The Social Tricks of Advertising: Discourse Strategies of English-Speaking Tour Operators on Facebook
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13136/2281-4582/2017.i10.479Abstract
The current paper is intended to provide a description of the linguistic and discourse strategies displayed by generalised and budget tour operators in Facebook, with particular emphasis on the techniques employed to promote destinations. To this aim, a corpus including 326 posts was created.The posts were analysed by means of corpus linguistics methods–including POS tagging, keyword analysis, and analysis of collocations–, while the images accompanying the posts were analysed within the framework of visual grammar theory.Keyword analysis showed that the posts under investigation, despite being written texts, are closer to spoken communication rather than written informal communication. The analyses also showed ample presence of linguistic and rhetorical techniques typical of tourism promotion. Furthermore, the analyses proved that the tourism operators considered are expert conversation managers who have developed a range of strategies to influence conversation. Finally, comparison between the current results and previous empirical studies suggest that promotional strategies and thus ‘the language of tourism’ varies not only from culture to culture, but also depending on text type (e.g. website vs. Facebook page), tourism service provider (e.g. hotel chains vs. tour operators), and target (e.g. luxury vs. non-luxury tour operator)References
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Journal of Language and Social Psychology 31.2 (2012): 176-196.
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and in Italian.” Cultus 9.1 (2016): 49-67.
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websites in English.” Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie occidentale 51 (2017): 195-216.
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and German Websites.” Discourse, Communication and the Enterprise VIII (DICOEN VIII). NewcastleUpon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, in press.
D’Andrea, Giulia. “Linguistic notes on French music tourism. The case of La Fugue website.” Tourism and
Tourist Promotion around the World. A Linguistic and Socio-Cultural Perspective. Edited by Elena
Manca and Francesca Bianchi. Lecce: Università del Salento, 2013. 95-108.
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Italy and This is Great Britain campaigns.” Cultus 9.1 (2016): 23-48.
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tourist websites.” Tourism and tourist promotion around the world: a linguistic and socio-cultural
perspective. Edited by Elena Manca and Francesca Bianchi. Lecce: Università del Salento, 2013. 109-
124.
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and cultural features.” Cultus 9.1 (2016a): 2-22.
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Websites.” Innovative Perspectives on Tourism Discourse. Edited by Magdalena Bielenia-Grajewska
and Enriqueta Cortes de los Rios. Hershey: IGI Global, 2017. 91-110.
Mariani, Marcello M., Marco Di Felice and Matteo Mura. “Facebook as a destination marketing tool: Evidence
from Italian regional Destination Management Organizations.” Tourism Management 54 (2016): 321-
343.
Mattiello, Elisa. “Metaphor in Tourism Discourse: Imagined Worlds in English Tourist Texts on the Web.”
Textus XXV.1 (2012): 69-84.
Minazzi, Roberta. Social Media Marketing in Tourism and Hospitality. Cham: Springer, 2015.
---. and Stefan Lagrosen. “Investigating Social Media Marketing in the Hospitality Industry: Facebook and
European Hotels.” Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2014. Proceedings of the
International Conference in Dublin, Ireland, January 21-24, 2014. Edited by Xiang Zheng and
Tussyadiah lis. Heidelberg: Springer, 2014. 145-157.
O’Connor, Peter. “An analysis of the use of Facebook by International Hotel Chains” International CHRIE
Conference - Refereed Track, 9, 2011.
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March 2017.
Offutt, Bob, Cathy Schetzina. PhoCusWright’s Travel Innovation & Technology Trends. 2012 & Beyond,
Special Report for World Travel Market, PhoCusWright, 2012.
http://www.ahresp.com/files/articles/20130328_162313_PhoCusWright's%20-
%20Special%20Report%20-
%20Travel%20Innovation%20&%20Technology,%20Trends%202012%20&%20Beyond.pdf.
Accessed 18 March 2017.
Pierini, Patrizia. “Quality in Web translation: An investigation into UK and Italian tourism Web sites.” The
Journal of Specialised Translation 8 (2007): 85-103.
---. “A warm welcome guaranteed – Aspetti dell’inglese nei siti degli enti nazionali per il turismo.” Studi
Linguistici e Filologici Online 6 (2008): 163-202.
Rayson, Paul. Wmatrix: a web-based corpus-processing environment. Lancaster: Computing Department,
Lancaster University, 2009. http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/wmatrix/. Accessed 10 January 17.
Scott, Mike and Christopher Tribble. Textual Patterns: Key Words and Corpus Analysis in Language
Education. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2006.
Spinzi, Cinzia. “Treading lightly on the Earth. Metaphorical frames in the discourse of ecotourism.” Tourism
and Tourist Promotion around the World. A Linguistic and Socio-Cultural Perspective. Edited by Elena
Manca and Francesca Bianchi. Lecce: Università del Salento, 2013. 81-94.
