Conference Presentations by Dr Elli Vazou
This is a case study that helps the audience discover how the theories of sociolinguistics, socia... more This is a case study that helps the audience discover how the theories of sociolinguistics, social semiotics and destination branding (Dann 2001 [1996]; Anholt 2007; Morgan et al. 2010) are adopted in creating multimodal | multisigned messages (Kress 2010; Bateman 2015) that address audiences throughout the world irrespectively of their culture, ideological beliefs, language, or everyday preferences (Thurlow and Jaworski 2010). Using in everyday practice the tools of tourism, multimodal and digital discourse the GNTO creates the emotional imagery of Greece in accordance with the restrictions imposed by each medium (or cybergenre). In this study we witness the process by which the content is being created by the GNTO copywriters resulting in a multimodal ensemble designed to lure potential visitors through the www.visitgreece.gr portal and onto its social media platforms (Tuten 2008; Buhalis et al. 2011; Tham et al 2013). Throughout this process, semiotic, cultural and natural resources work together to showcase the destination’s “goods”, and add value to visitors’ feelings.
The overall aim is to show how through tourism people escape to new storylands, realities are symbolized in words and visual images, destinations assume narrative styles, even monuments constitute a form of speech. Eventually, we wish to help all those engaged in the tourism industry see that linguistics, semiotics and tourism can and really do work together, and they are not different scientific disciplines as many of us may have considered.
The seminar brings together two research environments from the utmost South of Europe (Cyprus and... more The seminar brings together two research environments from the utmost South of Europe (Cyprus and Greece) and one close to the utmost North (Denmark). What unites them is a combined research interest in multimodal communication, national identity and branding, and consumer marketing and research. A key aim is to establish new proactive synergies between these fields in targeting such specific areas of practice and research as place branding, tourism, and food innovation and marketing. The seminar will exemplify the application of this overall agenda to a selection of current topics and types of data as implemented in ongoing research in the respective environments and provide a forum for generating new research ideas and exploring possible areas of common interest and perhaps possible future collaboration.
From the 30's until the onset of the economic crisis in 2010, the Greek National Tourism Organisa... more From the 30's until the onset of the economic crisis in 2010, the Greek National Tourism Organisation (GNTO) ran an impressive number of advertising campaigns. Posters and print ads were the most powerful tools used to promote Greece as a unique tourism destination. From this perspective, a print ad is a kind of " compressed message " through which a country conveys its brand promise: what are its core values, the unique experiences offered, to what extent can it live up to the visitor's expectations? In this paper, we explore the ways in which pictorial and verbal elements of the GNTO print ads built up the country's brand as a multimodal metaphtonymy (Goosens, 2003). Sociosemiotic analysis and cognitive metaphor theory (Lakoff, 1993; Forceville, 2009; Kövecses 2010; 2013) are used on a purposive sample of 4 print advertisements from 4 different campaigns to extract the prevailing visual and verbal metaphors and metonymies as well as the way in which they interact and depend upon each other. The denotative and connotative messages of images are examined in respect of their accompanied verbal messages, not only from the perspective of linguistic meaning, but also through their graphic and typographic rendering (Barthes 1977, Bertin, [1967] 2011). We also touch upon a cross-cultural cognitive linguistic perspective underlying the metaphor/metonymy universality (Kövecses 2008).
In today’s digitized society, it is not possible to isolate literacy from the rapid technological... more In today’s digitized society, it is not possible to isolate literacy from the rapid technological advances, social and economic factors and their impact on our communication. More than a
decade ago, Kress (2003) recognized the broad move from the dominance of writing to that of the image, and the shift from the medium of book to the medium of screen. As we put the emphasis on the visual representation of the world, tourism -- and destination branding, in particular-- provide answers to how people consume visually (Schroeder, 2002). Tourism is primarily an image-making enterprise where gaze “socially and culturally organized” (Foucault, [1963] 1973) is constructed through signs, and tourism involves the collection of signs (Urry & Larsen, 2011). Here, Kress’ (2003) claim that “the world told is a different world to the world shown” finds its most interesting realisation.
But, how literacy can be combined with tourism? How can we introduce digital visual culture in education? How online destination branding can provide new ideas of how to teach the lesson of language in high school? In this paper, we explore the possibility to introduce content from the www.visitgreece.gr portal that heavily relies on image, such as Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest posts, as a new teaching language material addressing teenagers who are actively involved in the digitally mediated communication as themselves produce content on these social media platforms. Throughout the theory of multimodality (Kress & van Leeuwen [1996], 2006; Kress, 2010) and its application in teaching (Kress et al., 2001; Kress, 2003), the basic tenets of online destination branding (Cantoni & Xiang, 2013; WTO & ETC, 2014), imagery in tourism (Hunter, 2008; Burns et al., 2010; Urry & Larsen, 2011; Google, 2012; Moufakkir & Reisinger, 2013), and digital media and learning (Hawisher & Selfe, 2000; Snyder, 2002; Warnick, 2002; Gee, 2010) we attempt to answer all the abovementioned questions.
