Discursive Representation of Ecotourism on the International Ecotourism Society (TIES) Homepage: A Multi-Modal Social Semiotic Framework

Ecotourism is one form of nature-based responsible travel that preserves environment and its natural areas. The International Ecotourism Society (TIES) is the inaugural American non-lucrative institution dedicating its efforts to cultivate the ideals and principles of ecotourism. What is intriguing about TIES homepage is that it deploys multimodal units in ensembles to explicate human-nature relationship. Moreover, the TIES homepage illustrates a kind of semiotic complexity in communicating ecological and touristic issues and this asserts the significance of this homepage at two interrelated levels: genre level and mode level. Accordingly, the paper presents a multimodal visual social semiotic analysis of the TIES homepage’s hypertextuality based on a hybrid of multimodal semiotic frameworks, namely genre analysis, layout analysis, and image analysis. The findings formulate that TIES is viewed as a typical discursive practice as it expounds how the interplay of different semiotic resources construe social practices and reflect social realities relating to environmental threats and values.