Images and writing in tourist brochures

Abstract

The scope of the paper is to investigate the role of visual and verbal modes in destination image formation, with a focus on the 2009 ‘Malta, Gozo and Comino’ brochure issued by the Malta Tourism Authority. Discussing brochures as pivotal genres within tourism communication [Antelmi, D., Held, G., & Santulli, F. (2007). Pragmatica della comunicazione turistica. Roma: Editori Riuniti; Calvi, M.V. (2010). Los generos discursivos en la lengua del turismo: Una propuesta de clasificaciœn. Iberica, 19, 9–32; Dann, G. (1996a). The language of tourism. A sociolinguistic perspective. Oxford: CAB International; Francesconi, S. (2007). English for tourism promotion: Italy in British tourism texts. Milano: Hoepli], attention will be paid to specific multimodal framing of the ideational, interpersonal and textual functions [Halliday, M.A.K. (1978). Language as social semiotics. London: Edward Arnold; Halliday, M.A.K., & Hasan, R. (1985). Language, context and text: Aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press]. First, the visual text will be addressed, through the observation of participants, perspective, frame, social distance, light and colours [Kress, G., & Van Leeuwen, T. (2006). The grammar of visual design (2nd ed.). London: Routledge]. Assumptions will be then checked and the verbal text will be analysed by means of corpus linguistics and the Wordsmith Tools 5.0 software. Particular attention will be devoted to verbal items like pronouns and adjectives shaping of the three core values of heritage, hospitality and diversity, these last identified as the cornerstone of Malta Brand in internal and external campaigns. The multimodal analysis of the brochure will show that both visual and verbal texts promote the core values. More specifically, these are first communicated through the predominant visual text, then described, clarified, expanded and confirmed through the accompanying verbal text.

Keywords:

• brochure
• genre
• multimodality
• corpus linguistics
• image destination
• Malta

Acknowledgements

This research has been funded by the Italo-Maltese Programme for Cultural Cooperation. I thank Prof. Marie Alexander for inviting me to the University of Malta and the Department of Linguistics for hosting me. I am grateful to Kevin Drake, Director of MTA, and to Andrew Warrington and Zammit Munro at Media Consulta for discussing Malta's branding and for providing valuable insights. I am indebted to the patient and accurate anonymous reviewers of this article. Finally, thanks to Miechelle van Kampen for the language revision of the article. Brochure texts have been reproduced by permission of MTA (copyright MTA).