A STUDY ON METAPHORIC EXPRESSIONS IN ENGLISH TOURISM ADVERTISEMENTS
Language is one of most powerful tool to spread and to communicate. This is especially true in fields of advertising and marketing. To get effective in communication, we have to use language in both writing and speaking. The choice of language to convey specific messages with the intention influence people in vitally important. Visual content and design in advertising not only have great impact on the customers, but help to identify a product and remember it.
Purpose of advertising is to attract tourists and update information. Good ads will help tourists to have more choices than their initial targets. Therefore, aside from enhancing the images, choosing words is also very important. So, language which used in advertising must be condensed, believable, distinctive and flexible images. In other words, advertising must sound convincing to readers in such the way showing benefits and comfortable to readers.
This study explores the rhetorical device such as metaphoric expressions to contribute to the creation of tourism images in online advertising. Extensive research has been conducted within the areas of advertising, tourism and linguistics. Moreover, they have been done to emphasize the importance of syntactic and semantic analysis. The majority of the research used the more common visual semiotics approach in tourism. This study provides a detailed analysis of metaphoric expressions in tourism advertising.
This thesis takes the theory on metaphor by Halliday in An Introduction to Functional Grammar as the theoretical base. Let us consider the following examples of metaphoric expressions in English tourism ads:
- Staunton Country Park is a gem just outside of Havant, with amazing gardens, a tropical glass house and an Amazonian water lily. Fun for all the family can be found on the ornamental farm with the friendly farmyard animals. [201]
‘A gem’ is usually used to aim a precious or semiprecious stone as its literal meaning. Also, this noun phrase here is used to portray the role of Staunton Country Park to Havant, it seems something very important to this town, look like ‘a gem’ to human beings.
- Margate, Broadstairs and Ramsgate’s coast is a feast for your eyes. Discover stunning sandy beaches and sea-carved chalk cliffs. [200]
Noun phrase ‘a feast’ with its literal meaning as a large meal often used in a celebration of something. Here, it has a meaning as something fill the need of tourist. The nice coast with stunning sandy beaches is always a best choice for tourists to see. So metaphoric expression ‘a feast to your eyes’ fulfils that satisfaction.
In our technology time, spread of information plays crucial role. Information is not only succinct, accurate and vivid with rich imagination and plentiful associations for readers, especial piece of ads but also as an expressive device with many colors and brevity.
On being of a tour guide in the Central of Vietnam, the writer realizes the usage of language in tourism advertisement is one of the extremely indispensible matters in introducing our beautiful country to tourists. And this is also the main reason why the thesis entitled ‘A Study on Metaphoric Expressions in English Tourism Advertisements’ was conducted.
The study also is a hope providing fruitful knowledge of tourism advertising language for English teacher and learner at faculty of tourism at colleges all in all; especially for those who work in tourism, in developing tours or routes in localities and around the world.
This study aims:
- To help Vietnamese learners of English to cultivate the ability to identify metaphoric expressions in commentary tourism advertisements in English.
- To encourage learners, tourists and who work for tourism, travel agencies and commentators get insight syntactic feature and semantic feature of metaphor meaning in general, and those used in tourism advertising in particular.
The objectives of the study are:
- To describe the syntactic and semantic features of metaphoric expressions in words, phrases
- Suggesting some implications of the findings for teaching and learning English in school; helping learners, tourists and who work for tourism, travel agencies not only to have more views about tourism language but also how to write tourism advertisement effectively.
Chosen metaphoric expressions from 55 tourism websites are described by syntactic and semantic features. Information will give us more views about nice tourist destinations, also the culture and history which are blown by words of love. Besides, we could learn something from their experience during advertisement expressions in doing tourism.
The study is to answer these following questions:
- What are the syntactic features of the metaphoric expressions used in English tourism advertisements?
- What are the semantic features of the metaphoric expressions used in English tourism advertisements?
To help employees who work in tourism field clear about their job as well as their contribution to society, and take a part in raising GDP. This will have an important meaning to development direction to a tourism country of Vietnam and the tourism city of Danang in the near future. The study is expected to be a small part to the process of modernization; and contribute to the teaching and learning in tourism colleges, also a good reference for tourism agencies in promoting tourism to the customer.
The thesis consists of five main chapters- structured as follows:
Chapter 1: Introduction consist rationale, the significant of the study, aim, objective, research questions, and organization of the study.
Chapter 2: Literature Review and Theoretical Background, mentions brief of the previous studies and addresses theoretical background that lays the foundation for further discussion in the thesis.
