New Zealand as “the youngest country on earth”: a multimodal analysis of a tourist video

Inspecting an institutional video featuring a Maōri creation story, the article discusses and questions the semiotic shaping of New Zealand as a tourist destination. To understand and interpret this antipodean discursive process in detail, the text has been addressed as a multimodal instance, making meanings by integrating multiple semiotic resources. Analysis has shown that each mode specifically acts in the meaning-making process of shaping the tourist gaze upon New Zealand as the youngest country on earth. Modes of signification have been functionally observed to the extent that they convey a message, configure a reading position and select, frame and edit the chosen subject. Multimodal interplay has proved to be a powerful strategy. From a cognitive viewpoint, it is an attention-grabbing device which then emphasizes the message and leaves a lasting trace in the mind. Within the discursive framework of tourism promotion, it effectively works as a push-factor strategy and indexical transfer performer. Moreover, the video’s dynamic textuality and multiplicity of viewing paths give potential tourists an impression of actual experience and active exploration, thus overriding the destination’s intangibility