LESSON n°3- Advertising in Tourism Discourse

An advertisement is an announcement online, or in a newspaper, on television, or on a poster about something such

as a product, event, or job.
A commercial is an advertisement that is broadcast on television or radio.
What is an ad? We are faced with the number of different genres and text types. Many answers are possible
depending on how you interpret the question. The easiest interpretation is the following: social media ads,
newspapers and magazines, outdoor advertising, radio and podcasts, direct mail, personal sales, video ads, product
placement (Spotify on alexa, alexa promots music list), event marketing, email marketing.
Link Disadvantages and Advantages of Online Advertising (bizfluent.com)
Genres of Tourism Discourse: Overview
We focus on written genres and within these written genres we will analyse extracts from texts. We can divided the
genres of tourism discourse into three categories:
 Pre-tip (promotional materials): advertising, brochures, travel articles, tourism websites, travel blogs;
 On-trip (informational materials): tourist guidebooks, travel blogs, apps;
 Post-trip (writing, feedback): travelogues, trip reports, reviews, travel blogs.
*In red we find the genres that didn’t exist before internet.
Travel blogs features in all 3 categories. Why? Because this categorization is a bit prepositional.
Advertising is the paid, non-personal communication of information about products or services by an identified
sponsor through the mass media in an effort to influence costumer behaviour. To influence, persuade not oblige.
It is designed to:
- Create a distinctive image for the brand (product/service);
- Establish brand (product/service) superiority.
To sum up, it has to persuade the customer into buying the product/service. That it is worth to spend money.
Historically, we associate advertising with consumer culture. Manufacturing is carried out on a large scale and
therefore you need to sell this large number of products and services to a lot of people.

And old/vintage ad for Coca Cola (1911) and a quite recent one (1991). The visual impact of the
more recent one is much greater. The slogan is very effective “Can’t Beat The Real Thing” +
strong colour, red, black and white. It is not a real picture but a bit beautified by using photo-
shop. Law modality images. It
catches quickly the attention.
There is a huge variation in what
we call ads:
- Handwritten ads, ads
published in
international magazines, radio and TV
commercials, web ads…
- Ads pursue different purposes, though their
function in society is relatively constant.
Advertising is a hypergenre, encompassing various sub-genres.
Formal characteristics of advertising
1. Multimodality. It is the combined utilisation of different semiotic resources/modes of communication within a
single communicative process (textual, visual, aural resources-for radio and TV ads). Working with multimodal
texts implies the understanding of the interaction of different modes and their grammars in the creation of
meaning.
Interplay of different semiotic resources in the construction of messages; the interplay between visual and
verbal modes of communication constructs complex layers of meaning.
*Human communication has always been multimodal, because it combines different modes.
2. Brevity/Conciseness. The language of advertising is constrained by contextual factors (space constraints). It is
required to compress the content. (“Linguistic ingenuity comes to the rescue”). Few but effective words are
useful to convince people, and each word has a costads are very expensive. That’s why the brevity.
 Slogans carry out the argumentative and persuasive functions of ads.
Advertising texts layout Slogan – headline – subheadlines – bodycopy –
trademark – logo – slogo. Pag. 90
We all like to travel in different ways: that is why advertisements target
different people with different discursive strategies. Professionals in the
tourism industry, particularly those who work in marketing and promotion
or destination branding, know that there are different types of travellers
and they try to appeal to them by different means.
Authenticity, Strangerhood, Play or Conflict?
*Tourism discourse tends to be conventional. Tourism addresses masses of
people, it can’t be too unconventional. This is a sociological insight, you need to unsure people not to scare them.
Tourism discourse is poised between semiotic innovation and conventional protocols.
The authenticity perspective is a search for authentic experiences; the tourist is sort of a pilgrim, so the emphasis is
laid on traditions, the past and current local life.
The strangerhood perspective focuses on the desire of the contemporary self to experience things or destinations
that differ from their own reality. To do so in an independent way, this perspective encourages travellers to distance
themselves from their cultural and emotional “centre”.
The play perspective sees tourism as a play, a game in which popular pleasures and fun are key concepts.
The perspective of conflict and appropriation focuses on the contrast between societies: the model applies to
tourism in emerging countries, sometimes in dangerous ones dark tourism, when you go and visit problematic
States (= Colombia).

In February 2022, Visit Britain (the UK tourism board) launched a new campaign “Welcome to another side of
Britain” which aims to attract home tourists not just international tourists. After the pandemic tourism industry
needs rethinking its advertising strategies. Link (112) Welcome To Another Side of Britain - YouTube

Topics of Tourism
Promotional material in tourism discourse can be categorised according to the topic, and we can find several topics
often interrelated:
 RRR: Romanticism, Rebirth, Regression (S. Valentine)
 HHH: Happiness, Hedonism, Heliocentrism (a vacation on the beach during summer)
 FFF: Fun, Fantasy, Fairy-tales (Disneyworld)
 S(S)SS: Sea, (Sun) Sex and Socialisation (Spain)
 Also MICE: Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, Exhibitions it is a type of tourism in which large groups with
a planned agenda are brought together
These topics can occur in a single text, they are not mutually exclusive.
How are these perspectives and topics enacted by linguistic means?
Keywords: they often convey primary information and are generally short, clear and to the point. They can be verbs,
nouns, adjectives: words that evoke specific emotions and conjure up specific topics.
It is often used the combination of evocative verbs and an imperative mood (as a gentle invitation not and order) to
create the spell effect (escape, forget, change, discover).
 Euphoria technique: use of positively-connected words
 Resorting to the magic dimension (Mirabilandia, Canada’s Wonderland)
 Ego-targeting: it singles out the reader from the crowd, making them feel unique (often by using informal
language and a conversational style)
Syntax
 Parataxis is often used, short and juxtaposed sentences
 Frequent choice of verbs in the –ing form and use of the imperative mood
 Use of rhetorical questions
 Figures of speech: rhyme, alliteration, parallelism, similes, metaphors.

Every strategy is used to satisfy the AIDA condition: capture Attention, maintain Interest, create Desire and get
Action.