Building the tourist destination through multiple semiotic modes

Olga Denti

2021-01-01

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Abstract

Over time, multiple semiotic modes have contributed in different ways to the construction and exchange of cultural meanings in Tourism Discourse. This has required the analysis and understanding of the modes employed and the recontextualization and adaptation of texts and images, especially to the new web genres. Nowadays, the tourist experience is mediated by personal, digital, and mobile technologies, which redirect the tourist gaze and become the mediator between the traveler and the tourist destination. Consequently, the tourism text must be considered as a single unit, where different semiotic resources intermingle to enhance its communicative strength. The present study will attempt to propose a methodology to read and write tourism texts in a comprehensive and effective way. It will start by focusing on the relationship between text and image to see how they co-exist in the page and in the way the page is arranged. Then, it will apply a functional approach to the analysis of such semiotic units. The result will show how the boundaries between image and text have become blurred, and textuality is built less through verbal syntax and more through rhetorical visual design.