Body branded: Multimodal identities in tourism advertising

Using a discursive/social semiotic perspective, tourism advertising is here investigated as a global discourse worth of critical investigation. Different identities are construed in texts for tourists and they are not purely reflections of personal identities. They are recontextualisations whose realisations and forms are conditioned by the social practices of the advertisers and by their stereotypical views of the countries being advertised. Gender representation is a key factor and the use of the human body, as a branding strategy, is an essential part in the construction of such identities. Exemplifying from tourism brochures and web pages, my aims are to discuss the different types of identities construed in the discourse, the way the representation of the human body is used as a semiotic resource and as a branding strategy, and the values which underlie the appeal to possible travellers and the implications of the branding strategies for gender representation.