Harmony in Diversity: The Differentiated Discursive Construction of Tourism Destination Images in Zhejiang’s Ancient Towns of the Rhetoric Academy
Abstract
Zhejiang’s ancient towns share the cultural foundation of “Jiangnan water towns” yet widely face the homogenization dilemma of “a thousand towns with one face”. Existing studies have mainly approached this issue from spatial morphology, business structure, and governance models, while seldom asking how differentiation becomes possible through discursive construction. Taking Wuzhen, Nanxun, Nianbadu, and Qiantong as case studies. This paper uses comparative discourse analysis to examine how ancient towns build distinctive destination images on the shared symbolic foundation of “Jiangnan water towns” through resource selection, narrative encoding, symbolic assemblage, and multi-actor collaboration. The findings show that: (1) Differentiation superimposes individuality upon a shared rather than rejecting common symbols. (2) Successful practices follow the pathway logic of “resource distillation - value positioning - narrative encoding - full-scenario penetration - communication verification. (3) Resident and local cultural-elite participation is pivotal to preventing differentiation from becoming another form of standardization. This paper proposes a “harmony in diversity” analytical framework.
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