A Pragmatic Study On Tourism Advertisements From The Perspective Of The Adaptation Theory

With the rapid developm ent of the tourism industry, tourism advertisem ent, as a kind of applied language, has becom e a subcategory of the comm ercial advertisements. Tourism advertisement is one of the m ost direct and effective ways employed by tour operators to propagandize the tourism products, take part in the com petition of the tourism market and get more tourism consum ers. Compared to other products, tourism products is intangible, variable, inseparabl e and perishable, whic h makes the tourism advertisement that is a comm on means of communication between the producers of tourism products and the consum ers is of influential value for both the tourism enterprises and the potential tourists. Firstly, tour operators aim to stimulate the interests of the potential consumers, attract their attention and successfully persuade them to take action of purchasing through the planned, or ganized and the goal-oriented prom otional activities; meanwhile, to ur operators can establish their ow n brand im ages, strengthen and enlarge the current m arket and enhance the market share. Se condly, the potential tourists try to find the fa vorable products from the tourism market with various tourism products depending on the information conve yed by the tourism advertisements and smoothly realize their travel plans. The tourism products which adequately meet needs of the tourists can take up a larger market share, especially in the current market with fierce competition.The Adaptation Theory is pr oposed by the general secret ary of the International Pragmatics Association Jef Verschueren. The Adaptation Theory is a significant and comprehensive theory in pragm atics. According to the Ad aptation Theory, the use of language is a process of m aking choices, c onsciously or unconsciously, driven by the internal or external reasons. Tourism advertisement, as a kind of applied language is also the result of language choice-making. So, in the process of using language, the writers of the tourism advertisements who attempt to make the choices at every level of language structures to adapt to the comm unicational context in o rder to rea lize the goal of communication.In short, based on Jef V erschueren’s Adaptation Theory, by analyzing the language of the tourism advertisements chosen from the professional webs ites home and abroad, applying a qualitative study, this thesis ai ms to explain how the writers of tourism advertisements realize the adaptation to the correlates of the communicative contexts by making linguistic choices to reach th e goal of communication, hoping to be a supplementary material to make the Adaptation Theory be more predicative and better guide people’s creation of tourism advertisements.This thesis contains three parts: in troduction, main body and conclusion. The main content is as follows:The first part is introduction. This part firstly introduces the study background and the theoretical support of this thesis, in cluding a brief introduction to the tourism advertisement, the Adaptation Theory and th e research status of them. And then the author points out the unique ness and the innova tion of th e research. In the end, the practical significance of this thesis is presented.The second part is the main body that contains four chapters.Chapter One is litera ture review. This chapter consists of two parts. The f irst part presents an overview of the Adaptation Theory. It firstly gives the inform ation about the background of the Adaptation Theory; then the key notions of the Adaptation Theory are presented, including making choices, variability, negotiability and ad aptability and four angles of investigation. Th e second part m akes a brief introduction to the tourism advertisement which consists of the definiti on, function, feature and classification of the tourism advertisement. Thus, a deep and com prehensive understanding about the connotation of the tourism advertisement can be got.In Chapter Two, based on the Adaptation Theo ry, it analyzes how the writers of the tourism advertisements realize the adaptation to the mental world by making the proper linguistic choices. In the proc ess of using language, the activated mental world includes cognitive elements and emotive elements. This chapter contains two parts. The first part analyzes the adaptation to the em otive element. This kind of adaptation includes the adaptation to the psych ological distance, the caring and indiscrim ination of the tour operator and the m otivation. The second part explor es the adaptation to the cognitive element. This kind of adaptation includes th e adaptation need for actual destin ation information, tourism operator information, detailed itinerary information and comprehensive useful tips.In Chapter Three, it an alyzes the adapta tion to the soc ial world in the tour ism advertisements via the Adaptation Theory. The social world m ainly includes the social elements which can realize the inter-adaptation to the language choice during the process of language use. This chapte r contains four parts. The first part analyzes how the language choices of the tourism advertisem ent realize the adaptation to the tar get communicative groups. The second part explores the adaptation to the tourism laws and regulations. The third part probes into the adaptation to the social settings of the tourists. In this part, it discloses how the language choices of tou rism advertisement fulfill the adaptation to the communicative norm s and the moral principles. The last part investigates how the language choices of the tourism advertisement realize the adaptation to the cultural differences.Chapter Four analyzes th e adaptation to the physical world in the tourism advertisements. In terms of the physical world, the language choices are made to adapt to the temporal reference and spatial reference.The third part is conclusion. It makes a summary of the major findings. The study in this thesis presents a brand-new understand ing of the realization of the comm unicative purpose in tourism advertisement, and p romotes the creation of the tou rism advertisements. In the last part, it points out the limitations of this thesis, and proposes some suggestions for further studies.