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102 connotation
to measure tourist image and analyse ski resort
choice', in P. Johnson and B. Thomas �eds),
Choice and Demand in Tourism, New York: Mansell,
93±106. �Explains methods of data collection
and analysis.)
Claxton, J.D. �1987) `Conjoint analysis in travel
research: a manager's guide', in J.R.B. Ritchie
and C.R. Goeldner �eds), Travel Tourism and
Hospitality Research:A Handbook for Managers and
Researchers, New York: John Wiley, 459±69.
�Discusses advantages and pitfalls of conjoint
analysis in trade-off situations.)
Smith, S.L.J. �1995) Tourism Analysis:A Handbook,
2nd edn, Harlow: Longman, 82±91. �Explains
the method and its use in restaurant choice
situations.)
connotation
BARBARA A. CARMICHAEL, CANADA
Apart from their primary significations, verbal and
pictorial images are often used to imply or connote
additional meanings. Connotation procedures are
the linguistic, symbolic and cognitive processes
through which such additional meanings are
generated and communicated. One of the main
reasons why the understanding of connotation
procedures is relevant to tourism studies is that, like
representations and the objects to which they
relate, tourism sites, together with their activities
and surrounding paraphernalia, derive much of
their saliency from being able to connote meanings
and associations which transcend their immediate
appearances. A beach, for example, may well be a
`sea shore covered with water worn pebbles', but
for holidaymakers it is also a place which carries a
host of connotations; for example, with childhood,
freedom or romantic liaisons. Ultimately, the whole
tourism industry is founded upon such structures of
symbolic transference.
Psychologists in the field have been particularly
interested in the ways through which the trappings
of leisure and tourism are used to connote the
inner states and internal dispositions of those taking
part in such activities. Incorporating insights from
the psychological realm, sociologists and anthropologists
are more concerned with the social
origins of connotation. Veblen was the first
seriously to examine how leisure pursuits took part
in the orchestration of status distinctions within
European society �horse racing and knowledge of
classical languages, to take two examples, connoting
high social status). More recently, Bourdieu has
carried this work forward by looking at how status
differences are symbolically marked by the connotations
emanating from different artistic pursuits,
and Barthes's studies of the Eiffel Tower and the
Blue Guide are recognised by many as the corner
stones of semiological �see semiotics) discussions
of tourism icons and their metaphorical associations.
Dann has developed this genre in his examination
of some of the symbolic vehicles of the
touristic imagination. He has shown how these
are implicated in the cognitive construction of
feelings and attitudes towards social and personal
histories and biographies �steam trains resurrected
for the summer tourism trade being
associated with both childhood and empire, for
example) and how, furthermore, the broader
panoply of iconography enters into cognitive
processes which symbolically articulate and
legitimate social hierarchies and systems of
social control. The theoretical challenge posed
by the interrelated tasks of analytically evaluating
the objects strewn in the tourist's path, exploring
the attributes they connote and describing the
connotation procedures used in the process,
derives from the necessity to thread together
the realms of the personal, social, psychological
and sociological within a single interpretative
framework.
Further reading
Barthes, R. �1983) The Eiffel Tower, New York: Hill
and Wang.
Bourdieu, P. �1984) Distinction:A Social Critique of the
Judgement of Taste, London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul.
Dann, G. �1996) The Language of Tourism:A
Sociolinguistic Analysis, Wallingford: CAB International.
Selwyn, T. �ed.) �1996) The Tourist Image:Myths and
Myth Making in Tourism, Chichester: Wiley.