A cross-cultural contrastive analysis of interpersonal markers in promotional discourse in travel agency websites

The present study is an investigation into the use of interpersonal markers in English and Italian tourism texts obtained from three successful online travel agency websites: one American, one British and one Italian. The aim is to explore cross-linguistic, cross-cultural pragmatic perspectives through a comparative analysis of the discoursal and pragmatic features related to the interpersonal use of language, so as to better understand how the discursive patterns of tourism texts from different cultures might affect the communicative function, or the interactional metadiscourse strategies, in promotional discourse. Results show how a comparative analysis of interpersonal devices in tourism websites offers insights not only into the way in which culture is conveyed and transmitted via tourism discourse, but more specifically into how authorial stance is constructed in the websites and how the audience is engaged in the discourse. The premise is that an awareness of the cross-linguistic and cross-cultural differences involved in interpersonal discourse can contribute to improving cross-cultural understanding, and ultimately contribute to the fields of intercultural and translation studies.