SEE BRITAIN BY TRAIN. A Diachronic Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of Tourist Railway Posters

This study is an attempt to provide an overview of the communication enacted by the British Railways via posters from a diachronic dimension, by focusing on those posters used by railway companies to promote holiday destinations. A corpus of 150 posters from the end of 19th century to the end of 20th century has been investigated from a multimodal critical discourse analysis approach, aiming at identifying potential similarities and differences in the discursive patterns and visual features used in the years by British railway companies to persuade potential customers. Moreover, the research has tried to detect the changing models of holiday-making, the development of advertising standards, and the approaches and aspirations of the different train operating companies throughout the years. This book will be of interest to researchers and students in linguistics, tourism discourse, communication and critical/cultural studies.