Turning Travelogue readers into tourists: representations of tourism destinations through linguistic features

Abstract

This article is focused on the language of tourism as a means of economic potential. Language in tourism, especially language of promotional texts, motivates and attracts tourists to visit a certain destination, and, consequently, makes profits. In its introductory part, the article offers a short theoretical insight into the functions of tourism discourse and, further on, Rick Steves‘ website texts (travelogues) about European destinations are examined through discourse analysis, more precisely linguistic analysis involving analysis of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. The results confirming the importance of lexical choices in tourism discourse are presented and discussed at the end of the article. Steves’ travelogues aim to turn potential tourists into actual tourists by employing language, rich in stylistic devices and lexical imagery. The texts convince the potential tourists actually to buy the tourism services and products promoted in the texts. Thus, Steves’ texts are examples of positive branding which aim to attract business. The research is orginial in the sense that it is concentrated on linguistic analysis of persuasive features based on discursive theories.