Tourists, Signs and the City the Semiotics of Culture in an Urban Landscape
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Tourists, Signs and the City The Semiotics of Culture in an Urban Landscape MICHELLE M. METRO-ROLAND Western Michigan University, USA © Michelle M. Metro-Roland 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Michelle M. Metro-Roland has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Wey Court East Suite 420 Union Road 101 Cherry Street Farnham Burlington Surrey, GU9 7PT VT 05401-4405 England USA www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Metro-Roland, Michelle Marie. Tourists, signs and the city : the semiotics of culture in an urban landscape. -- (New directions in tourism analysis) 1. Culture and tourism. 2. Culture--Semiotic models. 3. Symbolic interactionism. 4. Tourism--Psychological aspects. 5. Tourists--Hungary--Budapest--Attitudes. 6. Peirce, Charles S. (Charles Sanders), 1839-1914-- Knowledge--Semiotics. I. Title II. Series 338.4'791-dc22 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Metro-Roland, Michelle M. Tourists, signs and the city : the semiotics of culture in an urban landscape / by Michelle M. Metro-Roland. p. cm. -- (New directions in tourism analysis) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7546-7809-0 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-0-7546-9603-2 (ebook) 1. Tourism. 2. Cities and towns. 3. Tourism--Social aspects. 4. Signs and symbols--Social aspects. 5. Peirce, Charles S. (Charles Sanders), 1839-1914. 6. Semiotics. 7. Culture--Semiotic models. I. Title. G155.A1M446 2011 306.4'819--dc23 2011015893 ISBN 9780754678090 (hbk) ISBN 9780754696032 (ebk) II Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group, UK. Contents List of Maps and Figures vii Preface ix 1 Introduction 1 2 Peirce, Signs and Interpretation 11 3 Landscape and Tourism 25 4 The City—A Brief Introduction 41 5 Tourists in the City—Means and Methods 63 6 Signs in the City 75 7 Markets and Culture 111 8 Conclusions and Implications 139 Appendices 149 References 151 Index 167 Chapter 6 Signs in the City The interviews and the photographs, separately and taken together, offer tantalizing glimpses into the ways tourists were interpreting culture in the city. We have spoken about the history of the city, especially its architectural legacy, and the general conception of the way in which guidebooks shape collateral knowledge. However, once the tourist arrives on the ground, that information, along with their other conceptual baggage, is brought face-to-face with the vividness of being in the city. What follows is a discussion organized around the themes which emerged in the photos as well as the interviews. These include 1) the role of linguistic markers; 2) the question of disorder in interpreting the past, 3) the tensions between the socialist and post-socialist history, 4) the textual quality of architectural style for urban landscapes 5) the everyday city and its objects. The images and interview comments it is argued in the conclusion reveal the indexical role of location. The Writing on the Wall—Signs, Language and Graffiti The so called “linguistic landscape” is the material manifestations of language in place, the collection of street names, shop signs, notices, adverts, graffiti and other textual items (Shohamy and Gorter 2009). This landscape is crucial for the smooth functioning of a literate society, and because of its ubiquity is a key element of the tourist prosaic and the experience of cultural tourism especially when the language is other than the tourists’ own. As long as it does not impinge upon the visitor’s enjoyment or cause disruptions in the experience of the city, language difference remains an important marker of place differentiation. As we will see it was among the most commented upon aspects of a sign of “Hungarianess.” Images of the linguistic landscape were captured in the form of commercial signage, location markers including street signs, and graffiti. Shop Signs Commercial life is a key function in cities, from the fora found in Ancient Rome to Fifth Avenue in New York. While some participants photographed the folksy souvenirs available in shops in the Castle District, others took many pictures of the 76 Tourists, Signs and the City many local, small scale shops found throughout the city.1 One photographer was particularly interested in a shop called Telefonía selling used cell phones which the photographer had “never seen.”2 Like many shops this one listed on its sign its wares in Hungarian first and then in English, which is why the participant could comment upon it. The use of English in commercial places is both functional, a message to non-Magyar