three main paradigms in the translation
process, i.e. natural equivalence, directional equivalence, and purpose,
inform this chapter. M compares the translated and non-translated corpora
aforementioned and focuses her analysis on the twenty most frequent content
words in each corpus. She concludes, ‘Translated texts are… only partially
adapted to the new target language and audience and this lack of adaptation in
terms of promotional strategies (Attention and Interest vs. Desire and Action)
leads to the creation of tourist products which have lost part of their
persuasive power and, for this reason, they will probably be less successful
among the new audience’ (173).
CRITICAL EVALUATION
The strength of Manca’s text lies in the in-depth analysis of tourism
promotion through systemic functional linguistics, visual semiotics, the AIDA
Model, and corpus linguistics. For instance, M offers clear definitions and
examples of esoteric concepts from systemic functional grammar such as the
‘ideational metafunction’, the ‘tactic system’ (including both ‘parataxis’ and
‘hypotaxis’), the ‘interpersonal metafunction’, and the ‘textual
metafunction’. In essence, this book offers a ‘how-to’ guide for analyzing
tourism corpora.
Despite the thorough exemplification of concepts, however, many of the claims
M makes can and should be made stronger. For example, near the end of Chapter
1, M writes, ‘Implications for this analysis are several: based on the
assumption that language, images and culture are strictly interrelated, every
act of cross-cultural communication… should not disregard this aspect and thus
should carefully select the strategies to be adopted for a successful result’
(63). Likewise, in Chapter 3, M blandly states, ‘All analyses carried out in
this chapter have consistently shown that the three websites have a different
but systematic way of promoting tourism in the three countries’ (133). The
claims about the importance of the AIDA Model in Chapter 2 could be fortified
with a reference to Bell’s (1984) work on audience design.
Most problematic in this book are the claims regarding cultural dimensions of
tourism discourse and the use of translation in tourism promotion. In Chapter
3, M presents a discussion of British, Italian, and Australian cultures in
terms of low and high power distances (Hofstede, 2001; Hofstede and de Mooij,
2010). Her claims seem impressionistic; she should have critiqued the model
earlier in the book. Moreover, there appears to be a conflation of nationality
and culture. Near the end of this chapter, M states, ‘if some features [of
cultural aspects] are very common and frequently used by a culture it means
that they are effective and their presence contributes to a more positive
disposition on the part of the consumers towards the products advertised’
(141). Such a statement raises the question of how stereotypical the language
of tourism promotion is or may be. Furthermore, such a claim needs to be
supported with empirical data showing how cultural features are taken up and
by whom; her data are compelling and, as such, deserve a more critical
analysis. Chapter 4 introduces a new topic to the study at hand, the use of
translation in tourism across languages and cultures. One wonders why more
literature review, e.g. Pym (2010), appears in the last chapter rather than in
the first. M’s claims regarding the translations on the analyzed websites do
not seem to have a strong basis, e.g. ‘“Ancient times” is an unusual
collocation in the English language and could be replaced by the noun “past”
where the emphasis conveyed by “ancient” is neutralised’ (150).
In conclusion, M’s text adds to the growing literature on tourism discourse
available. Accordingly, it should be added to the bibliographies of syllabi
for language and tourism courses. Likewise, it could serve as a supplemental
text illustrating the use of persuasion in a rhetoric course.
REFERENCES
Bell, Allan. 1984. Language style as audience design. Language in Society
13:2, 145-204.
Halliday, M.A.K. 1978. Language as social semiotic: The social interpretation
of language and meaning. London: Edward Arnold.
Halliday, M.A.K. 1985. Introduction to functional grammar. London: Edward
Arnold.
Hofstede, Geert. 1980. Culture’s consequences: International differences in
work-related values. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Hofstede, Geert. 2001. Culture’s consequences: Comparing behaviors,
institutions and organizations across nations, 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage.
Hofstede, Geert and Marieke de Mooij. 2010. Convergence and divergence in
consumer behavior: Implications for international retailing. Journal of
Retailing 78, 61-69.
Kress, Gunther and Theo van Leeuwen. 2006. Reading images: The grammar of
visual design, 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
Lewis, E. St.Elmo. 1899. Side talks about advertising. The Western Druggist
21:2, 65-66.
Pym, Anthony. 2010. Exploring translation theories. London: Routledge.
Strong, Edward K., Jr. 1925. The psychology of selling and advertising. New
York: McGraw-Hill.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Richard W. Hallett is professor of linguistics at Northeastern Illinois
University. His research interests include the discourse of tourism, world
Englishes, and second language acquisition.
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