Return to the east: Tourism promotion as legitimation in Qiandongnan, China

This article analyzes encounters with tourism promotional materials as acts of legitimation. I argue that legitimation constitutes an integral part of tourism promotion as communicative act. Through legitimation, producers of promotional materials affect and persuade the viewers of those materials, transforming desires and engendering tourism activities. Tourism promotion therefore constitutes a micro-social interaction between producer, viewer, and materials, and much of the “work” done through this interaction can be analyzed as legitimation. Drawing on recently developed frameworks for semiotic and discourse analysis, I examine a set of promotional brochures and websites published in Qiandongnan, a region in southwest China