Image And Cultural Variation

Urban culture is closely linked with city image. In the process of modernity, changes in social culture could cause changes incomponents of city image, which would lead to the representation of city image. Taking Lijiang, a city with mature tourism for example, its inheritance and protection of traditional culture have been challenged in the process of modernity. With the development of social culture, a number of changes have occurred in Lijiang’s public image Representation of this city’s cultural image appears to be vulgar.This study aims to explore characterization of Lijiang’s urban image and variation of this city’s cultural image from the perspective of communication, with symbolic and cultural representation approach. There are five chapters, specific as follows:Chapter 1, preliminary introduction to the study, establishes theoretical framework of representation connected with communication; Chapter 2 traces the development and evolution of urban culture, combined with discussion on development of urban image and representation of urban image; Chapter 3 analyses the representation system of current image according to some paper texts and interview texts about Lijiang’s image representation, as well as the information accessed through field observation, in order to reveal the cognition and communication of variable urban cultural image; Chapter 4 points out that changes in social culture would lead to variation of urban culture, and variation of urban culture is associated with construction of urban cultural ethics. Chapter 5 is conclusion of the study.This study suggests that Lijiang mainly has 8 characterization images including "land of river and bay", "important town along the ancient tea-horse road" and so on, with corresponding cultural meaning as natural appellation, pursuit of cultural implications, traditional business image, romantic symbol meaning. These images form an organic integrity. With the prosperity of tourism since reform and openness, Lijiang’s urban cultural image has experienced tremendous changes, traditional culture has been destroyed, official image and civil image scramble for the power of discourse about characterization. Currently, symbolic representation system of love affairs in Lijiang and its image evolution are variation of urban culture in the process of modernity. Under multiple contexts of communication, escape of social responsibility and lack of communication ethics aggravate the representation and communication of variable image. Therefore, in the process of modernity, urban cultural ethics should be constructed actively to avoid the variation of urban image caused by the absence or inadequate construction of urban cultural ethics.