The concept of the Bucket List has achieved rapid and widespread recognition. This article makes an original Critical Discourse Analysis of the Bucket List as a cultural phenomenon that provides important insights into the interrelation between identity and tourism. The Bucket List is used to communicate specific suggestions of desirable tourism experiences and uses what can be termed the experiential imperative discourse, where the language, tone and framing of the text positions the experience described as essential and obligatory. Ultimately, the Bucket List discourse serves to prescribe culturally specific ideas of what constitute ‘good’ tourism experiences and is imposed on individuals who are prompted to desire a constantly renewing range of tourism experiences
History
Published in
Annals of Tourism Research
Citation
THURNELL-READ, T., 2017. ‘What’s on your bucket list?’: Tourism, identity and imperative experiential discourse. Annals of Tourism Research, 67, pp. 58–66.
Publisher
Elsevier
Version
AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Annals of Tourism Research and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2017.08.003.