ANALYZING THE LANGUAGE OF ADVERTISEMENTS ON TOURISM IN VIETNAM

HUE UNIVERSITY
HUE COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
---------

GRADUATION THESIS

“ANALYZING THE LANGUAGE OF ADVERTISEMENTS ON
TOURISM IN VIETNAM”

Student: Nguyễn Mỹ Ngân
Student’s Code: 10K4051057
Year: 2012-2016

Supervisor: Ms Trương Thị Như Thủy (MA)

Hue, 5/2016


Graduation thesis

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the process of completing this graduation paper, I have received a great deal
of help, advice, guidance and encouragement from many teachers, friends and my
family. It is my great pleasure I have got.
First of all, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Ms Truong
Thi Nhu Thuy (MA), for her constant support, various materials, precious advice and
valuable comments on draft chapters to complete this study. This would not have been
possible conducted without her supports.
Besides, I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Hue University College of
Foreign Languages for providing us professional learning environment and facilities as

well as all the teachers in English Department for their useful lessons, teaching,
guidance, experience sharing with the whole hearted instruction and giving enthusiasm
to lift us to be better ones as we are today.
Especially, I am proud of my family and friends. They are always beside,
support and encourage me throughout this study. I wishfully send the deepest gratitude
to all of efforts, support for me to complete this graduation paper.
Finally, it is an honor for me to extend my regards to all those who kindly gave
their advice and supported me. If there are not these helps, I could not complete my
graduation paper successfully. All your help and support is motive power for me to
finish this study.
Hue, May 2016
Nguyen My Ngan

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DECLARATION
I certify that this assignment is my own work and I used only the sources listed
in the bibliography. Moreover, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it hasn’t
contained any materials previously published or written by other people, except where
reference is used in the text of the study.

Hue, May 2016
Nguyen My Ngan

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LIST OF TABLES
Table 4.1: Lexical choices in tourism advertisement............................................................................39
Table 4.2: Lexical choices in English and Vietnamese tourism advertisements....................................45
Table 4.3: Verbs used in English tourism advertisements....................................................................45
Table 4.4: Sentence structures in English and Vietnamese tourism advertisements............................46
Table 4.5: Sentence types in English and Vietnamese tourism advertisements...................................46
Table 4.6: Figure of speech in English and Vietnamese tourism advertisements.................................47

LIST OF CHARTS
Picture 1.1: The process of communication.........................................................................................10
Chart 1.1: Top 20 the most popular triggering words...........................................................................15
Chart 4.1: Lexical choices in tourism advertisement............................................................................39
Chart 4.2: Percentage of type of adjective in Tourism advertisements in Vietnam..............................41
Chart 4.3: Sentence types in tourism advertisements in Vietnam........................................................41
Chart 4.4: Sentences realized by structure in tourism advertisements in Vietnam..............................43
Chart 4.5: Figure of speech in tourism advertisements in Vietnam......................................................44

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Table of Contents
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................................1
1. Rationale of the research................................................................................................................1
2. Aims of the study............................................................................................................................1
3. Objectives of the study...................................................................................................................2
4. Scope of the study: .......................................................................................................................2

5. Research question..........................................................................................................................2
6. Structure of study...........................................................................................................................2
Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW.............................................................................................................4
2.1 Text and Context ..........................................................................................................................4
2.1.1 Concepts of Text ...................................................................................................................4
2.1.2 Concepts of Context ..............................................................................................................4
2.2. Advertising...................................................................................................................................4
2.2.1. Notions and Aims of Advertising...........................................................................................4
2.2.2. Genre of Advertising.............................................................................................................6
2.2.3. Language of Advertising........................................................................................................7

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2.2.4. Advertising as a means of communication...........................................................................8
2.2.4.1. The process of communication......................................................................................9
2.2.4.2. Functions of language..................................................................................................11
2.2.4.3 Language creativity.......................................................................................................12
2.3. Tourism and Tourism Advertisements.......................................................................................12
2.3.1. Definitions of Tourism........................................................................................................12
2.3.2. Products of Tourism............................................................................................................13
2.3.3. Tourism Advertisements.....................................................................................................13
2.3.4. Distinctive Function of Tourism Advertising.......................................................................13
2.3.5. Definitions of Tour..............................................................................................................13
2.3.6. Generic Structures of Tourism Advertisements..................................................................13
2.4. Linguistic characteristics............................................................................................................13
2.4.1. Lexical choices aspect.........................................................................................................13
2.4.1.1. Triggering Words.........................................................................................................13
2.4.1.2 Adjectives......................................................................................................................15

