Rhetorical Narrative Criticism On Tourist Publicity Advertisements

With economical and cultural globalization, tourist industry is going into the new era. According to the prediction of World Tourism Organization, China will be the second most favorable tourist destination in the world in place of Spain in2015, and become the most favorable tourist destination in place of France in2020. At that time, there will be137million foreign tourists visiting China. The internationalization of tourist industry renders the local tourist publicity advertisements pay more and more attention on its persuasion. As the first tourist promoting video, Beautiful Scenery in Guangxi earned worldwide acclaim after being finished in2002, which has become the business card of Guangxi. This tourist publicity advertisement is probed mostly from the perspective of visual analysis, and the rhetoric theory is seldom used to explore it. Besides, Beautiful Scenery in Guangxi did not present the attractiveness of natural landscape and local culture in the traditional way, instead, by developing narrative. Accordingly, it is necessary and significant to study Beautiful Scenery in Guangxi from the perspective of rhetorical narrative criticism.This present thesis applies qualitative research method to explore the rhetoric of the tourist publicity advertisement from three levels:narrative elements, narrative structure and narrative signs in the framework of narrative criticism. These three levels analysis go from narrative content to narrative form, from macro to micro and return to macro again.(1) on the first level, the key narrative elements and their relations are analyzed.(2) on the second level, the narrative structure of the TPA-Beautiful Scenery in Guangxi is analyzed.(3) on the third level, the narrative signs are analyzed by examining the characteristics of verbal text at subtitle and the characteristics of visual texts concerning colors and shots.The research finds that,(1) the key narrative elements of the TPA-Beautiful Scenery in Guangxi includes narrator, setting, characters, audiences and theme and they interact mutually to present audiences the local attractiveness.(2) the narrative structure in musical movement in Beautiful Scenery in Guangxi makes the audience gain the important tourist information and appreciate the local unique attractiveness in an easier way.(3) the skillful handling of narrative signs including the application of colors and shots can help to present local attractiveness.This research not only can be applied to the chosen advertisement in this thesis but also can be used to analyze other tourist publicity advertisements. The significance of this thesis are as following two aspects:on one hand, theoretically, this thesis applies western rhetoric narrative criticism theory to tourist publicity advertisements to guide the production, and provide a new perspective for ads research; On the other hand, by means of analysis on the specific tourist publicity advertisement-Beautiful Scenery in Guangxi, the reader can have a better understanding of western rhetoric narrative criticism theory, and on the basis of knowing enough relevant theory, tourist publicity advertisements that can present more local attractiveness and that can be accepted by foreign tourists in a more easier way are produced to promote Chinese tourism to enter into the international market.