Images and writing in tourist brochures

The aim of this article is to discuss the role of visual and verbal modes in destination image formation, with a focus on the 2009 ‘Malta, Gozo and Comino’ brochure, issued by the Malta Tourism Authority. Addressing brochures as pivotal text genres within tourism discourse, attention will be paid to multimodal configurations of ideational, interpersonal and textual metafunctions. First, the visual text will be examined, through the observation of participants, perspective, frame, social distance, light and colours. In order to check assumptions, the verbal text will be also analysed, by means of corpus linguistics and the Wordsmith Tools 5.0 software. The multimodal analysis will show that both visual and verbal texts promote the core values of heritage, hospitality and diversity, identified as the cornerstone of Malta Brand in internal and external campaigns. More specifically, values are first communicated through the predominant visual text, then described, clarified, expanded and confirmed through the accompanying verbal text.