2.4.1.3 Verbs.............................................................................................................................17
2.4.1.4. Nouns...........................................................................................................................19
2.4.1.5. Pronouns......................................................................................................................19
2.4.2. Syntactic aspect..................................................................................................................20
2.4.2.1. Sentence types.............................................................................................................20
2.4.2.2. Sentence structure.......................................................................................................21

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2.4.3. Semantic aspect..................................................................................................................22
2.4.3.1. Personification.............................................................................................................23
2.4.3.2. Simile...........................................................................................................................23
2.4.3.3. Metaphor.....................................................................................................................24
2.4.3.4. Hyperbole....................................................................................................................24
2.4.3.5. Metonymy...................................................................................................................24
2.4.3.6. Polysemy and Homonymy...........................................................................................25
Chapter 3: METHODS AND PROCEDURES.............................................................................................25
3.1. Research design.........................................................................................................................25
3.2. Research methods.....................................................................................................................25
3.3. Description of samples..............................................................................................................26
3.4. Data collection and sources of data...........................................................................................26
3.5. Data analysis..............................................................................................................................26
3.6. Research procedures.................................................................................................................27
Chapter 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION................................................................................................27
4.1. The analyzed data......................................................................................................................27
4.1.1 Tourism advertisements in Vietnamese...............................................................................29
4.1.2 Tourism advertisements in English......................................................................................34
4.2. Analysis of lexical aspect............................................................................................................39

4.3. Analysis of syntactic aspect.......................................................................................................41
4.4. Analysis of semantic aspect.......................................................................................................43

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4.5 Comparison between English and Vietnamese tourism advertisements in Vietnam..................44
4.6. Factors affecting the language of tourism advertisements in Vietnam.....................................47
Chapter 5: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS......................................................................................49
5.1. Some suggestions for teaching and learning about tourism advertisements............................49
5.2. Conclusion.................................................................................................................................51
5.3. Limitation of the study...............................................................................................................53
5.4. Suggestion for further research.................................................................................................54
BIBLIOGRAPHY......................................................................................................................................55

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Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the research
Tourism promotion is an essential source of information for potential tourists. It
engages people in decision-making of the destination they would like to travel to. In
this digital age, greater attention has been given to the development on tourism
through such approaches and this has been utilized by most countries in the world,
which in turn has encouraged the necessary development of the tourism sector. To
promote tourism, travel agencies use languages feature to advertise their products to
customer. As a result, the language of tourism becomes one of the exited research
areas to focus on, in particular tourism advertisements.

Language of tourism advertisement is very important because it gives detailed
portrayal of the potential tourism destination in which attempts to persuade, attract,
encourage and seduce the potential tourists to be actual tourists. It is true to say that
tourism advertisement is a form of communication between the creator of
advertisement and the consumer. Since it is a form of communication, the concern
about the language will be essential. Besides, tourism advertisements have their own
characteristics by combination of the different components. The language used in
tourism advertisements must be condensed, believable, distinctive and images used are
highly selective and should look “real” in the eyes of readers. In other words, it must
sound convincing to readers in such a way that it quickly makes readers realize the
benefits of a certain product or service.
In Viet Nam, with the rapid economic growth and travel needs’ increase, we
can easily catch out any tourism advertisements everywhere and every time. It has
become a vital means for tourists to make a tour. In order to capture the public’s
attention as well as promote well tourism products, it is necessary to take language of
advertisements on tourism into consideration. Therefore, “Analyzing the Language
of Advertisements on Tourism in Vietnam” is expected to be beneficial.
2. Aims of the study
This study aims to analyze the typical language features of Advertisements on
Tourism in Vietnam.

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3. Objectives of the study
- To describe the language features of Language of Advertisements on Tourism
in Vietnam in terms of the lexical choice aspect, syntactic aspect and semantic aspect;

- To compare and contrast features of language between Vietnamese and
English languages to find out similarities and differences;
- To find culture factors affecting the language of tourism advertisements;
- To give some useful solutions for students of English in general and students
majored in English tourism to prepare for their future jobs.
4. Scope of the study:
The study is limited to analyze the language features of written Vietnamese and
English tourism advertisements, focus on slogans and headlines.
The data for the study was collected from online websites of travel companies
in Viet Nam from 2010 to now.
5. Research question
To achieve these objectives, the following question will be answered:
1. What are the language features used in tourism advertisements in Vietnam ?
2. What are the differences between language features in English and
Vietnamese tourism advertisements ?
3. What factors affect the language of tourism advertisements ?
4. What suggestions should be noted for teaching and learning about tourism
advertisements ?
6. Structure of study
The study is structured in five chapters as follows:
Chapter one begins with introduction including the research scope, objectives,
significance, as well as the research questions.
Chapter two represents some theoretical concepts of languages features.
Although such analysis was made, it would be very difficult to elaborate it in such
limited space. For that reason, in this work the language of advertising from the
linguistic, especially lexical, syntactic and semantic points of view will be analysed.
The study will provide examples and describe the most commonly used linguistic
devices and figures of speech in tourism advertising. Also in the chapter, the general
views of advertising and tourism language are taken into consideration.

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Chapter three describes methods and procedures to carry out the study. It is
consists of research design, steps for carrying out the study, methods of collecting data
and data analyses and a stock of advertisements collected to analyse.
Chapter four deals with findings and discussion. It is concerned about the use of
words, sentence structures, figurative language in tourism advertisements in Vietnam;
the similar and different features of those in Vietnamese and English, factors affecting
creating tourism advertisement in Vietnam, from which the findings are drawn out.
Chapter five concludes the study by summarizing what have been dealed with
and completes the study with some limitations and suggestions for further research.

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Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Text and Context
2.1.1 Concepts of Text
“Text" is understood as a semantic unit of language in written form which is
complete in form and structure.
2.1.2 Concepts of Context
In this thesis, “context” is understood as the interpretation of the text including

situational context, background context and co-text. Situational context is the situation
or an event where the interaction is taking place. Background context is considered as
the general knowledge that people have in their minds about areas of life and about the
history of the events. Co-text is the linguistic environment surrounding the text and
helps to limit the range of the interpretation of the text.
2.2. Advertising
Advertising is an inevitable part of our modern capitalist consumer society
whose outstanding feature is its competitive fight. “…advertising is not some external
curiosity which we examine, from which we are separate and superior, but something
of which we are part, and which is part of us…” (Cook 1996: 182). “We are living in
the contemporary “consumer society”, in which advertising dominates the majority of
communication channels. We may encounter advertisements everywhere and at any
time without recognizing them as a form of discourse, and as a “system of language
use whereby” (Goddard, 2002).

Advertisements are everywhere around us: in

newspapers, in magazines, on billboards along the streets, on television, in radio, in
means of public transport and any place the sponsor pays to distribute their message.
The effects of the advertising influence us whether we like it or not.
2.2.1. Notions and Aims of Advertising
Advertising is one of the main elements of the market communication mix. It
involves using paid media to communicate persuasive information about a destination,

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product or service.
“Advertising, generally speaking, is the promotion of goods, services,
companies and ideas, usually performed by an identified sponsor. Marketers see
advertising as part of an overall promotional strategy.” ( />This definition is given according to the free encyclopedia Wikipedia, but there
are also other definitions of advertising, for example, the American Heritage
Dictionary says that the advertising is:
1. “The activity of attracting public attention to a product or business, as by
paid announcements in the print, broadcast, or electronic media.
2. The business of designing and writing advertisements.
3. Advertisements considered as a group: This paper takes no advertising.”
Advertisement is a concrete manifestation of advertising; “a paid public
announcement appearing in the media.”
All these definitions have in common the fact that advertising is a means of
promotion of the product, idea, or organization on the market with the aim to give
information and to persuade people of the advantage of the product and induce them to
take and action.
To consolidate the terminology, the concepts of slogan and headlines are
defined as follows:
Advertising slogan has many definitions. According to Oxford Advanced
Learner’s Dictionary (2001), slogan is “a word or phrase that is easy to remember,
used for example by a political party or in advertising to attract people’s attention or to
suggest an idea quickly.”
The purpose of a slogan is to communicate some information about the product
or a program and fix it in the readers mind in a memorable way. So that, there are 5
functions of a slogan to show these purpose:
- Drawing customer’s attention and arousing his interest
- Encouraging a reader into further reading of the text
- Conveying an advertising message in the shortest possible form
- Evoking in consumer’s mind a desire of possessing a given product
- Summarizing and summing up the whole text as well as making the receiver

remember the advertisement or the program.
It is “short, memorable advertising phrase: Examples include "Coke Is It," "Just
Do It" and "Don’t Leave Home Without It." When a product or company uses a slogan
consistently, the slogan can become an important element of identification in the
public’s perception of the product.”

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The concept of slogan is used among authors of books about advertising in
various ways. Advertising layout is divided into several parts: headline, body copy
(the main part of the advertising message, often divided into subheads), signature line
(a mention of a brand-name, often accompanied by a price-tag, slogan or trade-mark)
and standing details (e.g. the address of the firm). (See Leech 1972: 59). In this
understanding, slogan is not identified with headline and vice versa and the term is
used in narrow sense. However, Greg Myers (Myers 1997) uses the term ‘slogan’ in
larger sense - for any catchy phrase, what a headline definitely is. In many cases, the
boundaries between slogan and headline disappear. For that reason, we will accept the
second idea and will use the term ‘slogan’ in broader sense.
As far as we know, in every discourse, headline is the first signal to draw
readers’ attention so they can decide whether it is worth reading or not. The main
function of headline is to introduce the discourse’s content to readers. In addition to
other visual aids like pictures, captions, headlines must be eye-catching and attractive
at readers’ first scanning to evoke their interest and desire to read on. A headline is
also an element to judge which discourse is more important and more interesting to
readers themselves.
In brief, a headline must be clear and easy to read and understand; exact and

informative; short and dynamic; suitable and true to the text’s content.
In this thesis, the language of tourism advertisements focusing on slogans and
headlines on tourism will be analysed.
2.2.2. Genre of Advertising
Basing on the aims, Vestergaard and Schorder [59] divided advertising into two
main types: commercial and non-commercial advertising.
According to Geoffrey Leech (Leech 1972), most frequent and important type
of the advertising is “‘commercial consumer advertising’: advertising directed towards
a mass audience with the aim of promoting sales of a commercial product or service. It
is the kind which uses most money, professional skills, and advertising space in this
country.” (‘this country’, here: Great Britain). Example: “Plump it up. New volume

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boost liquid lip colour. Paints lip with a high shine lacquer finish. Feel the tingling
sensation as formula begins to work.”
Another type of commercial advertising is ‘prestige advertising’. Here the name
and the positive image of the company are advertised rather than a product or a
service. Example:
“The America’s Cup: the oldest and most coveted trophy in the world of
sailing. Its organizers have entrusted once again the vital timing of the races to
Omega, a company whose experience in watch making and sports timekeeping dates
back over 150 years…to the very origins of the America’s Cup itself.”
We may mention ‘industrial or trade advertising’, where a company advertises
its products or services to other firms, so the communication is between equals. They
both (copywriter and the reader) have as an interest as a particular knowledge about

the product advertised. Therefore, “industrial advertising typically lays greater
emphasis on factual information than prestige and consumer advertising and less
emphasis on the persuasive elements.” (Vestergaard and Schroder 1985: 2)
A demonstration is below:
“You can trust Trenkwalder. We can search for and find the right professional
challenge for your career. We offer you:
• Advice about the employment market
• An analysis of your personal career opportunities, taking into account your
knowledge, your experience and your preferences”
As an example of non-commercial advertising, we may mention appeals from
associations and societies whether their purposes are charity or political propaganda:
“Thanks to the World Food Programme, this little girl in Mozambique knows
she won’t go hungry today.”
In addition, we can classify the types of advertising also according to the type
of medium: TV, radio, brochures, leaflets, magazines, newspapers and other printed
material advertising, the Internet and Direct Mail advertising, outdoor advertising, etc.
2.2.3. Language of Advertising
Advertising language is a marketing tool used in a communicative process to send
a message to receivers (consumers), who will react or respond in a certain way. Both
senders and receivers must be active participants in the same communicative relationship
in order for thought to be shared. (Dunn, Barban, Krugman & Reid 1990: 51)

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Leech in his book (Leech 1972: 25) writes that the language of advertising
belongs to so called ‘loaded language’. Wikipedia defines it as “the writing or speech,

which implies an accusation of demagoguery or of pandering to the audience.” Leech
says that loaded language has the aim to change the will, opinions, or attitudes of its
audience. He claims that advertising differs from other types of loaded language (such
as political journalism and religious oratory) in having a very precise material goal –
changing the mental disposition to reach the desired kind of behaviour – buying a
particular kind of product.
To persuade people to buy the product is the main purpose of the advertising.
Among such great competition, the producers want to demonstrate the uniqueness of
their product. They want to differentiate it from the rest. They are trying to find new
techniques of advertisement. Also, the advertisement texts must be more attractive and
more unexpected. It must catch the attention of the audience and then identify the
product. Copywriters create uncommon, surprising, interesting texts with catchy
slogans or phrases. The readers or listeners must give it some thoughts and the result is
manipulation with them in order to buy the product. Leech sets following principles of
advertising texts: Attention value, Readability (by means of simple, personal, and
colloquial style), Memorability (most important in the process of advertising is to
remember the name of the product) and Selling power (Leech 1972: 27). The last
principle is crucial. David Ogilvy (Ogilvy 1985: 7) in his book says: “I do not regard
advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information. When I
write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative’. I want
you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.”
We may identify the advertising as a type of discourse, because “it can tell us a
good deal about our own society and our own psychology (…) Discourse is text and
context together.” (Cook 1996: 2-5). We could analyze the whole discourse of
advertising, it means “the interaction of all elements that participate in advertising
discourse: participants, function, substance, pictures, music, a society, paralanguage,
language, a situation, other advertising and other discourse.”
2.2.4. Advertising as a means of communication

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Advertising is a communication means that carries information about a product
or service to consumers in a visually or verbally attractive way in order to promote it
and later sell it. Advertising is using persuasive techniques to explain perspective
customers what is the best for them. It helps consumers to make an informed decision
from various options that are available for them. Vestergaard and Schroder stated in
their book: “Advertising is verbal/non-verbal, public, one way communication” (14).
Verbal and non-verbal means apart from using spoken or written words, sentences, the
conversation is always accompanied by our gestures, facial expression and other nonverbal features, in written advertisements this is expressed by pictures, quotations
marks, size/bold letters and other visual stimulations. It is public communication as
advertising message is always addressed to anonymous public therefore it is one way
communication, same way as in case of literature or film industry (14).
2.2.4.1. The process of communication
The communication process in general by Vestergaard and Schroder needs at
least two people. One that will send the information (addresser or transmitter) and the
other one for whom the information is intended to (addressee or receiver). Between
these two people is transmitted a code message or code meaning through
communication channel. All of this is part of the context or some kind of situation
(15). In the advertising environment are other aspects that need to be taken into
account. The communication process in the advertising is described based on the
schema below:

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Picture 1.1: The process of communication
Transmitter is a company that wants to advertise a product or service, on the
other side is the customer (receiver) who wants to satisfy the need and make the
informed choice among variety of options. The message before it is sent to receiver is
encoded into symbols, pictures, text, sound, and so on. Transmitter needs to be aware
of the characteristics of the receiver (context) so the message can be received
appropriately. Then comes the process of the message transmission, in this part comes
other surrounding influences, these are called interferences or channel noises and
should be predicted into certain level at the stage of message encoding.
Message decoding means that message is received with a certain meaning this
meaning can be different from the emitted meaning as a consequence of the channel
noise. The understood meaning is a result of message decoding and interpretation in a
way that was intended by the transmitter. Receiver in advertising is the targeted
consumer to whom the message was addressed at the beginning. Feedback is the action
or no action at the end of the communication process, the effect on the customer can
be positive, negative or none. However, the purpose of the process is to get a response
to purchase product or service.

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In the communication process the most important part is the intended meaning
and understood meaning. The transmitter or someone who encodes the message
(copywriter) needs to make sure that the understood meaning is the same as the

intended meaning. Otherwise, it would not make sense to send such message.
Furthermore, the communication is very restricted, as in the advertising language and
in slogans particularly, is the space limited for message. It consists usually only from
the information that transmitter wants to say and thinks it will have larger effect on the
decision of consumers.
2.2.4.2. Functions of language
Language is used to express our emotions, to inform addresser, to influence
others behavior, to get the attention from the addressee, to talk with others, to check
their understanding, to make speeches in front of wider audience, to write or speak to
entertain others.
Jakobson set six functions of language (referential, emotive, conative, phatic,
metalingual and poetic) which corresponds with six acts of communication.
Referential relates to the context and describes things or facts. They are usually
expressed by descriptive statements, these statements may use either definite
descriptions or deictic words to anchor the text in time, place, in general in concrete
situation. Emotive focuses on the transmitter (addresser). It speaks for his emotions,
feelings, attitudes, wills. Emotive or sometimes also called expressive has the added
value of internal states of addresser. It is typically expressed by interjection. Conative
is primarily focused on the addressee. It is used to get other people to make something.
It usually includes direct orders expressed by imperatives. Phatic function is used in
order to set, maintain or end the communication with the addressee. Metalingual
primarily focuses on the code. It is the use of language to describe, discuss, check or
correct the code (language) itself. Poetic function is oriented to the form of the
message itself, how it is used. It has the most prominent but not restricted use either in
poetry or in advertising language (Dontcheva-Navratilova 15).
Advertising language uses primarily the poetic function. The conative function
is used to address the message more directly and referential function to convey the

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information. Phatic function is seen on TV advertising, at the beginning or end of
commercial in order to get the attention of the audience.
As the poetic function that prevails in advertising requires creativity further
should be explored the creative writing, the meaning and rules if any applied.
2.2.4.3 Language creativity
Creative may sound like a mantra for advertising writing and creating slogans.
Leech mentioned that there is no other word that would be so popular in advertising
than creativity. They have creative job, create a creative campaign, they must think
creatively and come up with creative ideas. What it means being creative in terms of
language? It means breaking rules of grammar in order to find original way of
linguistic usage or create new expressions. Copywriters are not the only one who
somehow plays with words and language itself. It is done actually in everyday
conversation as well for the entertainment purpose or for the flow of the conversation.
So in fact we all take part in the language creativity.
The last sentence is in parallel what David Ogilvy said about advertising and
creativity: “I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of
information. When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it
‘creative’. I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product” (7). In fact
creativity of language in advertising is just using persuasive techniques in order to achieve
action from the consumer – to buy advertised product or service. Leech mentioned that
persuasive techniques might be called either linguistic anomaly or linguistic violations
(176). He also stated: “The number of linguistic violation is unlimited, since any rule of
language can be violated in any number of different ways” (176).
In the practical part of the thesis shall be explored the linguistic violation that
occur in the fast food industry slogans. They shall be divided at the grammatical,
lexical, syntactic and semantic level.

2.3. Tourism and Tourism Advertisements
2.3.1. Definitions of Tourism
World Tourism Organization defined that “Tourism comprises the activities of
persons travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not

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more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes not related to
the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited”.
2.3.2. Products of Tourism
The tourism product may be defined as a bundle or package of tangible and
intangible components, based on activities at a destination. The package is perceived
by the tourist as an experience available at a price.
2.3.3. Tourism Advertisements
Tourism advertisements as the communicative intent is to provide tourists with the
essential information for helping them decide what places to visit and which tour(s) to
book. Moreover, tourism advertising also follows the AIDA principle used in marketing:
“attracting Attention, creating Interest, fostering Desire and inspiring Action”.
2.3.4. Distinctive Function of Tourism Advertising
Due to the intangible and heterogeneous nature of tourism products, tourism
advertisements have a distinctive function is to inform consumers about the travel
agency’s products and to attract bookings for them.
2.3.5. Definitions of Tour
Tour is considered as the journey’s fixed schedule of which includes duration,
visiting places, accommodation, transportation, an expert guide, assurance, the price
and other services. It can be called package tours.

