The Semiotics of Heritage Tourism

By: Emma Waterton and Steve Watson

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Synopsis: This book is a fast-paced and thorough re-evaluation of what heritage tourism means to the people who experience it. It draws on contemporary thinking in human geography and heritage studies, and applies it to a sector of tourism that is both pervasive yet poorly researched in terms of the perspective of tourists themselves. In a series of lucid and tightly argued chapters, it traces the use of semiotics as an analytical tool from its theoretical origins in text, through the all-important dynamics of visuality into an expanded realm of feeling and sensuality. Challenging assumptions about the way that heritage is experienced, this book uses examples from around the world to explore the semiotic landscape that surrounds heritage sites, linking what is represented about the past and how it feels to be there.