Stereotyping in Tourism Discourse: Intercultural Communication and Nation Branding

The aim of the chapter is to present stereotyping as an important discourse strategy and culture-specific linguistic phenomena in tourism advertising discourse. Stereotyping in tourism advertising occurs when the authors of advertisments generalise underlining only those qualities that make a competitive advantage of the advertisied product. Stereotypes therefore play the key role in constituting the identity of tourism product. Besides the tourism product, also the addressee is stereotyped, since the persuasion strategy of the tourism advertising should be adapted to a generalised representation of the specific target audience. In the chapter the stereotyping in the tourism advertising discourse is observed regarding the choice of arguments and modification of their intensity. Further, the intercultural comparison is made between the arguments and their modification in Slovenian and Italian tourism advertising texts. In the final part of the chapter the metaphorization is shown as a discourse strategy complementary to stereotyping.