Exploring Sustainable Tourism through Semio-Linguistic Analysis: The Case of Europe's Top Destinations

The ubiquitous presence of the term “sustainability” in the “semiosphere” explains why it has acquired multiple meanings in common usage, depending on the domain of discourse within which it happens to occur. The present contribution seeks to explore the semantics of sustainability within the specific discourse domain of tourism, where it is largely addressed and exploited for promotional purposes. Considering the key role played by sustainability as a determining factor in the choice of a tourist destination, many countries’ institutional tourist websites include a section dealing with sustainable travel. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative analysis, this study investigates the semio-linguistic mechanisms by means of which a locality aims to build up an image of itself as a sustainable destination. The examples discussed are taken from a corpus of promotional institutional webpages and selected to best represent how the promotors of destinations entrust discourse with the task of creating meanings capable of influencing tourists’ perceptions and choices. The semio-linguistic analysis will reveal the presence of a series of narrative constants and valorisation strategies beneath the apparent diversity of the discursive surface of the promotional webpages investigated. It will also help outline the profile of the potential “sustainable” tourist inscribed in the texts under consideration.