Multiple Words, In The Context Of Cross-cultural Tourism

Despite the widespread influence G H. Mead's work has over time, his name is often cited, there are few empirical studies that have sought to realize his ideas in a systematic way. This is in part because of the abstruse nature of the theory and the resulting difficulties involved in instantiating the theory. An heir to the Meadian theory, symbolic interactionism tends to question the grand theory even Mead's, thus more inclining to deductive approach instead of much systematic studies into Mead's social act theory and its core concepts. On the other hand, the empirical field this present research based on is tourism. Being a significant part of society and culture, and important form of man's dynamic existence, it has received little attention from social psychology. In this sense, the rich social and cultural sense-making process involving all actors in the touring act needs to be explored.The present research is based on touring act in which the British tourists in China and the Chinese hosts interacting with each other, and the perspective-taking and self-reflection emerging in this process. The other focus is the novel identities constructed by this process in divergent contexts. Social act, position exchange and perspective-taking, significant symbol and vocal gesture, self-reflection are the core concepts of this research; while concepts like cultural stream, symbolic resource, social representation and dialogical self are introduced as an extension of the Meadian framework. In this way, the social act theory is more applicable to empirical studies. The naturalistic-constructive paradigm adopted by this study is echoed with perspective-, relation- and history-oriented methodology and qualitative research techniques (observation, interview, literature analysis, action research, discourse analysis, genealogical analysis, etc.)The creative aspects of this research are as follows: First, the novel interpretation of Mead's theory as social act is based on a clear analysis of his original publications and frontier researches available only recently. This is a novel research area at home and just emerging abroad. On the other hand, the application of social psychological theories such as Mead's into cross-cultural tourism has very few precedents. This endeavor will help make sense of the complications in this field and work for a better understanding of divergent phenomenon. Last but not the least, a systematic combination of methods and techniques bridging social psychology, cultural anthropology, history, comparative literature, education can be regarded as methodological breakthrough this study has attempted.Multi-level analysis of the collected data has resulted in 4 evaluative discoursedimensions and corresponding positions, namely "traditional-modern","traveler-tourist", "good guest-annoying guest", "service -provider" and "money-maker". On the basis of the above empirical data, the study has revealed thefollowing points: firstly, ever taking other's social position doesn't necessarily leadsto self taking other's perspective; although frequent exchange of social positions didoccur in certain social act(self-narration act). Secondly, The core problematic of thisstudy is "whether the Chinese and the British self-reflect as a result of taking theother's perspective". Considering this has led to the conclusion that each group hasgreater ability to take the perspective within one's social group than outside it. Thisalso demonstrates the utility of the concept of position exchange in a reverse way.Thirdly, the Chinese-British perspective-taking did occur even in the absence ofposition exchange, which involves a range of symbolic resources and reconstructiveworks in trying to imagine the perspective of the other, and probably self-reflectingwhen discomfort or tension emerge. The last point worth mentioning is that thespecific structure and mechanism of significant symbol has been explored. Evoking asignificant symbol, such as "I" or "tipping" in the serving act is evoking the wholesocial act from all of the perspectives embedded within it. Instead of the same singlemeaning, it evokes the same complex of divergent meaning, thus achieving theinter-subjective structure vital for perspective-taking and self-reflection.The present study has added to the contemporary debate over the links between symbol and interaction by its novel interpretation and empirical efforts. On the one hand, the focal point has been the integrating of perspectives relative to complementary social positions, leading to a differential basis for emerging self-reflection and significant symbol. On the other hand, perspective-taking and the formation of significant symbol are empirically studied in the social act framework. Due to the above functional basis of perspective-taking and emerging self-reflecting consciousness, the Meadian social act theory holds its values for unraveling social complexes such as the cross-cultural touring act.