This study examines metaphors in the hospitality discourse of Singapore (SG) and Hong Kong (HK) using conceptual metaphor theory, corpus linguistics, and discourse analysis. We identify the key source domains employed in luxury hotel websites across both regions and use quantitative methods to reveal metaphorical patterns in each corpus. The findings reveal that the SG corpus exhibits a greater inclination toward FORTUNE metaphors, whereas the HK corpus shows a prominence of MAGIC metaphors. Against this background, we argue the importance of a frequency-based collocational approach for analyzing conceptual metaphors, as it facilitates the exploration of the sociocultural dimensions embedded in hospitality discourse.
AhmadR.TorlakovaL.LiginlalD.MeedsR. (2020). Figurative language in arabic e-commerce text. International Journal of Business, 57(3), 279-301. https://doi.org/10.1177/2329488416688216
2.
AhrensK. (2010). Mapping principles for conceptual metaphors. In CameronL.DeignanA.LowG.ToddZ. (Eds.), Researching and applying metaphor in the real world (pp. 185–207). John Benjamins.
3.
AhrensK.GongS.-P. (2021). Contextual congruency and novel metaphor integration. Cognitive Linguistic Studies, 8(1), 109–132. https://doi.org/10.1075/cogls.00068.ahr
Au-YeungT.LawR. (2006). Evaluation of Usability: A Study of Hotel Web Sites in Hong Kong. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research (Washington, D.C.), 30(4), 452–473. https://doi.org/10.1177/1096348006290115
6.
BoeynaemsA.BurgersC.KonijnE. A.SteenG. J. (2017). The effects of metaphorical framing on political persuasion: A systematic literature review. Metaphor and Symbol, 32(2), 118-134. https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2017.1297623
7.
BurgersC.KonijnE.SteenG.IepsmaM. (2015). Making ads less complex, yet more creative and persuasive: The effects of conventional metaphors and irony in print advertising. International Journal of Advertising, 34(3), 515-532. https://doi.org/10.1080/02650487.2014.996200
8.
CameronL. (2010). What is metaphor and why does it matter? In CameronL.MaslenR. (Eds.), Metaphor analysis: Research practice in applied linguistics, social sciences and the humanities (pp. 3-25). Equinox.
9.
ChanC.-S.PetersM. (2021). Investigating brand strategy gap in Hong Kong: First impressions and unique attractions. Asian Geographer, 38(1), 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1080/10225706.2020.1729211
10.
ChangT. C. (1997). From “instant Asia” to “multi-faceted jewel”: Urban imaging strategies and tourism development in Singapore. Urban Geography, 18(6), 542-562. https://doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.18.6.542
11.
Charteris-BlackJ. (2006). Britain as a container: Immigration metaphors in the 2005 election campaign. Discourse & Society, 17(5), 563-581. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926506066345
12.
Charteris-BlackJ. (2014). Analysing political speeches: Rhetoric, discourse and metaphor. Palgrave Macmillan.
13.
ChenJ. Z.AhrensK.TayD. (2024). ‘Luxurious’ metaphors in luxury hotel websites in Singapore and Hong Kong: A mixed-methods study. Applied Corpus Linguistics, 4(2), 100090. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acorp.2024.100090
14.
ChenX.XiangB.BilgihanA. (2024). Metaphorical effects of advertising in different types of hotels: Evidence from eye-tracking. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 36(12), 4192-4214. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-09-2023-1376
15.
ChengW.HoJ. (2017). A corpus study of bank financial analyst reports: Semantic fields and metaphors. International Journal of Business Communication, 54(3), 258-282. https://doi.org/10.1177/2329488415572790
16.
ChengW.SuenA. (2014). Multimodal analysis of hotel homepages: A comparison of hotel websites across different star categories. In ChengW.WangM. J. (Eds.), The Asian ESP journal, special issue (pp. 5-33). English Language Education Publishing.
17.
ChiuS. W.SiuK. Y. (2022). Hong Kong society: High-definition stories beyond the spectacle of east-meets-west. Springer Nature.
18.
