Evaluation In English Tourism Texts On Chinese, British And American Websites: A Corpus-based Comparative Study

Web-based tourism texts, as an important means of promoting tourism products and services, are supposed to be abundant in evaluation; and evaluation per se is universal in language communication. The above constitutes the point of departure for this study. Informed by APPRAISAL theory, this study analyzes the construction of evaluative meanings in web-based English tourism texts (ETTs). Situated in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) at the level of discourse semantics, APPRAISAL theory is developed by J.R. Martin et al, representatives of neo-Hallidayan School, to construe interpersonal meaning. It focuses on"the kinds of attitudes that are negotiated in a text, the strength of the feelings involved and the ways in which values are sourced and readers aligned"(Martin & Rose 2007: 25). With its three interacting domains– ATTITUDE, ENGAGEMENT and GRADUATION, this systemic framework can be applied to explore evaluation in various discourses.This study investigates the semantic potentiality of evaluative meaning in English tourism texts on Chinese, British and American websites, as well as the similarities and differences in constructing evaluation among the three varieties of ETTs. It is aimed to discover the characteristic preferences for particular appraisal resources in constructing evaluation in native ETTs, and to find out the deficiencies in using evaluation in Chinese ETTs. Therefore, this study is hoped to be instructive for Chinese ESL/EFL (English as a Second Language / English as a Foreign Language) writers who wish to compose ETTs (or perhaps to translate Chinese tourism texts into English or edit them). The study employs two analytical procedures: first, based on large corpus files, it discusses the semantic potentiality for evaluative meaning in the three types of ETTs; then, various evaluation features are explored in detail concerning resources of ATTITUDE, ENGAGEMENT and GRADUATION under the APPRAISAL framework. All discussions are conducted by combining quantitative statistics with qualitative analyses.By examining the lexical diversity, density and coverage, the key words, the 4-gram structures, and imperatives and exclamatives, we find that all the three varieties of ETTs have a strong tendency for evaluation; by comparison, British ETTs show most obvious potentiality, followed by American and Chinese ETTs. In terms of attitudinal resources, the three types of ETTs prefer APPRECIATION most, especially the Chinese ETTs. AFFECT is the second choice for British and American ETTs, but it is the last choice for Chinese ETTs. JUDGEMENT is the least favored attitudinal option for native ETT writers. With respect to ENGAGEMENT, Monoglossic utterances are more favored over Heterogloss across the three varieties of ETTs, which indicates that ETTs are not particularly typical of dialogic nature. Further observation reveals that Chinese ETTs especially prefer Monogloss options. All the three types of ETTs show a strong tendency for contracting dialogic space over expanding dialogic space; and Chinese ETTs employ even more resources for contracting dialogic space. Moreover, the distributions of Disclaim and Proclaim are in balance in the two native varieties of ETTs, while Chinese ETTs favor Proclaim in particular, mainly focusing on Pronounce and Endorse. By contrast, the British and American ETTs are featured by Entertain and Counter. As far as GRADUATION is concerned, the choice for FORCE is the common feature of ETTs regardless of cultural backgrounds. Closer examination demonstrates that native ETTs prefer Quantification while Chinese ETTs keep a balance in choosing Intensification and Quantification.This study, to some extent, reveals significant features of evaluation construction in English tourism texts, and points out the deficiencies in using evaluation in Chinese ETTs. At the same time, it modifies and extends some aspects of APPRAISAL theory so as to facilitate the analysis of evaluation in tourism discourse. However, due to the intrinsic complexity of evaluation and the limitations such as the corpus size, further research on this subject needs to be carried out in the future.