This paper is intended to examine the functions of '
interpersonal idiomatic
expressions' (Fernando 1996) in discourse. The
data are some travel ads from two English magazines. Travel advertising as a register has become one of the candidates for late modern discourse par excellence.
Interpersonal idiomatic expressions are one of the main resources to create dialogue and text voices, to promote
conviviality and other social emotions. Travel advertising is dialogic by nature. As its main discourse function is promoting goods and service while its dominant atmosphere is that of amity, interpersonal idiomatic expressions of conviviality are favored by this register. Like any other discourse type, the discourse of travel advertising is multi -voiced. These voices are mainly realized through different forms of interpersonal idiomatic expressions, especially those involving language report, which play a fundamental role in constructing heteroglossis in travel advertising. Advertising is a dubious manifestation of free enterprise in which language becomes a natural resource exploited by agencies in the sectional interests of their clients' marketing programs. This is called 'linguistic capitalism' (Hughes 1988) of advertising, of which a recent stage is to exploit the idiomatic resources of language.