Richard W. Hallett is a Professor of linguistics at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, IL. He received his PhD in linguistics from the University of South Carolina. In addition to the discourse of tourism, his research interests include second language acquisition, sociolinguistics, and World Englishes.

Official Tourism Websites: A Discourse Analysis Perspective investigates the construction and promotion of identity of tourist locales by the designers of the official websites for destinations such as Santiago de Compostela, Spain; the Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia; New Orleans, Louisiana and Gary, Indiana; Myanmar/Burma; US Sports Halls of Fame; and, in recognizing the influence and popularity of such sites, three websites parodying the imaginary nations of Phaic Tan, Molvania, and San Sombrero. Analysis addresses how tourism websites foster social action and, therefore, contribute to the (re)construction of nations and other communities by variably fostering re-imagination, rebirth, renaissance, promotion and caution, and patriotism. Recognizing that tourism texts can function to both construct and embody identity for their respective locales, this investigation employs critical discourse analysis, multimodal discourse analysis, and visual semiotic analysis in the investigation of web texts and images.

1. Introduction
2. Identity and the World Wide Web Methods of Analysis
3. Narrative of the Nation: Baltic Tourism Websites in the Post-Soviet Context
4. The Tourist as Pilgrim, The Pilgrim as Tourist: Santiago de Compostela
5. Rebirth of an American City: New Orleans, Louisiana
6. '100 Years...Steel Strong': Forging an Identity for Gary, Indiana
7. The Tourist as Patriot: Sports and Nationalism
8. Balancing Promotion and Warning in the Construction of National Identity in Travel Guides: The Case of Myanmar/Burma
9. Constructing Self vs. Other in Parodic Travel Guides
10. Conclusion: On Tourism, Identity, and the World Wide Web