Measuring Meaning

Abstract

While much research has focused on the linguistic expression of emotion, especially in the advertising industry, little attention has been paid to the linguistic evocation of emotion. This study attempts to redress this issue by employing methods of empirical social research to measure the evocation of emotionality and rationality in recipients. The data was collected online through representative samples (n=3,030) across four countries (US, UK, Germany, Switzerland) using comparative text modules embedded in tourism brochures promoting sustainable hotel stays. On the one hand the results show that theories of the linguistic evocation of emotionality are not borne out in practice. On the other, our findings suggest that linguistic evocation of emotionality and rationality varies across cultures even if the language in which the evocation is triggered is shared (i.e.UK and US).

How Language Sets Imagination in Motion: A Phenomenological Approach to the Reading of Promotional Texts in the Tourist Industry

“…For rationality, the items 'informative' and 'objective' (in accordance with Holbrook and Batra: 1987) were used. In addition to Wehrli et al (2013) overall discussion of the findings, further analyses of the data and their implications are discussed in Demarmels et al (2014) as well as Kellerhals et al (2016). Wolfgang Iser is a representative of the theory known as reader-response criticism which at its time marked a shift away from the close reading of a work as a complex structure of meanings ("textimmanente Analyse") to the analysis of the interaction between the work and its reader (Abrams 1999: 256;Richter 2001: 517).…”