ChoiT.-M.LiuS.-C.PangK.-M.ChowP.-S. (2008). Shopping behaviors of individual tourists from the Chinese Mainland to Hong Kong. Tourism Management, 29(4), 811-820. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2007.07.009
19.
CucchiC. (2019). National cultures on European corporate homepages in English: A linguistic analysis. International Journal of Business Communication, 56(2), 198-232. https://doi.org/10.1177/2329488415604456
DjafarovaE.AndersenH. C. (2010). Visual images of metaphors in tourism advertising. In BurnsP. M.LesterJ.BibbingsL. (Eds.), Tourism and visual culture: Methods and cases (Vol. 2, pp. 35-43). CABI.
22.
Dolón HerreroR. (2020). “Different” and “distinct” as markers of otherness: A corpus-driven study of the (re)creation of privilege in high standard hotels. Ibérica (Castellón de La Plana, Spain), 39(39), 97-118. https://doi.org/10.17398/2340-2784.39.97
23.
DouglasS. P.CraigC. S. (2011). Convergence and divergence: Developing a semiglobal marketing strategy. Journal of International Marketing (East Lansing, Mich.), 19(1), 82-101. https://doi.org/10.1509/jimk.19.1.82
24.
FellbaumC. (1998). WordNet an electronic lexical database (2nd printing.). MIT Press.
25.
FieldA. P. (2018). Discovering statistics using IBM SPSS statistics (5th ed.). SAGE Publications.
26.
FrancesconiS. (2008). Metaphors of jewels as strategies of persuasion in British tourist promotional texts. In GarzoneG.CatenaccioP. (Eds.), Language and bias in specialized discourse (pp. 176-186). CUEM.
27.
GilbertG. N. (1993). Analyzing tabular data: Loglinear and logistic models for social researchers. UCL Press.
28.
GoatlyA. (2007). Washing the brain (Discourse approaches to politics, society and culture). John Benjamins Publishing Company.
29.
GongS.-P.AhrensK.HuangC.-R. (2007, May21–23). Chinese Sketch Engine and mapping principles: A corpus-based study of conceptual metaphors using the BUILDING source domain. In: Proceedings of the 8th Chinese Lexical Semantics Workshop [Conference session] Hong Kong Polytechnic University, pp. 130–136.
30.
HellerM.PujolarJ.DuchêneA. (2014). Linguistic commodification in tourism. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 18(4), 539-566. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12082
31.
HendersonJ. C. (2002). Heritage attractions and tourism development in Asia: A comparative study of Hong Kong and Singapore. The International Journal of Tourism Research, 4(5), 337-344. https://doi.org/10.1002/jtr.389
HorngJ.-S.TsaiC.-T. (Simon). (2012). Exploring marketing strategies for culinary tourism in Hong Kong and Singapore. Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, 17(3), 277-300. https://doi.org/10.1080/10941665.2011.625432
34.
HuangC. R.ChangR. Y.LeeH. P. (2004). Sinica BOW (Bilingual Ontological Wordnet): Integration of bilingual WordNet and SUMO [Conference session]. The International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, Lisbon, Portugal.
35.
JaworskaS. (2017). Metaphors we travel by: A corpus-assisted study of metaphors in promotional tourism discourse. Metaphor and Symbol, 32(3), 161-177. https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2017.1338018
36.
KatrandjievH. (2016). Rhetorical analysis of tourism advertising slogans: An empirical study from Bulgaria. Tourismos, 11(1), 86-118.
37.
KollerV. (2009). Brand images: Multimodal metaphor in corporate branding messages. In ForcevilleC.Urios-AparisiE. (Eds.), Multimodal metaphor (pp. 45-71). de Gruyter
38.
KrennmayrT. (2013). Top-down versus bottom-up approaches to the identification of metaphor in discourse. Metaphorik. de, 24, 7–36.
39.
LakoffG.JohnsonM. (1980/2003). Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press.
40.
LawR.ChenS. Z. (2012). Representation of destination cultural factors on hotel websites: Content analysis of Beijing hotel websites. Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, 17(2), 210-229. https://doi.org/10.1080/10941665.2011.616903
41.
