LEXICO-GRAMMATICAL CONSTRUCTION IN TURKISH TOURISM PROMOTIONAL WEBSITES: A CORPUS BASED DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Merve Geçikli1

1Atatürk University, Kazım Karabekir Faculty of Education, Department of Foreign Languages Teaching, Erzurum, Turkey, merve.gecikli25@gmail.com, orcid id: https://orcid.or/0000-0002-8619-5026

ABSTRACT

Lexico-grammatical structure of texts are of importance in terms of hooking the readers about what the messages are actually tried to convey through what is said within the discourse; thus, meta-discourse tools are the means commonly used and processed by the members of specific discourses to manage perception of the target community in terms of persuasion. In this regard, the practices of discourses appear to manipulate the reality beyond text by linking external world and thoughts through content management with discursive acts. On this basis, this study aims to explore the lexico-grammatical construction within a computer mediated discourse, Tourism, specifically Turkish promotional websites within tourism discourse, to shed light on how meta-discursive practices are shaped.

Moving on corpus-based discourse analysis within qualitative paradigm, this study basically focuses on a corpus of Turkish promotional websites where there is a reader engagement through feedback and evaluation services: the lexico-grammatical items within the corpus are analyzed through lexis counting with NVivo 12.
The overall findings of the study show that the most frequently used lexico-grammatical items are boosters (adjectives) and hedges, while attitude markers (directives and self-mentions) are used at a moderate level. In this regard, this study would guide service renderers how the dialogues between interlocutors in Tourism discourse (service renderer- customer/client) are processed through meta-discourse devices.

Key Words: Lexico-Grammatical Construction, Turkish Tourism Promotional Websites, Corpus Study, Discourse Analysis