The tourist as a metaphor of the social world

John Urry, in his recent Sociology Beyond Societies, claims that ‘much of our understanding of society and social life is based upon, and reflected through, various metaphors’ (Urry, 2000: 21). Warming to his theme, and later on the same page, he becomes more emboldened when he categorically asserts that ‘sociological thinking, like any other form of thought, cannot be achieved non-metaphorically.’ In order to reinforce his position, he approvingly cites Sontag (1991: 91) as declaring that ‘one cannot think without metaphors’, and Hawkes (1972: 60), who states that ‘all language is fundamentally metaphorical, as is the way that it is communicated to others.’

Từ khóa: the tourist as a metaphor of the social world, society and social life, cultural codes, universal metaphors, communication process, conventional language