Chapter 3: Method and Procedure, presents the research method, hypotheses and procedure of study. It mentions the aims, the objectives of the study, the methodology, the design of the research, data collection, data analysis, and description of the corpus.
Chapter 4: Findings and Discussion, discusses the result of data analysis, and then is devoted to the analysis of the syntactic and semantic features of metaphoric expressions in English tourism advertisements.
Chapter 5: Conclusions– summarizes the main points discussed throughout the study and the major findings of the investigation concerning metaphoric expressions, the practical implications, and some limitations of the study and suggestions for further study.
IN ENGLISH TOURISM ADVERTISEMENTS
LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
There are some prior researches relating to metaphoric expressions have been done such as:
Halliday [1985] gave a framework to emphasize the social functions of language and the semantic and information structure of speech and writing.
Urszula [1996] looked into the aspects of vocabulary in advertising and gave out the semantic features of advertising language.
Nguyễn Thị Lê (2006) in ‘An investigation into semantic, pragmatic and syntactic features of euphemisms in English and Vietnamese newspapers’ has a study on euphemisms in newspapers.
Phan Thị Uyên Uyên (2006) with ‘An investigation into some commonly used stylistic devices in advertising in English and Vietnamese newspapers’ has a general look on stylistic devices,metaphoric expressionsincluded.
Lê Thị Thanh Yên (2009) in ‘An Investigation Into The Use Of Metaphor And Metonymy In Sport Language In English and Vietnamese’ researched on metaphor and metonymy in sports articles. In this study, the author only investigates on the semantic and lexical features of metaphoric expressions in sport language.
Nguyễn Thị Việt Tài (2010), ‘An Investigation into Metaphor In English And Vietnamese Economic Newspapers’ studied about metaphor in economic newspapers.
Hồ Vi Nữ Mỹ Linh (2011) in ‘A Study In Metaphor In Newspaper (English versus Vietnamese)’ studied about metaphor in newspapers, simile and metonymy are included.
Nguyễn Văn Vui (2011) ‘An Investigation into Nominalization in English and Vietnamese Newspapers as Grammatical Metaphor Device in the Functional Grammar Perspective’ .
As mentioned above, there have been a great number of studies on metaphoric expressions in English. However, none of above reviews demands on English tourism advertisements. Thus, ‘A Study on Metaphoric Expressions in English Tourism Advertisements’ was conducted to fill the gap in this field. Yet, issues ofmetaphoric expressionsin this study was just discussed in a small section of the paper and thus further researches is still needed for better insight into this semantic phenomenon.
- Notions and Aims of Advertising
Aim of advertising is to help increase the demand for goods and services by the consumers. Other forms of advertising are aimed at raising awareness or informing the population of new developments in the socio-economic arena. Advertising is known to be effective when combined with other marketing tools.
According to the Definition Committee of American Marketing Association, advertising is defined as follows: “Advertising is the non-personal communication of information usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature about products, services or ideas by identified sponsor through the various media.”
American Marketing Association has defined advertising as “any paid form of non-personal presentation of ideas, goods and services by an indentified sponsor”. According to Webstar, “Advertising is to give public notice or to announce publicity”. According to Gardner, “Advertising is the means of mass selling that has grown up parallel with and has been made necessary to mass production”.
Advertising, in every market economy, plays an important role in bringing new goods and services to the attention of customers. Advertising itself brings information of name of products or services and how that product or service could be benefit to users; to persuade a target market to purchase or consume that brand. Advertising can also serve to communicate an idea to a large number of people in an attempt to convince them to take a certain action. [67]
Leymore (1975) says that ‘advertising is a mediator between the abstract and concrete’, through which main cultural perceptions are uncovered from tourists’ expectations and needs (in Cohen, 2004). According to Cohen (2004), the ‘tourist industry, with the help of its advertising, is able to attract tourists to a place by advertising it as a ‘paradise’ and thus invoking deeply set, unconscious cultural motives in the prospective tourists’. Tourism offers tourist an opportunity to realize their imaginary ideas and wishes. Different tourist destinations carry different images (Boorstin, 2006). Tourists are free to make their own choice about the way to connect with this imaginary nature.
From above definitions, we can see that advertising has three basis objectives:
- To inform customers about new products, experiences, services and other information that they need to know
- To persuade customers to purchase a destination or product, to perceive a destination of product differently or change a brand preference or
- To remind customers about a destination or product, where it may be purchased of how it may be purchased (booked).
