The creation of a promotional website for tourist products is far from being an easy task. In fact, the target of tourist promotion is almost always international and multicultural, and this involves the presence of several cultural determinants in the promotion process. Ethnocentricity is always a risk in cross-cultural marketing activities, because those strategies that are successful in a country (or within a culture) do not always work abroad (or in a different culture) (see Prime 2003). For this reason, this paper performs a linguistic and cultural analysis of the strategies adopted (and that should be adopted) by British and Italian tourist facilities, such as farmhouse holidays, hotels and campsites in their websites. The methodological approach used for the analysis (Manca 2008; 2009; 2012) starts from the identification of word patterns according to a Corpus Linguistics approach (Sinclair 1991, 1996; Tognini Bonelli 2002) and interprets the functionally complete units of meaning thus identified, through the cultural filters elaborated by Intercultural Studies theorists (Hall 1989; Hofstede 1991, 2001; Katan 2004, 2006). The node words considered for analysis belong to the semantic field of the five senses which, as evidence suggests, are frequently used by Italian tourist websites to promote tourist products.
Describing through the five senses. A contrastive socio-cultural and linguistic analysis of Italian and British tourist websites
MANCA, ELENA
2013-01-01
Abstract
The creation of a promotional website for tourist products is far from being an easy task. In fact, the target of tourist promotion is almost always international and multicultural, and this involves the presence of several cultural determinants in the promotion process. Ethnocentricity is always a risk in cross-cultural marketing activities, because those strategies that are successful in a country (or within a culture) do not always work abroad (or in a different culture) (see Prime 2003). For this reason, this paper performs a linguistic and cultural analysis of the strategies adopted (and that should be adopted) by British and Italian tourist facilities, such as farmhouse holidays, hotels and campsites in their websites. The methodological approach used for the analysis (Manca 2008; 2009; 2012) starts from the identification of word patterns according to a Corpus Linguistics approach (Sinclair 1991, 1996; Tognini Bonelli 2002) and interprets the functionally complete units of meaning thus identified, through the cultural filters elaborated by Intercultural Studies theorists (Hall 1989; Hofstede 1991, 2001; Katan 2004, 2006). The node words considered for analysis belong to the semantic field of the five senses which, as evidence suggests, are frequently used by Italian tourist websites to promote tourist products.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