Zouganeli, Stathia, Nikolaos Trihas and Maria Antonaki. “Social media and tourism: the use of Facebook by
the European national tourism organizations.” Tourism Today 11 (2011): 122-140.
Zuliani, Alessandra. “A journey to Portugal. The official tourist promotion of Turismo de Portugal.” Tourism and
Tourist Promotion around the World. A Linguistic and Socio-Cultural Perspective. Edited by Elena
Manca and Francesca Bianchi. Lecce: Università del Salento, 2013. 61-80
20, Special Issue (2017): 239-271.
Biber, Douglas, et al. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Longman, 1999.
Cappelli, Gloria. “The translation of tourism-related websites and localization: problems and perspectives.”
RILA Rassegna Italiana di Linguistica Applicata XL.3 (2008): 97-155.
---. “Travelling words: Languaging in English tourism discourse.” Travels and Translations. Edited by Alison
Yarrington, Stefano Villani and Julia Kelly. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2013. 353-374.
Carr, Caleb T., David B. Schrock, and Patricia Dauterman,. “Speech Acts Within Facebook Status Messages.”
Journal of Language and Social Psychology 31.2 (2012): 176-196.
Cesiri, Daniela. “Promoting Venice through digital travel guidebooks: a case study of texts written in English
and in Italian.” Cultus 9.1 (2016): 49-67.
---. “Representing Venice’s local culture to international tourists: the use of the ‘languaging’ technique in
websites in English.” Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie occidentale 51 (2017): 195-216.
---. and Colaci, Laura A. “The Construction of a Country’s Image for the Expo 2015 Event: The Case of English
and German Websites.” Discourse, Communication and the Enterprise VIII (DICOEN VIII). NewcastleUpon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, in press.
D’Andrea, Giulia. “Linguistic notes on French music tourism. The case of La Fugue website.” Tourism and
Tourist Promotion around the World. A Linguistic and Socio-Cultural Perspective. Edited by Elena
Manca and Francesca Bianchi. Lecce: Università del Salento, 2013. 95-108.
Dann, Graham. The language of tourism. A sociolinguistic perspective. Wallingford: CAB International, 1996.
Ernawati, Diyah Bekti. “The techniques of the language of tourism.” Jurnal Ilmiah Pariwisata 42.2 (2001): 61-
67.
Fischer-Starcke, Bettina. Corpus Linguistics in Literary Analysis. Jane Austen and her contemporaries. London
and New York: Continuum, 2010.
Francesconi, Sabrina. Reading Tourism Texts: a Multimodal Analysis. Bristol: Channel View Publications, 2014.
Gabrielatos, Costas and Anna Marchi. “Keyness: Matching metrics to definitions. Corpus Linguistics in the
South: Theoretical-methodological challenges in corpus approaches to discourse studies - and some
ways of addressing them.” University of Portsmouth, 5 November 2011.
http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/51449/. Accessed 5 March 17.
Garside, Roger and Nicholas Smith. “A hybrid grammatical tagger: CLAWS4.” Corpus Annotation: Linguistic
Information from Computer Text Corpora. Edited by Roger Garside, Geoffrey Leech and Anthony Mark
McEnery. London: Longman, 1997. 102-121.
Gotti, Maurizio. “The language of tourism as specialized discourse.” Translating Tourism: Linguistic/Cultural
Respresentations. Edited by Oriana Palusci and Sabrina Francesconi. Trento: Università degli Studi di
Trento, 2006. 15-34.
Gretzel, Ulrike and Kyung-Hyan Yoo. “Premises and promises of social media marketing in tourism.” The
Routledge Handbook of Tourism Marketing. Edited by Scott McCabe. London: Routledge, 2014. 491-
504.
Hays, Stephanie, Stephen John Page and Dimitrios Buhalis. “Social media as destination marketing tool: its
use by national tourism organisations.” Current Issues in Tourism 16.3 (2013): 211-239.
Huertas, Assumpcio and Estela Marine-Roig. “Differential Destination Content Communication Strategies
through Multiple Social Media.” Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2016.
Proceedings of the International Conference in Bilbao, Spain, February 2-5, 2016. Edited by Alessandro
Inversini and Roland Schegg. Heidelberg: Springer, 2016. 239-252.
Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. Reading Images. The Grammar of Visual Design, Second Edition.
London: Routledge, 2006.
Leung, Rosanna, Markus Schuckert and Emmy Yeung. “Attracting User Social Media Engagement: A Study
of Three Budget Airlines Facebook Pages.” Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism
2013. Proceedings of the International Conference in Innsbruck, Austria, January 22-25, 2013. Edited
by Lorenzo Cantoni and Zheng Xiang. Heidelberg: Springer, 2013. 195-206.
Maci, Stefania. “Virtual touring: The Web-language of tourism.” Linguistica e filologia 25 (2007): 41-65.
