Linguistic Analysis of Authentic Texts: The TPT Corpus

SPECIALIZED CORPUS
Material created by Ida Ruffolo
ANALYSING SUSTAINABLE
POLICIES OF UK HOTEL
WEBSITES
AIM OF THE PROJECT….
Material created by Ida Ruffolo
The tourism industry has certainly not been immune to the demand
of environmental responsibility, thus having to put into practice
actions that do not harm the environment and employing a
discourse that highlights the greening of the corporate
consciousness.
The aim is to understand how tourism companies and
organizations provide information on sustainability.
AIM OF THE PROJECT…. (2)
Analyze the discourse used by hotels when promoting the
green practices put forth by the company.
do British and Italian hotels attempt to create a
green image?
 How
do they try to persuade their guests to protect
nature during their stay without disappointing
traditional expectations of a certain luxury, e.g. daily
change of linen, etc.
Material created by Ida Ruffolo
 How
MARKETING STRATEGIES FOR THE TOURISM
INDUSTRY
 Developing
 Businesses
need to collaborate and engage with their
customers through purposeful use of internet.
Material created by Ida Ruffolo
a good customer relationship through the
Internet can increase customer’s satisfaction, loyalty and
retention.
REDESIGNING WEBSITES FOR HOTELS TO
MEET CUSTOMERS’ DEMANDS
need to be redesigned and updated to match
customers’ demands
 Persuasion
is the key function that has to be constantly
reassessed in terms of culture, language and genre.
Material created by Ida Ruffolo
 Websites
UK GREEN HOTELS CORPUS
 Hotel

websites accredited as sustainable in the UK
 Promoting
local life
 Encouraging
the use of public transport
 Minimizing waste
 Being
efficient
 Giving
something back
 Respecting
the environment
Material created by Ida Ruffolo
Green Tourism Scheme
UK GREEN HOTELS CORPUS
British English is the source language.

Only hotels in the UK – 10 (about 10.000 words)

The corpus was compiled including the following micro-
texts:
 Homepage
 Sections
with references to environmental sustainability
Material created by Ida Ruffolo

LET’S ANALYZE THE CORPUS
Material created by Ida Ruffolo
Step 1:
 Create a wordlist of the corpus
 Write down the types and tokens
 Select the twenty most frequent content words
ANALYZING THE WORDLIST




Promoting local life

Encouraging the use of public transport

Minimizing waste

Being efficient

Giving something back

Respecting the environment
Material created by Ida Ruffolo

Are there more adjectives, nouns, or verbs?
What do these words remind you of ?
What impressions do they give you?
Are there any semantic categories that they seem to focus more
on? E.g.
LET’S GET INTO THE TEXT..LOOKING INTO
ADJECTIVES
Material created by Ida Ruffolo
Qualifying adjectives play a crucial role in the verbal
representation of tourist destinations, as they often create
the promotional message itself.
The owners of tourist accommodation use some particular
qualifying adjectives to promote their facilities, as these
adjectives can “seduce” the tourist, capture his/her
attention and give a connotation of exclusivity to the
holiday.
Let’s start our analysis with a comparison between the
frequency of occurrence of qualifying adjectives in English
and
Italian
promotional
texts.
LET’S GET INTO THE TEXT…..
Material created by Ida Ruffolo
Step 2:
 Choose one or two keywords
 Create concordance lines for these keywords
 Observe what is happening in the sentences
 Can you notice any patterns / repetitions ?
LET’S GET INTO THE TEXT…..

Suggestions:
Are there any references to the five senses?
 Are there any references to cultural experiences?

Material created by Ida Ruffolo
Step 3:
 Create collocate lists for the keywords that you
have chosen
 Any interesting patterns?
 What words follow or come before your keywords?
 Why impression doe this give you?
LET’S TAKE A LOOK AT THE TECHNIQUES OF THE
LANGUAGE OF TOURISM
Which one do you notice?
 Comparison
 key
words & keying
 Testimony
 Humour
 Languaging
 ego-targeting
Material created by Ida Ruffolo
 VERBAL: