Linguistic Projection of Pakistan’s Official Tourism Websites

Implications for Tourism Sustainability

Abstract

Sustainable tourism industry is generally represented from an economic standpoint but is rarely considered from a linguistic perspective. As tourism is view to be a passport to nation’s proclivity to go green and the persuasive language on official tourism websites is an instrumental tool in navigating the potential tourists’ perceptions towards it. Taking this into account, this paper evaluates the linguistic attitudinal resources and their communicative purposes on Pakistan’s official tourism websites. More specifically, it also examines the realization of ecological preferences through the use of appraisal patterns. Based on the qualitative research design, the data of this study was collected from three official tourism websites of Punjab, Sindh, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces operated under Pakistan Tourism Development Cooperation (PTDC). At total of 30 destinations and cultural features were selected based on the purposive sampling technique. Three of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 11, 12 and 15 (United Nations, 2015) including sustainable communities, resource efficiency and life on land were focused. For Ecolinguistic analysis, Stibbe’s (2015) theory of evaluations and appraisal patterns was applied. The results revealed that all the appraisal categories are equally employed within the tourism discourse. The deployment of the affect category to instill the institutionalized feelings, judgment category shows the institutionalized behavior and appreciation category to promote the intrinsic values. The graduation category further stimulates the persuasion of tourism discourse. Thus, we advocate the usage of positive appraisal patterns to establish a hybrid mode of communication. Moreover, the ecological values are more significantly triggered through appreciation category to promote sustainable tourism.