Le "voci" della comunicazione istituzionale via social: uno sguardo contrastivo tra Svizzera e Italia sulla pubblicità turistica

The article presents a contrastive analysis of the language of tourism promotion as used in two major international advertising campaigns run by government tourism organizations in 2023: Italia. Open To Meraviglia (Italian Ministry of Tourism) and Grand Train Tour of Switzerland (Switzerland Tourism). The study provides an overview of the main linguistic features that characterize governmental, non-commercial advertising and that differentiate it from traditional commercial advertising, to show that the language used in the two tourism campaigns contains a mix of elements of both types. Specifically, the study analyses the tone of voice of the two campaigns and their actors (two international celebrities for the Swiss campaign, a virtual influencer for the Italian one), examines the surface and structure level of the written and spoken texts of the ads, and describes language use and variation across digital and social media, with a specific focus on language as a digital resource. In doing so, the study aims to provide the basis for further explorations in the dynamics of the language of government advertising in the age of digital and social media.