Language choice and rhetorical persuasion in the linguistic landscape of Koh Samet, Thailand

Abstract

This study investigates language choice and rhetorical persuasion in the English-containing linguistic landscape of Koh Samet, a popular tourist destination in Rayong Province, Thailand. Previous linguistic landscape research in Thai tourism contexts has primarily focused on the visibility and distribution of languages on public signs, with less attention paid to how rhetorical resources enhance persuasive communication. Addressing this gap, the analysis explores both language combinations displayed on signs and how rhetorical devices in English contribute to tourism branding, place representation, and the construction of local and global meanings. The study adopted a mixed-methods approach, total of 226 publicly visible signs were photographed along the main road and accessible routes on Koh Samet and analyzed using linguistic landscape frameworks (Landry & Bourhis,1997) in combination with rhetorical frameworks proposed by Leigh (1994) and McQuarrie and Mick (1996). Bilingual signs were the most prevalent within the English-containing corpus, with English-Thai combinations as the dominant pairing, followed by monolingual English, and multilingual signs appeared less frequently. This distribution suggests that English functions as both a communicative and symbolic resource in tourism signage, while Thai remains central to expressing local identity and audience accessibility.  The rhetorical analysis identified 108 occurrences of tropes and schemes, especially imagery and alliteration, which help create memorable, appealing, and more commercially persuasive in tourist destinations. The study demonstrates that tourism signs should be viewed not only as multilingual displays of language choice but also as persuasive discourse that contributes to destination branding, potentially shape visitor expectations, and expressing the connection between local identity and globalization by incorporating rhetorical analysis into linguistic landscape research.