speakers, but it also signifies to the Magyar speaker that it is hip, “international” and contemporary. Two separate photographers shot the Ruszwurm sign, the tiny coffee house in the Castle District which dates from the early 1800s. The actual name on the sign, is a sign, in a semiotic sense, indicating all that is embodied in the concept of this café which the Vendég Váró calls “an atmospheric, confectionary furnished in the Empire style” (45). The Kiscelli Museum which sits on the outskirts of the city has an important collection of old commercial signs, which as opposed to those one finds today, utilized symbology, created in the round often out of metal. For the most part those signs have disappeared except for nostalgic reconstructions, such as one Owl sign taken outside what appears to be a folk craft store in the Castle District.3 Entirely absent from the commercial signage photos surprisingly were the elaborate neon signs that date from the 1950s and 1960s, many now defunct but still in situ on buildings throughout the city. Others have made their way into the Elektrotechnikai Múzeum [Electrotechnical Museum]. In interviews the shops and commercial enterprises were not mentioned with a great deal of frequency, with a few notable exceptions. One pair were struck when they went into a “locals shopping store, and it looked really poor on the outside but inside it was fabulous” (Interview 14), and they also spoke about trying to find a pharmacy. Enzensberger’s (1989 [1985]: 102) mid-1980s essay on Hungary gives a sense of why this would be a challenge: I’ve spent whole days reading the wounds and splendors of the city of Budapest from its doors, walls, and nameplates. I think of it as an ambiguous, puzzling, dirty panorama. Every sign in this country seems to promise a secret to the flaneur from abroad and impresses upon him that he is condemned to remain an 1 Photos 9.22T; 11.21T; 11.24T; 11.25T; 16.17T. The numbers in parentheses refer to the photographers and the image number which are archived with the author. A selection of the 357 photos will appear in the chapter. The numbers are included in the text in order to give the reader a general idea of the number of photos on a particular theme that appear in the collection. Each camera held 25 to 26 exposures, and the numbers assigned to each photo reveal where in the order of images the pictures was taken, in reverse order. In other words, a picture with an image number of 25 indicates that it was the first picture taken, in reverse successive order all the way to 0 or 00. The T indicates that this was a tourist. While cameras were also given to Hungarians, those pictures are not treated in this work. See Metro-Roland (2009a) for a discussion of the Hungarian photos. 2 Photo 12.20T. 3 Photo 21.7T. Signs in the City 77 idiot, an illiterate. Gyógyszertár, for example. Who could decode such a word? And yet, behind the frosted glass and the wood paneling is concealed nothing more than a quite ordinary pharmacy. The pair mentioned above recognized the Green Cross image and so were able to locate one. The experience of a young American couple (Interview 1) however was more frustrating, and bore a close resemblance to the complaint of Enzensberger. They unsuccessfully sought out linguistic clues in the cityscape to guide them to a pharmacy but gyógyszertar the word bears little resemblance to pharmacia, patika or apotheka, words they might have recognized more easily. They were bitterly disappointed when upon locating a shop called Drogerie Mart they discovered that, in fact, no actual drugs were to be found, only shampoos, soaps, and tissues. In the course of one of the interviews in the Castle District the interviewee asked for help in locating a pharmacy. These experiences shed light on the frustrations that the Hungarian linguistic landscape could bring when trying to undertaken everyday tasks. For many people language was the defining factor given for the city being Hungarian and the logical follow up question was whether this impacted negatively the tourists’ experiences, that is whether the language posed a barrier. This also allowed for a glimpse into their level of interaction beyond mere “sight- seeing” of Hungarian culture; in other words, how far were they moving out of the touristscape which exists in an almost exclusive English language space within the larger Hungarian speaking local space of the cityscape as a whole? It should be noted that in the capital English is the primary language of tourism followed by German. What ought also to be kept in mind is that, as the list of nationalities of interviewees reveals, for many of them English was a second language (if not a third or fourth).