Η χρησιμοποίηση του τουρισμού ως διδακτικού αντικειμένου είναι ένα πεδίο που ελάχιστα, αν όχι καθ... more Η χρησιμοποίηση του τουρισμού ως διδακτικού αντικειμένου είναι ένα πεδίο που ελάχιστα, αν όχι καθόλου, έχει μελετηθεί. Αν και χωρίζει μεγάλη απόσταση τον τουρισμό από την εκπαίδευση, στην παρούσα μελέτη θα δείξουμε ότι υπάρχουν τρόποι να εμπλουτιστεί το γλωσσικό μάθημα από υλικό Οργανισμών, όπως ο Ελληνικός Οργανισμός Τουρισμού (εφεξής ΕΟΤ). Πιο συγκεκριμένα, θα εξετάσουμε: (1) Πώς το υλικό της διαδικτυακής πύλης του ΕΟΤ, συγκεκριμένα το www.visitgreece.gr (εφεξής visitgreece) μπορεί να προσφέρει μια πληθώρα κειμενικών ειδών, όπως ιστολόγιο, τουριστικά κείμενα, newsletters, αναρτήσεις κτλ. Με τον τρόπο αυτό, οι μαθητές/τριες γνωρίζουν τον κόσμο του ιστοτόπου του ΕΟΤ και των ψηφιακών ειδών και εξοικειώνονται με την έννοια της διαδραστικότητας (interactivity), καθώς αξιοποιούν τα διαδικτυακά εργαλεία της ιστοσελίδας. (2) Στηριζόμενη κατά κύριο λόγο στην εικόνα, η (τουριστική) προβολή μιας χώρας προσκαλεί τα παιδιά να παρατηρήσουν με προσοχή τις συνέργειες δύο γλωσσών, δηλαδή της γλώσσας και της εικόνας, ως τρόπων (modes) που συμπληρώνουν και ταυτόχρονα επεξηγούν ο ένας τον άλλο. Επίσης, δεδομένου ότι η μεταφορά και η μετωνυμία κυριαρχούν στον τουριστικό λόγο, οι μαθητές/τριες θα γνωρίσουν επίσης τη χρήση αυτών των ρητορικών σχημάτων μέσα από την αλληλεπίδραση μεταξύ εικόνας και γλωσσικού κειμένου. Έτσι, λοιπόν, θα εστιάσουμε στην πολυτροπικότητα (multimodality) που μπορεί να εμπλουτίσει τη διδασκαλία του ψηφιακού γραμματισμού (digital literacy) ενώ ταυτόχρονα θα ανακαλύψουμε τη ρητορική των ψηφιακών ειδών. (3) Επίσης, δεδομένου του υλικού που συγγράφεται και στην αγγλική, μπορεί να εξεταστεί το τεχνικό λεξιλόγιο της τουριστικής διαφήμισης και στις δύο γλώσσες (αγγλική και ελληνική). Ως αποτέλεσμα των παραπάνω, η διδακτική αξιοποίηση των κειμενικών πόρων της ιστοσελίδας του ΕΟΤ θα εμπλουτίσει τις γνώσεις για τον πολιτισμό της Ελλάδας και θα βοηθήσει στη δημιουργία τουριστικής συνείδησης σε μια χώρα όπου ο τουρισμός αποτελεί βασικό μοχλό της οικονομικής της ανάπτυξης.
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Conference Presentations by Dr Elli Vazou
The overall aim is to show how through tourism people escape to new storylands, realities are symbolized in words and visual images, destinations assume narrative styles, even monuments constitute a form of speech. Eventually, we wish to help all those engaged in the tourism industry see that linguistics, semiotics and tourism can and really do work together, and they are not different scientific disciplines as many of us may have considered.
decade ago, Kress (2003) recognized the broad move from the dominance of writing to that of the image, and the shift from the medium of book to the medium of screen. As we put the emphasis on the visual representation of the world, tourism -- and destination branding, in particular-- provide answers to how people consume visually (Schroeder, 2002). Tourism is primarily an image-making enterprise where gaze “socially and culturally organized” (Foucault, [1963] 1973) is constructed through signs, and tourism involves the collection of signs (Urry & Larsen, 2011). Here, Kress’ (2003) claim that “the world told is a different world to the world shown” finds its most interesting realisation.
But, how literacy can be combined with tourism? How can we introduce digital visual culture in education? How online destination branding can provide new ideas of how to teach the lesson of language in high school? In this paper, we explore the possibility to introduce content from the www.visitgreece.gr portal that heavily relies on image, such as Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest posts, as a new teaching language material addressing teenagers who are actively involved in the digitally mediated communication as themselves produce content on these social media platforms. Throughout the theory of multimodality (Kress & van Leeuwen [1996], 2006; Kress, 2010) and its application in teaching (Kress et al., 2001; Kress, 2003), the basic tenets of online destination branding (Cantoni & Xiang, 2013; WTO & ETC, 2014), imagery in tourism (Hunter, 2008; Burns et al., 2010; Urry & Larsen, 2011; Google, 2012; Moufakkir & Reisinger, 2013), and digital media and learning (Hawisher & Selfe, 2000; Snyder, 2002; Warnick, 2002; Gee, 2010) we attempt to answer all the abovementioned questions.