‘Please Do not Stand over the Buddha’s Head (Pay Respect)’: Mediations of Tourist and Researcher Experience in Thailand

Abstract

This paper examines signs mediating tourist experience in temples and heritage sites in Thailand, paying particular attention to how language is used on signs, the semiotic make-up of the signs, and the economy of discourses embedded within those signs. Utilizing a geosemiotic approach (Scollon and Scollon 2003), we show that the signs populating tourist spaces in Thailand not only address rather different audiences, but also index distinct orders of discourse (religious, commercial, informational, regulatory). We propose that signs mediate differently the landscape of Thai Buddhist temples for the local Thai audience and for non-Thai Western others, implying for each group not only different kinds of behaviours but also contrasted positions and identities. In that sense, we view signs in this tourist context observed as cultural tools for boundary production between Easterner and Westerner.