The Treatment of Adjectives in Tourism Websites: A Comparative Study of the Jordanian, European and Asian Official Tourism Websites

Juhaina Maen Al-Issawi

doi:10.5296/ijl.v12i5.17513

Abstract

This study aims at examining how the lexical choice of a given discourse is determined by different factors such as the type of the discourse, the content and the medium of the message, and the ideological perspectives of the tourism persuader. More specifically, the study focuses on selecting adjectives in the Jordanian tourism official websites compared to European and Asian counterparts. The finding of the study shows that adjective lexical selection, together with their collocational behavior plays a crucial role in the tourism promotional discourse. The lexical choice of adjectives is also semantically restricted in that only limited meanings of the adjectives in the discourse are used. Accordingly, the vocabulary of the Jordanian tourism websites is characterized by the co-presence of two main types of adjectives: the descriptive adjectives, describing details about the targeted destination; and evaluative adjectives, conveying positive attitudes.

Highlights

The methodology of multimodal analysis of tourism websites suggests that the design of these websites encompasses textual and visual discourse. Maci (2007) contained that the layout that is constructed of texts surrounded by visual elements is regarded as semiotic discourse
This study aims at examining how the lexical choice of a given discourse is determined by different factors such as the type of the discourse, the content and the medium of the message, and the ideological perspectives of the tourism persuader
The finding of the study shows that adjective lexical selection, together with their collocational behavior plays a crucial role in the tourism promotional discourse

Summary

Introduction

The methodology of multimodal analysis of tourism websites suggests that the design of these websites encompasses textual and visual discourse. Maci (2007) contained that the layout that is constructed of texts surrounded by visual elements is regarded as semiotic discourse. Maci (2007) contained that the layout that is constructed of texts surrounded by visual elements is regarded as semiotic discourse. Such a type of framework helps in describing and depicting the world as having either "real" or "ideal" representation (ibid: 54). The tourism language is "a specialized discourse" based on the fact that it has specified terminologies, a unique semantic content, and a distinctive register. It follows particular syntactic rules and structures (Merkaj, 2013: 321). The structure and form of sentences are distinctive

Objectives

Methods

Findings

Conclusion