Tourism discourse in Hong Kong : (self-)orientalism, performativity and elitism

Abstract

In response to Thurlow and Jaworski’s (2014) call for a cross-genre study of tourism discourse to look beyond an oversimplified image of power in the tourism industry presented in existing literature, the aims of this research are to study the representations of Hong Kong and to examine the ideologies that are made manifest across three genres of tourism discourse.

By using multimodal discourse analysis to study the representations of heritage attractions in Chinese and English guidebooks, the study shows that Western epistemology of the Orient still dominates tourist imagination of Hong Kong. The results indicate that Orientalist ideologies (cf. Said 1978) not only prevail in English guidebooks, Chinese guidebooks with local and mainland tourists as target audience also draw on these ideologies to exoticize the attractions. The data demonstrates how locals and heritage spaces are orientalised to match the prefigured imageries of the Orient as a homogenous and superstitious community. It underscores the unequal power relations between the Orient and the West still exist as processes of orientalization and self-orientalization still dominate the portrayal of the city in these guidebooks.

The semiotic landscapes in the selected sites illustrate the process of touristification by commodifying markers of Chineseness. The results indicate that different semiotic resources, such as materiality, typography and shapes, are strategically employed by heritage management to invoke a sense of heritage and Chinese space. By using non-participant observation, the research also demonstrates the reduction and commodification of religious practices and landscapes into spectacles of localness. Tourists often consume these heritage spaces by establishing embodied relationships with visually impressive sights and religious worshippers or playfully perform local religious rituals to construct a fleeting identity as locals. It demonstrates tourism, as a sign-consuming activity, tends to promote the reduction and commodification of cultural markers that can be easily consumed by the tourists.

TripAdvisor reviews are gaining importance in shaping tourist imagination and travel behaviours in the past decade. By using discourse analysis to examine the reviews of the selected sites, the results reveal that the identity of an elite tourist is foregrounded by the reviewers. Such identity is discursively constructed through different acts of stancetaking (du Bois 2007). Through the positive evaluation of cultural and historic attributes of the attractions, the reviewers align themselves with upperclass, educated elite tourists and simultaneously distance themselves from mass tourists. It demonstrates power inequalities not only exist between hosts and tourists, but also among the tourists as social class is still served as a social ideal in the tourism industry.

Based on the findings from the cross-genre analysis, this research underscores how power relations can be made manifest across different genres and scales, and such power inequality can be displayed in multiple ways by drawing on different sets of ideologies.