Language of Tourism Advertising: A Pragmatic Approach

Abstract

Much of the existing research on tourism advertising has focused on visual semiotics rather than verbal language. This research note discusses the methodological approach that was taken to investigate language use in British tourism print advertising. Pragmatics, a branch of linguistics, was utilized to support the content analysis of figures of speech. This methodological approach is the first serious attempt to explore the language use in tourism advertising. The approach taken provides rich insight into the interpretation of figures of speech and demonstrates how language contributes to the communication of tourism images. The major contribution of this research lies in the detailed textual analysis of figures of speech. This analysis is based on pragmatic approach, relevance theory, which enhances the interpretation of tourism images.