Semiotic landscape of Bangkok sex tourism spaces

Abstract

Sex tourism, though a potentially significant site of investigation, has received limited scholarly attention in the semiotic landscape research in the past two decades. Addressing this gap, I interrogate the discursive construction of Bangkok sex tourism spaces focusing on Silom areas, Cowboy alley, Nana Plaza. The study aims to identify the patterns of linguistic and semiotic choices in sexed signs, analyze the role of linguistic and semiotic resources in indexing gender and sexuality, and investigate the discursive construction of Bangkok sex tourism spaces. The data comprised 122 photographed sexed signs. I also did the non-participant observation in the areas investigated for approximately five months. The analysis focused on the shop signs and promotional signs appearing in bars. An integrated framework from code preference, visual social semiotics, lexicalization, linguistic fetish, language and desire was used to examine the sexed signs. Findings reveal that English-only, English-Thai, and English and other languages are the linguistic patterns in the sexed signs where English-only emerges to be prominent both in terms of its frequency and its salience. The semiotic patterns include the use of the human body, body part, animal, and object. The male body, the female body and the trans woman body appear in shadow figures in shop signs while appear as photographic images in promotional signs. Linguistic and semiotic resources both contribute to the construction of gender and sexual identities. Lexicalization processes emerging from the data include personalizing, characterizing, fetishizing, heterosexualizing, queering and fantasizing. Certain lexical items are significant indexes of gender and sexual identities, particularly “boy” and “male” for male homosexuals, “ladies” and “girls are for female heterosexuals and “ladyboy” for trans women. The female body is indexed by wavy hair, heels and shadow nudity while the trans woman body by bikinis. This is the case in signs located in Cowboy alley, Nana Plaza and Phatphong 1, the areas known to be dedicated to male heterosexual audiences. The muscular male body is displayed in signs located in Phatphong 2 and Silom 4, the areas targeting queer audiences and particularly male homosexuals. Findings have illustrated that Bangkok sex tourism spaces are constructed through the discursive practices imbricated in linguistic and semiotic resources in signs. I argue that sexed signs are semiotic aggregates that reveal language, gender and sexuality, identity and power situated in spaces. Likewise, I argue that linguistic fetish unveils the symbolic and economic value in the use of linguistic practices. Erotic desire, erotic intimacy through transgression and power embedded in language, and visual elements construct sites of desires. The study is significant in understanding sex tourism spaces in Thailand and in contributing to Thai sociolinguistics. The study has mapped the discursive structure of sex tourism spaces more generally. It also adds to the gender and sexuality scholarship in semiotic landscape and participates in the growing field of the sociolinguistics of sex work.