---. The Language of Tourism. Bergamo: CELSB, 2010.
---. “Click here, book now! Discursive strategies of tourism on the Web.” Textus XXV.1 (2012): 137-156.
---. Tourism Discourse: Professional, Promotional and Digital Voices. Genova: ECIG, 2013.
---. “Perception of perspective? Adjusting the representation of Italy and the UK for the tourist: the Made in
Italy and This is Great Britain campaigns.” Cultus 9.1 (2016): 23-48.
---. “Meaning-making in Web 2.0 Tourism Discourse.” Ways of Seeing, Ways of Being: Representing the
Voices of Tourism. Edited by Maurizio Gotti, Stefania Maci e Michele Sala. Bern: Peter Lang, 2017.
Manca, Elena. “From phraseology to culture: qualifying adjectives in the language of tourism.” International
Journal of Corpus Linguistics 13.3 (2008): 368-385.
---. “Describing through the five senses. A contrastive socio-cultural and linguistic analysis of Italian and British
tourist websites.” Tourism and tourist promotion around the world: a linguistic and socio-cultural
perspective. Edited by Elena Manca and Francesca Bianchi. Lecce: Università del Salento, 2013. 109-
124.
---. “Official Tourist Websites and the Cultural Communication Grammar model: analysing language, visuals,
and cultural features.” Cultus 9.1 (2016a): 2-22.
---. Persuasion in Tourism Discourse. Methodologies and Models. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars
Publishing, 2016b.
---. “Verbal Techniques of the Language of Tourism Across Cultures: An Analysis of Five Official Tourist
Websites.” Innovative Perspectives on Tourism Discourse. Edited by Magdalena Bielenia-Grajewska
and Enriqueta Cortes de los Rios. Hershey: IGI Global, 2017. 91-110.
Mariani, Marcello M., Marco Di Felice and Matteo Mura. “Facebook as a destination marketing tool: Evidence
from Italian regional Destination Management Organizations.” Tourism Management 54 (2016): 321-
343.
Mattiello, Elisa. “Metaphor in Tourism Discourse: Imagined Worlds in English Tourist Texts on the Web.”
Textus XXV.1 (2012): 69-84.
Minazzi, Roberta. Social Media Marketing in Tourism and Hospitality. Cham: Springer, 2015.
---. and Stefan Lagrosen. “Investigating Social Media Marketing in the Hospitality Industry: Facebook and
European Hotels.” Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2014. Proceedings of the
International Conference in Dublin, Ireland, January 21-24, 2014. Edited by Xiang Zheng and
Tussyadiah lis. Heidelberg: Springer, 2014. 145-157.
O’Connor, Peter. “An analysis of the use of Facebook by International Hotel Chains” International CHRIE
Conference - Refereed Track, 9, 2011.
http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1675&context=refereed. Accessed 18
March 2017.
Offutt, Bob, Cathy Schetzina. PhoCusWright’s Travel Innovation & Technology Trends. 2012 & Beyond,
Special Report for World Travel Market, PhoCusWright, 2012.
http://www.ahresp.com/files/articles/20130328_162313_PhoCusWright's%20-
%20Special%20Report%20-
%20Travel%20Innovation%20&%20Technology,%20Trends%202012%20&%20Beyond.pdf.
Accessed 18 March 2017.
Pierini, Patrizia. “Quality in Web translation: An investigation into UK and Italian tourism Web sites.” The
Journal of Specialised Translation 8 (2007): 85-103.
---. “A warm welcome guaranteed – Aspetti dell’inglese nei siti degli enti nazionali per il turismo.” Studi
Linguistici e Filologici Online 6 (2008): 163-202.
Rayson, Paul. Wmatrix: a web-based corpus-processing environment. Lancaster: Computing Department,
Lancaster University, 2009. http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/wmatrix/. Accessed 10 January 17.
Scott, Mike and Christopher Tribble. Textual Patterns: Key Words and Corpus Analysis in Language
Education. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2006.
Spinzi, Cinzia. “Treading lightly on the Earth. Metaphorical frames in the discourse of ecotourism.” Tourism
and Tourist Promotion around the World. A Linguistic and Socio-Cultural Perspective. Edited by Elena
Manca and Francesca Bianchi. Lecce: Università del Salento, 2013. 81-94.
Zouganeli, Stathia, Nikolaos Trihas and Maria Antonaki. “Social media and tourism: the use of Facebook by
the European national tourism organizations.” Tourism Today 11 (2011): 122-140.
Zuliani, Alessandra. “A journey to Portugal. The official tourist promotion of Turismo de Portugal.” Tourism and
Tourist Promotion around the World. A Linguistic and Socio-Cultural Perspective. Edited by Elena
Manca and Francesca Bianchi. Lecce: Università del Salento, 2013. 61-80
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