A Contrastive Corpus-based Analysis of Rhetoric in Asian, American, and European Low-Cost Carriers' Slogans (original) (raw)

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically affected various industries, and aviation is the hardest hit (Suau-Sanchez et al., 2020). This predicament has turned all flyers across the globe into flying a low-cost carrier (henceforth, LCC) for pragmatic reasons. Attracting airline customers in a competitive market during this extra challenging time is inextricably linked to the strategic manipulation of linguistic resources in airline slogans. However, there has been a scarcity of contrastive analysis of rhetorical and linguistic devices used in LCCs' slogans that promote their global and local identities ascribed to airlines' culture and belief systems. Juxtaposed from McQuarrie and Mick (1996), Nilsen & Nilsen (1978, 1979), and Praba's (2017) theoretical and analytical frameworks, this study takes a corpus-based approach to analyze the rhetorical figures and linguistic devices operating in thirty (30) LCCs' slogans as represented in the three traffic conference areas which were ranked World's Best LCCs (2019-2021) by Skytrax. Findings reveal that many rhetorical figures and linguistic devices are employed in LCCs' slogans through phonetic, syntactic, and semantic devices. Moreover, these linguistic devices coconstruct the overall rhetorical appeal of the slogans may have influenced passengers' airline choices during the pandemic. The study likewise reveals socio-cultural embeddings inferred from the airline slogans. Therefore, it can be construed that airline slogans lend awareness to sociocultural nuances framed in American, European, and Asian LCCs through the rhetorical and linguistic resources that aid in making their global and local presence and thus their identity concerns during the pandemic.