A Positive Discourse Analysis Of English Eco-hotel Advertisements

In recent years, green tourism and eco-tourism boomed all around the world, and theirpurpose is to reduce human beings’ negative impact on ecological environment and toensure the recycling uses of tourism resources. The development of eco-tourism promotedthe appearance of eco-hotel, which refers to a hotel or accommodation that has madeimportant improvements to its structure in order to minimize its impact on the environment.Eco-hotel advertisements, by the means of discourse, introduce to the potential customersthe location, surroundings, facilities and activities available, with the goal of attractingcustomers. This is the basic aim of eco-hotel advertisements. On the other hand, eco-hotelis distinct from others for their efforts to protect the environment. This characteristic isimplied in eco-hotel advertisements, which will, to some extent, improve the public’secological awareness and will make contributions to the whole society.As Hu Zhuanglin (2012) pointed out, the materials for discourse analysis shouldinclude good news which promotes peace, and it is essential to put forward a new goal fordiscourse analysis, that is to design but not to criticize. Design means rejecting theprevious negative behaviors and employing conscious discourse analysis to formulate abetter future. This is the significance of Positive Discourse Analysis (PDA). Due to thecontributions to the environment protection made by eco-hotels and the impact of eco-hoteladvertisements on the public awareness, this thesis analyzes the twenty English eco-hoteladvertisements from the perspective of PDA.One of the theoretical frameworks in the thesis is Appraisal Theory, which is the mostwidely accepted methodology in PDA. Moreover, deep ecological thoughts are introducedas the other theoretical framework. Based on these two frameworks, this thesis conducts ananalysis on the twenty English eco-hotel advertisements from the three subsystems ofAppraisal Theory: attitude, engagement and graduation.Attitude, as the core of Appraisal Theory, is also the focus in this thesis. Analyzingfrom the three subcategories of attitude, namely affect, judgment and appreciation, thisthesis reaches the conclusion that appreciation resources are used the most frequently.Affect mainly reflects the writer or speaker’s emotion, and judgment is mainly concerned with evaluation of other people or their behavior, and appreciation is mainly involved withevaluation of the things or nature. To highlight the objectiveness, English eco-hoteladvertisements focus on descriptions of “things” such as hotel environment, facilities andservice, hence appreciation resources occupy the biggest proportion. The selected Englisheco-hotel advertisements all emphasize the convenient location, tranquil and naturalenvironment and recycling facilities. Among the three subtypes of appreciation, valuationand reaction resources account for bigger percentages than composition resources.Engagement is realized by monogloss and heterogloss. The former excludes thepossibility of dialogue, while the latter leaves some space for dialogue. English eco-hoteladvertisements, as a form of discourse to promote eco-hotels to readers, definitely allowfor the space for dialogue, so this thesis only takes heterogloss into consideration.Contraction resources are employed more frequently than expansion resources, whichmeans that most advertisements put enormous efforts into persuading potential customersto real ones by means of firm and positive language resources.Attitude, as the core of Appraisal Theory, is gradable, and this is realized bygraduation. Most of the selected English eco-hotel advertisements employ raise in focusand sharpen in focus, to emphasize the good opportunity offered by the eco-hotels toindulge in nature, the convenient locations and the convenient and diverse facilities andextraordinary services provided by the hotels.