2.3.6. Generic Structures of Tourism Advertisements
Basing on tourism advertisements collected, it can be seen that the general
structure of a tourism advertisement in general consists of three main parts as follows:
Overview, Tour Details, Additional Mentions.
2.4. Linguistic characteristics
2.4.1. Lexical choices aspect
2.4.1.1. Triggering Words
According to website dictionary.com, triggering words are defined as words to

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start a series of actions or events. In marketing, trigger words are the words/phrases
which trigger an impulse in a user to click on a link, stay on a website and read
the content or – best case – decide to act as intended and purchase the product… etc.
Sometimes these words are also called “Magic Words”. They often begin a series of
activities and appear in the itineraries of the tour in tourism advertisements to motivate
the customers’ decisions and promote the trade of the travel agencies.
In tourism advertisements, using trigger words can make customers tend to
respond better to than others. Words like you, free, because, new or instantly persuade
them in their own, unique way. “You” for instance creates a personal connection. And
according to a research by the Institute for the Study of Child Development certain
regions of our brains activate when we see our names in print or on screen. For example,
Do you want to have a journey ?, Bạn đã đến Mandiver của Việt Nam chưa ?...
In addition, trigger word like “Free” on the other hand suggests an incentive that will
keep customers interested whereas “New” suggests something exclusive. To illustrate this,
we can take an tourism advertisement “New year journey at Dinh Cape Ninh Thuan”.

Another example of trigger word in tourism advertisements is using words to
motivate customers to take action. A strong call-to-action is what often makes content
so successful. BJ Fogg from the Persuasive Technology Lab defines a call to action as
a trigger that tells people to perform a behavior now. He adds that “for behaviors
where people are already above the activation threshold – meaning they have sufficient
motivation and ability – a trigger is all that’s required.” For instance, if we use
“Discover the beauty of Quan Lan island” instead of “See the beauty…” it will make
customers experience an increased conversion rate. “Discover” is a Trigger Word
while “See” is not. In the example: “Half day cycling tour to explore the typical values
of Ha Noi”, the word “explore” has same explanation. It makes customers want to visit
and experience the tour.

“Khám phá vẻ đẹp Tây Bắc” in Vietnamese tourism

advertisement is also an example here.
In the chart below, we have top 20 the most popular words the marketers take
when they create any advertisements. These words also are used effectively in
language of tourism advertisements.
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Graduation thesis
Chart 1.1: Top 20 the most popular triggering words

(Source: />In short tourism advertisements, there isn’t space for many words there. In fact,
we can use only about 25 characters in a headline. Yet, each of those has to grab
attention of potential customers, inform them, add a strong emotional appeal and
persuade them to change their view (or encourage them to take action). And it has to

achieve it all within seconds. That is the reason why trigger words play an important
role in language of tourism advertisement.
2.4.1.2 Adjectives
In Leech’s research, he stated “Advertising language is marked by a wealth of
adjective vocabularies”. Adjectives are probably the most frequent part of speech used
in any slogans. They have to be expressive, persuasive, convincing, out of the ordinary
and give a clear image of the heavenly like destination. While reading the tourism
advertisement, the reader may notice the hyperbolic character of the language. This
exaggeration causes increased number of comparative and superlative adjectives. The
tourism product is better, nicer, newer, and tighter and the customer is happier and
more satisfied. The product offers more information, more entertainment, more
comfort, more than any other product. The colorful, vivid and fascinating
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Graduation thesis
introductions and descriptions tend to impress and attract more potential tourists to
visit. Moreover, large amounts of adjectives could give special emphasis to the
positive and enthusiasm emotion, especially the general superlative adjectives which
convey strong positive emotions, such as the words largest and other adjectives with
the aid of the adverb of most. Therefore, it is very important to choose adjective
effectively in any tourism advertisements.
Exploring the meaning of the adjectives in tourism advertisements, we find two
main adjectives including descriptive adjectives and experiential adjectives.
Adjectives used most in tourism advertisements are often descriptive such as:
breathtaking, mysterious, adventurous, mênh mang, lãng mạn, đặc sắc, quyến rũ…
In many cases, the adjectives combine with various colorful pictures of the
products to indicate characteristics of advertised products and help readers imagine

