A Contrastive Study On The Discourse Of Chinese And American Tourism Brochures

Tourism has become an important industry undergoing rapid growth on a global scale. The development of the tourism industry has, in turn, exerted a tremendous influence on the economy and culture of the world. As a form of advertising, the tourism brochure is a kind of vital marketing tool, through the functions of both informing potential tourists and persuading them to be certain consumers, it has become a principal means of promoting tourism in the whole world.Halliday's Systematic-Functional Grammar (SFG) holds that language is best regarded as a form of activity, or to be more specific, a form of activity of human beings in societies. Halliday believes that language is used to perform certain functions. Interpersonal function, as one of the three Metafunctions, refers to the function in which language is used to enable people to participate in acts with other people, to take on roles and to express and understand communicative feelings.Based on the theory of interpersonal function, this thesis aims to make a contrast between Chinese and American tourism brochures through Mood, Modality and other realizations of interpersonal meaning. To ensure the reliability and validity of the study, both quantitative and qualitative analysis are employed so as to examine how and to what extent Chinese and American tourism brochures are represented from the perspective of interpersonal function.Many linguists have been studying tourism brochure discourse from translation, genre analysis, and stylistics or error analysis;however, the contrastive study of the tourism brochure discourse from the angle of its interpersonal function, is comparatively rare. Nevertheless, such studies are especially needed considering China's entry into WTO and the globalization of an increasing tourism industry. Thus, motivated by the research need, this study attempts to explore the application of functional grammar to the contrastive analysis of tourism brochure discourse and tries to find the similarities and disparities between Chinese and American tourismbrochures.In the analysis and discussion, there are 30 Chinese and 30 American samples in Appendixes I and II respectively, which come from the author's word-by-word copies of tourism brochures found in tourism books, tourism booklets and on the Internet. Most of the scenic spots in tourism brochures discourses are also well known. Through the analysis and discussion, the findings can be summarized as follows:First, functional grammar is applicable, not only in the contrastive analysis of novels, poems or expositions, but in the contrastive analysis of tourism brochures.Second, taking one discourse and its English equivalence as an example is a good approach of contrastive study.Third, there are some similarities between Chinese and American tourism brochures: (1) the majority of the sentences in Chinese tourism brochures and American ones are written in declarative mood;(2) both Chinese and American tourism brochures share the same communicative function of exclamation;that is, to express the speaker's surprise and show strong emotional response about something;(3) in terms of mood adjuncts, both in Chinese and American samples, there were no examples in types of readiness, typicality and obviousness;(4) simple present tense and simple future tense are popular in tourism brochures;(5) the second person is predominant in Chinese and American tourism brochures.Nevertheless, the disparities between the two samples are outstanding: (1) more interrogative and imperative sentences are used in American tourism brochures, so as to give the language variety and make it friendly, and to achieve the aim of persuasion;(2) low value modal operators are more commonly used in Chinese tourism brochures. However, American samples frequently use the median value modal operators. There are also high value modal operators used in the Chinese discourse to express the copywriter's confidence in the tourist spot and to convince the readers;(3) in terms of person system, the frequency of personal pronouns in American samples is much higher than that in the Chinese ones;Chinese samples have two kinds of forms "你" and "您 in the second person to show politeness, while the American ones only have one form"you";rhetorically, the third person "jtfe" or "#," is employed instead of '"￡" in Chinese tourism brochures to refer to the place which will be described. (4) In the appraisal system, American tourism brochures emphasize subjective affect and judgment, while the Chinese ones pay attention to objective appreciation, which reflects a different cultural tendency between the two languages.Due to the authentic data collection and scientific methods, the findings of this study could be considered reliable. It is sincerely hoped that this study will also provide insights into both the understanding and further studies of tourism brochure discourse in translation, composition and teaching of English for Tourism. At the same time, it is the author's hope that it will benefit readers, translators, English teachers and learners in their practice.