LawalT. (2025). Metaphor in U.K. bank chairman letter to shareholders. Business and Professional Communication Quarterly. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/23294906241304697
42.
LiX.WangY.YuY. (2015). Present and future hotel website marketing activities: Change propensity analysis. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 47, 131-139. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2015.02.007
43.
MarianiM. M.BorghiM.KazakovS. (2019). The role of language in the online evaluation of hospitality service encounters: An empirical study. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 78, 50-58. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2018.11.012
44.
MattielloE. (2012). Metaphor in tourism discourse: Imagined worlds in English tourist texts on the web. Textus, 1(1), 67-82.
MusolffA. (2004). The heart of the European body politic. British and German perspectives on Europe’s central organ. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 25(5-6), 437-452. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434630408668917
47.
NilesI.PeaseA. (2001, October 17–19). Towards a standard upper ontology [Conference session]. Proceedings of the International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS), Ogunquit, Maine, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/505168.505170.
48.
OoiC.-S. (2008). Reimagining Singapore as a creative nation: The politics of place branding. Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 4(4), 287-302. https://doi.org/10.1057/pb.2008.18
49.
PauwelsL. (2012). A multimodal framework for analyzing websites as cultural expressions. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 17(3), 247-265. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2012.01572.x
SeminoE. (2008). Metaphor in discourse. Cambridge University Press.
52.
SeminoE.DemjénZ.DemmenJ. (2018). An integrated approach to metaphor and framing in cognition, discourse, and practice, with an application to metaphors for cancer. Applied Linguistics, 39(5), 625-645. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amw028
53.
SeptiantoF.PontesN.TjiptonoF. (2022). The persuasiveness of metaphor in advertising. Psychology & Marketing, 39(5), 951-961. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21633
54.
ShinW.HuhJ. (2009). Multinational corporate website strategies and influencing factors: A comparison of US and Korean corporate websites. Journal of Marketing Communications, 15(5), 287-310. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527260802481207
SteenG.DorstA.HermannB.KaalA.KrennmayrT.PasmaT. (2010). A method for linguistic metaphor identification: From MIP to MIPVU. John Benjamins.
57.
StepinsK. V. (2022). A cross-linguistic study of metaphor variation in promotional discourse of the tourist sector in Spanish, English and German: Implications for translation [Unpublished doctoral thesis, Universitat Politècnica de València].
58.
SuenA. (2009). Self-representation of five star hotels: A digital genre analysis of hotel homepages. In BhatiaV. K.ChengW.Du-BabcockB.LungJ. (Eds.). Language for professional communication: Research, practice & training (pp. 111-130). The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Asia-Pacific LSP and Professional Communication.
59.
SuenA. (2018). The language of luxury hotel websites in China. In KimY. C.ChenP. C. (Eds.), The digitization of business in China (pp. 99-125). Palgrave Macmillan Asian Business Series. Palgrave Macmillanhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-79048-0_4
60.
ToddL.LeaskA.FyallA. (2015). Destination competitiveness: A comparative study of Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore. Tourism Analysis, 20(6), 593-605. https://doi.org/10.3727/108354215X14464845877832
61.
WhitlaP.WaltersP. G. P.DaviesH. (2007). Global strategies in the international hotel industry. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 26(4), 777-792. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2006.08.001
62.
WongE. P. Y.BauerT. G.WongK. K. F. (2008). A critical comparison of tourism policies of Hong Kong and Singapore - an avenue to mutual learning. The International Journal of Tourism Research, 10(3), 193-206. https://doi.org/10.1002/jtr.656
63.
ZengW. H.AhrensK. (2023). Corpus-Based Metaphorical Framing Analysis: WAR Metaphors in Hong Kong Public Discourse. Metaphor and Symbol, 38(3), 254–274. https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2022.2158088
64.
ZengH.TayD.AhrensK. (2020). A multifactorial analysis of metaphors in political discourse: Gendered influence in Hong Kong political speeches. Metaphor and the Social World, 10(1), 141–168. https://doi.org/10.1075/msw.19016.zen