tourist attractions and then they make up their mind to choose the product. For
example: “Cat Ba cliffs and rock-climbing enthusiasts, a heavenly match”, “Điện Biên
rực rỡ mùa hoa ban”. Adjectives expressing perceptions or emotions that we can call
‘experiential’, such as warm, happy, vibrant, amazing, incrediable… that partly
denotes an objective property (‘full of life and energy’), partly conveys the subjective
perception of the encoder. In the slogan: Let us design your unforgettable trip,
Amazing tour from Nha Trang to Sai Gon, New adventurous tour explores unique
caves in Quang Binh…
In another research, a semantic grouping of adjectives by the Longman
Grammar of Spoken and Written English (Biber et al., 1999) was used as the basis of
this study. Biber et al.’s (1999). To clarify this semantic categorization, Biber et al.
(1999: 508-509) have further divided descriptors into five groups:
(1) Color (C) – denoting color, brightness: black, white, dark, bright
(2) Size/quantity/extent (SQE) – denoting size, weight, extent: big, deep, heavy, huge
(3) Time (T) – denoting chronology, age, frequency: annual, daily, early, late
(4) Evaluative/emotive (EE) – denoting judgments, affect, emphasis or is
clearly an opinion instead of a fact: bad, beautiful, best, fine
(5) Miscellaneous descriptive (MD): appropriate, cold, complex, dead
The first three groups compose only a minority of descriptors and, while they
are included in this study, they are not in the focal point because they do not
participate in affecting the reader as much as the other descriptors. However, the most
important adjectives are in group number four, the evaluative and emotive adjectives.

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They include such words as great, magnificent, excellent etc. that may give the reader

an especially positive image of the destination or attraction. Therefore, the
evaluative/emotive group (i.e. EE) is what will be the most examined group of
adjectives in the discussion chapter. The last group, miscellaneous descriptive (MD)
descriptors, emerged clearly as the largest group of descriptors and, while not being as
explicitly influential as the EE group, will also have a major role. The study focuses
mostly on the EE and MD groups of adjectives because they account for the majority
of descriptors and a special emphasis is on the evaluative and emotive adjectives as
they play a vital role in painting a glowing picture of the attractions.
Every adjective has its own meaning and has several specific nouns it can
modify. When you want to use an adjective, the first thing you should do is to make
sure its meaning is proper for the noun. In the advertising slogans, this point is
particularly critical because advertisement is performed in pubic, it must use right
adjectives to make good advertising effect come true.
Thus adjectives are of utmost importance in tourism slogans, being “the most
notable feature of the language in advertising” (Townson 1995:85). It is therefore an
inescapable fact that the language of advertising relies on the heavily use of adjectives
and on exaggerations.
2.4.1.3 Verbs
The structure of the verb phrases are divided into two types: finite and nonfinite verb phrases. Sidney Greenbaum and Randolph Quirk explained: “A finite verb
phrase is a verb phrase in which the first and only word is a finite verb, the rest of the
verb phrase (if any) consisting of nonfinite verbs” (41). The finite verb phrases can be
verb phrase of independent clauses, have tense contrast, person and number concord
with the subject and have mood. Non-finite verb phrases are formed if the first or only
word has the non-finite form of the verb, such as the infinitive, the –ing participle and
the –ed participle. As for the above mentioned simplicity of phrases: the finite verb
phrase is simple when it consists of only one word and complex is when it consists of
two or more words (Greenbaum and Quirk 42).
Leech in his book further studied simplicity in the verbal group, as from the
aforementioned findings, this occurred as prominent feature in advertising English. He
mentioned that by checking the advertising materials, provided in his book, were

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