Scotland in Your Eyes

It can be argued that the advertising of a foreign destination is placed at the interface between two cultures: on one side the culture of the potential host and, on the other side, the cultural background of the tourist. For Urry (1990) the construction of the tourist gaze 9 is fundamentally based on contrast since tourism, a form of 'deviance', inherently seeks departure from established routines. This antipodal stance is indeed such a crucial cornerstone of tourism that the observation of tourism practices can, he argues, inform by contrast on the standard, normal' practices of a given social group. Although contrast is undeniably a prime appeal in destination advertising, marketing practitioners also see the need of embedding the values of the targeted group in the advertising message in order to satisfy international tourists' needs (Reisinger and Turner 2003) and reinforce their perceived self-image to create brand empathy (Morgan and Pritchard 2002). Social scientists have also stressed the part played by the tourist's culture in the semiotic process of meaning construction, as the decoding of the advertising message is negotiated through the recipient's referent system (Dann 1996) and relies on pre-established ways of seeing (McCannell 1973, Culler 1981). The process of audience construction in destination advertising is therefore underpinned by the bipolar tensions of familiarity and difference: the need, on the one hand, to work with the societal practices, values and expectations of the targeted audience as ideology tends to be conservative (Gold and Gold 1995, O'Barr 1994, Cathelat 1992), and, on the other, to suggest life enhancement through a temporary diversion from the familiar, in the exploration of 'new frontiers' (McCannell 1973)

Advertising · Business · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Representation (politics · Sociology · Culinary Culture and Tourism · Diverse Aspects of Tourism Research · History · Law · Philippine History and Culture

• The Tourist Bubble and the Europeanisation of Holiday Travel

  Jens Kr Steen Jacobsen•Journal of Tourism and Cultural…•2003

  Incluir item

• Mediating landscapes

  Open Access•Caroline Scarles•Tourist Studies•2004

  Incluir item

• Culture and the Ad

  Richard Ohmann, William M O’barr et al.•Contemporary Sociology A Journal…•1995

  Incluir item

• Picturing practices

  Open Access•Mike Crang•Progress in Human Geography•1997

  Incluir item

• Imagining Scotland

  Janet E Finegar•Journal of American Folklore•1999

  Incluir item