“地方”的视觉表征与社会构建——西方旅游广告研究的“文化转向”思潮

Visual Representation and Social Construction of Place:Cultural Turn in Western Tourism Advertising Researches

20世纪90年代后,西方人文地理学出现"文化转向"(cultural turn)的理论思潮,学者们格外重视对地理现象进行文化层面的解释,视觉分析(visual analysis)等定性方法(qualitative methods)得到较多的应用。旅游是现代社会的重要地理现象之一,旅游地的视觉表征(visual representation)成为"文化转向"思潮中最活跃的研究议题。西方学者援引地理学、符号学、语用学以及社会批判学派等诸多理论,将旅游营销图片作为"文本"(text)进行文化研究(cultural studies),揭示出旅游地是一个想象的空间这一本质,阐述其被社会性地构建(socially constructed)的过程和意义。国外同行的相关研究工作对我们具有重要的借鉴意义。

In mid and late 1990s, western human geography saw a major theoretical incident---＂Cultuml Tum＂, whose core was to put cultural studies and social theories into the analytical system of humane geography and stress on the shaping role of social culture and political process in space and place. For marketing many destinations use pictures to show their landscape, which some scholars named visual representation. And these marketing pictures just are texts which involves culture, place and man. The major conclusions of those westem scholars have been made are： Firstly, the destination is an image and myths. Secondly, postcards are narrative texts involving many social signifiers. Thirdly, those visual marketing texts often make fake representation about the hosts.