In short, advertising is a form of communication and it is a paid form of publicity whose purpose is to inform potential customers about products and services and how to obtain and use them. Many advertisements are also designed to generate increased consumption of those products and services through the creation and reinforcement of brand image and brand loyalty. For these purposed advertisements often contain both informative and persuasive messages.
- Genre of Advertising
Advertising is a very interesting genre, whose complexity might very well increase with the use of each new technology. Their purpose is to make an impact on people’s mind, but their mind and space are limited as is human attention. Vestergaard and Schroder [65] distinguished advertising into two main types: commercial and non-commercial advertising.
Commercial advertising can be divided into two subtypes. The first type is called prestige advertising or goodwill advertising where the firm promotes its name to create a long term excellent image before the customers. Even though the shareholders will get the updates of the firm by mail, the firm will advertise their reports on Sunday papers to pronounce their existence in the market. Second type of commercial advertising is called trade or industrial advertising. In such advertising a firm usually advertises its products to other firms or equals. It is different from consumer advertising or selling advertising products for consumers or the prestige advertising.
The main reason behind commercial advertising is to increase familiarity and goodwill with the name and image of the company, rather than the actual product itself (Vestergaard & Schroder 1985).
Non-commercial advertising on the other hand has not profit or promotion behind it other than informing the public of some important news. The government of a country can notify the public of any new rule or special campaign through such advertisements on media. There are again two other kinds of advertisements such as display advertisements and classified advertisements. Display advertisements are published by large firms or associations where they consult advertising agencies to before deciding on the advertising. Their main aim is to promote the product. Classified advertisements are published on specific areas of a newspaper or magazine and ordered sequentially to promote a product for people with special interest in it. Such advertisements have information like non-commercial advertisements, they do promote a specific product, but without any persuasive streak like the commercial advertisements (Vestergaard and Schroder, 1985).
In this paper, tourism advertising belongs to kind of commercial advertising because the ads are messages of consumers and urge them to buy the products.
- Function of Advertising
The functions of advertising vary and are relative to the advertiser. Advertising can render the following functions; marketing, information, persuasion, education and reminding.
Marketing
Advertising is used to creating awareness for a product to be marketed. It is a link between the advertiser and the target market. Anyacho (2007) notes that advertising support marketing and this also helps a company to reach marketing objectives.
Information
Information as a function of advertising gives relevant details about the product to the consumer or its product. It highlights the existence of the product, benefits, location, price, et cetera. It is useful to build a positive brand image for the product.
Education
This establishes the basis knowledge about the availability, usage and other alternative to the product. It can offer the right choice and open the consumer’s mind to the quality of products available to improve their standards of living.
Persuasion
Persuasion in advertising is used to ensure a change of attitude in a consumer or prospect in favour of the product. It serves to motivate the consumer to try the product or keep using it as the case may be.
Reminding
Advertisements serve to keep the product in the mind of the consumer. a continuous display of advertisements on the media helps to keep consumer in constant reminder that the brand is available and can be purchase at sales spots.
Cultural transmission / entertainment
Above these, advert serves to transmit culture as well as entertain its audience. Parts of the primary roles of advertising is to entertain its targets audience, where advertising fails to achieve this, he may lose its sales message therefore turning off target consumers from purchasing the products. Advert that mixes work with play, gets the votes of the audience. Also, culturally, advertising should reflect the culture of the target audience which is directed towards.
- Language of Advertising
Language has a powerful influence on people and their behavior, especially in advertising. Thus, the choice of language to convey specific messages with the intention of influencing people is virtually important to advertisers in affirming their trade name, as Delin [14, p.32] said ‘Vocabulary is clearly a central element in building the image of a product’. John [74, p.85] added that cultural background helps thoroughly interpret the used language: ‘The language used in advertisements is very careful chosen to have special effects. The words will create images as well as convey information, and often there will be more than one meaning to some expressions. Cultural knowledge is often important for gaining the full impact. The questions accompanying each advertisement try to give you some idea of that cultural background and focus on a few examples of the use of the language’.
In addition, advertising language is a marketing tool used in a communicative process to send a message to receivers (consumers), who will react or respond in a certain way. Communication is the process of commonness of thought between a sender and a receiver of a message: Both sender and receiver must be active participants in the same communicative relationship in order for thought to be shared [79].
There for, the function of a message of a persuasive advertisement is the reason for its existence, a piece of impressive ad must be condensed, reliable and distinctive. To put it differently, it must convince readers and make them realize the benefits of a given product or service.
