Commodification of place, consumption of identity: The sociolinguistic construction of a ‘global village’ in rural China1

Abstract

This paper seeks to contribute to the understanding of place as it relates to globalization and mobility by examining the sociolinguistic construction of a tourism site. A former residential neighborhood, West Street in Yangshuo County, China, was gradually transformed into a so‐called ‘global village’ for domestic tourists partly through appropriating English as one semiotic resource. Positioning this place in the global‐national‐local nexus, this study shows that the promotion of West Street as a ‘global village’ is not only driven by globalization or westernization, but more importantly capitalizes on English as a stylistic resource that indexes the modernist aspirations of the Chinese people. This commodified sense of place is nevertheless negotiated by tourists as they activate and (re‐)work the social meaning of place through their discursive practices. This highlights how place is a social construct, constantly transformed in the process of socio‐historical change, and also mediated by people's conceptualization, imagination and experience. 本文从社会语言学角度考察一处旅游景点的建构，旨在增进在全球化和流动时代背景下对‘地域’ (place) 的理解。位于中国阳朔县的西街，通过把英语作为一种符号资源，从一个历史居民街区转变成为所谓的‘地球村’。本研究从全球‐国家‐地方三位连结的框架审视该地域，说明‘地球村’不仅仅是全球化带动下的地方经济发展策略，更重要的是借用了在英语作为一种语言风格资源在中国社会中的作用。然而，这种构建的地域涵义也同时被游客通过不同方式激活和改写。本文提出，地域是社会构建的产物，其涵义随着社会历史的变革，人们对地域的理解，想象和体验，而不断改变。[Chinese]

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