Cultural Values Are Communicated: How Hotel Introductions Persuade

ABSTRACT

This study looks into the question of how to theorize the role of cultural values in communication through persuasion. A multi-method approach is used to encode 60 English hotel introductions and 60 Chinese ones for data analyses. The relation between cultural values and persuasive strategies is explored in the context of communication. It is argued that hotel discourse not only reflects cultural values; more importantly, it creates empirical evidence for people within the culture to learn and induce their own conception of their culture.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural value
• communication
• persuasive appeals
• hotel introduction

Acknowledgments

Thanks are extended to Miss Zhu Shen who helped in data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Data from https://china-outbound.com/cotri-analytics/, retrieved on October 20 2018.

2. From Hilton Newark Penn station website “About Hilton Newark Penn Station” at http://www.guestreservations.com/hilton-newark-penn-station/booking.

3. From Sichuan Jinjiang Hotel website “Overview Sichuan Jinjiang Hotel” at http://www.jjhotel.com/en/default.aspx.

4. Introduction from www.comfortinnbirmingham.co.uk.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by Overseas Diffusion Center of Hubei Culture [grant number HBWHHWCB201604]; Social Science Department of Ministry of Education of PRC [grant number 16YJA740022]; and Fulbright Visiting Research Scholar Program.

Notes on contributors

Donghong Liu

Donghong Liu is a Professor of English in School of Foreign Languages at Central China Normal University, China. Her research interests include comparative rhetoric and second language composition, inter-cultural composition and communication, the teaching of English writing and Second Language acquisition.

Hong Wang

Hong Wang is an associate professor of communication at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include cultural semiotics, intercultural communication, and environmental communication.