. Tourism and Tourism Advertisements
a. Definition of Tour
The term tour is defined by Hornby [28, p.1264] as follow: (1) A journey for pleasure during which various places of interest are visited, (2) A brief visit to or through a place, (3) An official series of visits for the purpose of playing matches, giving performances, et cetera.
And another definition of tour is that: (1) A trip with visits to various places of interest for pleasure, business or instruction, (2) A group organized for such a trip or for a shorter sightseeing excursion, (3) A brief trip to or through a place for the purpose of seeing it, (4) A journey to fulfill a round of engagements in several places, (5) A shift, as in a factory, (6) A period of duty at a single place or job, (7) A series of professional tournaments, as in golf [81]
Article four from Law of Vietnamese Tourism [83] described tour as an itinerary is planned by travel agencies, of which includes specified time, destinations, stop places, stay services, transportation, other services and the price of the tour.
Tour can help us get the most out of our holiday by saving time, planning and stress. Some of the many benefits of a tour include having an expert guide, transportation, meeting new people, visiting places off the beaten track, organized accommodation and importantly a local knowledge.
In the thesis, tour is considered as the journey’s fixed schedule of which includes duration, visiting places, accommodation, transportation, an expert guide, assurance, the price and other services. It can be called package tours.
b. Definition of Tourism
If we consider the following definition of World Tourism Organization, we will find that Tourism is not only the concept of visiting a place, visiting friends and relatives or taking a vacation, Tourism is also taking part in a convention, a business conference or other professional activities.
According to World Tourism Organization [82]: ‘Tourism comprises the activities of persons travelling to and staying in places outside of their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes not related to the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited.’
Furthermore, Tourism is different from Travel. While Travel is defined: ‘the act of going from one place to another place. It always involves walking, but can also include the use of planes, trains, autos, draft animals, or water craft. The duration of travel can vary, from one hour to several years’ [142]. And ‘travelers seek out experiences that are both educational and exciting; they tend to stray farther off the beaten path than tourists. Tourists, on the other hand, seek pleasure and comfort, so they will end up in places that cater to the tourist experience’ [8]. Or ‘travelling is for work, health care and to visit people for a short while tourism is when people rest away from work, have fun and enjoy themselves for a long while’ [13].
c. Product of Tourism
The tourism product was defined by many as an tangible product to the customer, a service/ experience the customer can only have once purchased this is stated in Middleton’s definition, the tourism product ‘may be defined as a bundle or package of tangible and intangible components, based on activities at a destination. The package is perceived by the tourist as an experience available at a price’, Middleton & Clarke [45]. The most basis form of the tourism product is a service and not a typical tangible product, ‘the purchase of a package tour is a speculative investment, involving a high degree of trust on the part of the purchaser’ Holloway [26]. This means that the tourism product is almost a promise of an experience to the customer. The five characteristics of service sector industries are Intangible, Perish-ability, Inseparability and Lack of ownership. With the tourism product being a service the more tangible and the more personal to the customer service is intangible and that the purchase has a lack of ownership then the purchase is not as attractive to the potential customer. However, if the idea of the tourism product is portrayed correctly by the organization then the potential customer will feel like the tourism product is almost as good as a manufactured product.
Tourism products are not ‘sent’ to tourists as consumer products, but tourists most come to the location where the products are located. Thus, to be successful, tourism products are also called attraction. Attraction, by definition, has the ability to draw people to there. The activities that people pursue at attraction are recreation and entertainment. Recreation and entertainment can take many forms. It can be active or passive close to home or far away or relaxing, inexpensive or costly. Investors and designers for tourism development should provide a combination of different attraction that satisfies tourists by giving them various types of experience.
- Tourism Advertisements
Tourism Advertisements refer to all advertisements which are published through various forms and contain tours, duration, itinerary and other services. Moreover, tourism advertising also follows the AIDA principle used in marketing: ‘attracting Attention, creating Interest, fostering Desire and inspiring Action’.
Tourism advertisements as the communicative intent is to provide tourists with the essential information for helping them decide what places to visit and which tours to book. Therefore successful tourism advertisements must be both informative and persuasive, and they rely heavily on the use of words and images to achieve this aim.
Today, when everything has become easier with the Internet, be online to search for travel information seems to have become popular. People could online to search for adventures and experiences that will offer them unforgettable memories of their holiday and unique and unparalleled experiences. [55]
A STUDY ON METAPHORIC EXPRESSIONSIN ENGLISH TOURISM ADVERTISEMENTS
A STUDY ON METAPHORIC EXPRESSIONSIN ENGLISH TOURISM ADVERTISEMENTS
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