A Contrastive Analysis Of English City Guidebooks By Chinese And Overseas Publishers

Tourism and language are closely related. However, up to now, tourism discoursein China still lacks a systematic and comprehensive study due to the complexity oftourism phenomenon and large amounts of the tourism discourse are designed fromthe public. This study attempts to investigate how English is used in a typical tourismdiscourse-guidebook for westerners to tour in Shanghai, P.R. China. A contrastivestudy is carried out to explore the distinct linguistic features of English guidebooks ofShanghai published by Chinese and overseas publishers. This study addresses thefollowing three questions:1. What are the similarities and differences of English guidebooks published byChinese and overseas publishers with regard to the linguistic features at the macrolevel?2. What are the similarities and differences of English guidebooks published byChinese and overseas publishers with regard to the linguistic features at the microlevel?3. What accounts for these similarities and differences between the two groupsof English guidebooks?The contrastive study of English guidebooks adopts the mixed methodology ofquantitative and qualitative approach. The qualitative approach dominates the macrolevel analysis of the guidebook features. The similarities and differences are examinedin terms of format, content, register and genre based on register analysis and genericanalysis. At the micro level, the corpus approach is adopted to examine the lexical andgrammatical features. The linguistic context, professional settings, social, cultural andcognitive context are taken into consideration at both two levels and the whole studyis based on the self-built corpus of English guidebooks of Shanghai.The result shows that at the macro and the micro linguistic level, the similaritiesand differences between guidebooks by Chinese publishers and overseas publishersdo exist. The similarities arise from the fact that they share similar communicative purposes: informational, promotional and persuasive. The significant differencesdemonstrate that the two groups of guidebooks can be considered as sub genres sincethe two groups of guidebooks are written and edited by two groups of distinct authorsor editors. The obvious differences between the authors or editors can be grouped intothe variables such as English proficiency, cognitive style, intimacy with tourismdestination and attitude toward tourism destination and its culture. These variablesaccount for the significant differences between the two groups of guidebooks.The main contribution of the present study lies in the fact that contrastiveanalysis of English guidebooks is conducted between two distinct groups of authors oreditors. From the viewpoint of language proficiency, the Chinese authors and editorscan be regarded as non-native English speakers whereas the overseas authors can beregarded as native English speakers. From the viewpoint of tourism destination,Chinese authors are locals whereas the overseas authors are non-locals, although theyare familiar with Shanghai and China. Therefore the crossing features of the twogroups of authors or editors results in noticeable differences between the groups ofguidebooks with relation to the same tourism destination-Shanghai.The study can shed some lights on the further tourism discourse studies,specialized discourse studies and discourse studies. The study can also provide usefulreferences for the improvement of readability of English guidebooks by Chinesepublishers. In addition, the study provides valuable resources for teachers and learnersin their tourism English teaching and learning, Shanghai’s tour guide English teachingand learning in particular. Furthermore, the study also provides effective perspectiveand suggestions for tourism administrative bureaus and tourism enterprises on how topromote tourism destination in an effective and efficient way so that more and morepotential tourists can be converted into actual tourists.