‘Experience Norfolk! Experience Fun!’ vs. ‘Doživi više od očekivanog’ – A Corpus-Based Contrastive Study of Reader Engagement Markers on the Web

Abstract

The paper investigates how reader engagement markers (Hyland 2005; Zou and Hyland 2020) are used in tourism promotion to establish interaction with potential customers on the web. The markers are extracted using AntConc software from two comparable corpora in English and Serbian compiled from the web texts of regional tourism organizations. Normalized frequencies per 1,000 words are calculated, followed by a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the most frequent markers. The results are interpreted in view of the differences and similarities in the two corpora considering the distribution and communicative functions of the markers, and the cultural aspects of this kind of interaction with the reader. The findings shed light on the implied concepts underlying reader-oriented engagement and written e-communication practices in the context of tourism discourse. The results can be used for the data-driven teaching of writing and translation studies.