Tourists’ Embodied Metaphors in Lifestyle Cultural Space

Abstract

Traditional cultural tourism spaces are constantly being threatened by the trend of fast consumption, but some of them successfully survive. This research proposes the concept of “lifestyle cultural space” in a tourism context, referring to various lived traditional spaces that integrate closely with the lifestyle of the local community and become attractors to tourists. We aim to establish the formation mechanism of embodied metaphors in the spatial environment by taking teahouses in Chengdu, China, as typical cases. Methodologically, this study integrates Sebeok and Danesi’s modeling system with biosemiotic analysis and discourse analysis, and examines tourists’ embodied cognition and metaphors of such space through tourists’ online photographs, reviews, and authors’ participatory notes. Our findings reveal tourists’ embodied metaphors in lifestyle cultural spaces and build a theoretical connection between tourists’ embodiment and cognition of such spaces. Practical suggestions are given for the enhancement of lifestyle attractions.