5.1 Mormality and Informality
As for the validity of meaning，let us go behind the formality of tourism prom otional texts.Traditionally，sociolinguistists have often used the term register as shorthand for formal／informal style（Gregory 1967）.Halliday（1978）interpreted register as“the linguistic features which are typically associated with a configuration of field，mode and tenor...”.According to Halliday，tenor evolves participants and shows the interpersonal relationship.In other words，tenor shows the intimacy or distance between participants.Defining“registers”more narrow ly as specialist language use related to a particular activity such as academic works，some scholars prefer style—“we characterise styles as varieties of language viewed from the point of viewof formality”（Trudgill 1992）.Quirk，who used the term attitude rather than style or register，ever illustrated form ality by the following diagram（Quirk et al.1985）.
Table 5.1 Formality Scale
Referring to tourism promotional texts，formality can be discussed by the following elements：(https://www.daowen.com)
（1）USEOFABBREVIATION in Section 4.1.3.4 provides evidence that OETT employs many abbreviations like's，'ll but TETT prefers the complete forms of them.The overuse of abbreviations cause informality.However，the abbreviations，which are mainly frequently used function words，can enhance people's reading speed.Moreover，people are led to em phasize on themajor information，withoutwasting time to read the textsword by word.
（2）READABILITY ANALYSIS has been introduced in Section 4.6.The experim ent is conducted with the assum ption that the higher coverage of BNC baseword it is in the tourism texts，them ore informal they are.Both OETT and TETT are found in close proximity to Range BNC baseword.Meanwhile，OETT shows a higher coverage of baseword.By the readability analysis，tourism promotional texts are inclined to be informal.And OETT ismore colloquial.
（3）USAGE OF“YOU”shows different evidence in OETT and TETT.Table 4.7 and Table 4.8 show there is a significant difference in keyness.Accounted by Antconc，there are 404 hits of you in OETT，but only 190 hits in TETT（including your and yours）.Normally，you signifies a face-to-face talk.Obviously，OETT highly appreciates the interpersonal relationship with visitors.The second person mode successfully builds intimacy between spots and visitors.In addition，OETT demonstratesmore hits of guest，visitor（OETT 163 hits，TETT 53 hits；guests and visitors included）.In a word，OETT is competent in shortening the psychological distance with visitors.
Generally speaking，tourism promotional texts are informal.As vocative texts（Bühler1934；Reiss1971；Newmark 1988；Nord 1997），they are supposed to be communicative and receiver-focused.OETT has well met the requirements of vocative texts.And yet TETT should im prove the pragmatic function.