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The Performance of Place and Tourist Performativity Through Bungee Jumping On and Offline

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Labour Policies, Language Use and the ‘New’ Economy

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Abstract

This chapter analyzes how adventure is commodified through place, spectacle and embodied action. It provides a case study of the performance of place and tourist performativity through bungee jumping, considered (and promoted) as the iconic adventure activity within Queenstown. I analyze different data sets both on and offline pertaining to bungee jumping, which include websites, posters and individuals’ discourse before and after their bungee jumping experiences. A multimodal methodological approach is taken in order to exemplify how bungee jumping, an activity that requires absolutely no skill or technique on the part of the consumer is sold and performed through the constant interplay of perceived and controlled risk in integrated texts where the boundaries of language and images break down. Another section of this chapter analyzes specific linguistic/discourse features which include parallelism and boosting and their specific functions in individuals’ discourse to exemplify the ways in which emotions are co-constructed, learned and enacted and how “conquering” the bungee jump becomes a rite of passage, where individuals’ social identities are reconfigured and reassessed whereby their social statuses are imbued with significant social and cultural capital.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The notion of performance and doing within the field of tourism has its roots in Culler’s seminal work (1981) in which he “outlined the way tourism as language acts to mark out, signify and categorize the world” (Franklin and Crang 2001: 17).

  2. 2.

    Crang’s (1997) study outlines tourist workers and “cast members” within various Disneyworld contexts and how their attire and costumes assist in the production of the touristic environment. Edensor (2001) expands on tourist workers and talks about “key workers”, which include “directors” and “stage-managers” within tourism contexts and how their roles are vital in the production of staged tourism (2001: 69).

  3. 3.

    https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shitless.

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  1. English Department, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

    Kellie Gonçalves

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Gonçalves, K. (2020). The Performance of Place and Tourist Performativity Through Bungee Jumping On and Offline. In: Labour Policies, Language Use and the ‘New’ Economy. Language and Globalization. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48705-8_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48705-8_5

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