VANDRING I SKRÄCKENS TECKEN - En semiotisk analys av Jack the Ripper-vandringar

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to examine the communication of two different websites which belongs to two different companies that offers Jack the Ripper walking tours. These tours are a kind of horror walk that takes place in Whitechapel, London, and departs multiple times a day, almost every day the year around. One of the theoretical approaches is the term morbid tourism in conjunction with the theory about postmodernity. Postmodernity and morbid tourism can be seen as two interlinked concepts that can help to explain why many people today are interested in travelling in other peoples suffering and death. The other theoretical approach is about the postmodern societies relationship to death, which can be discussed by how people in different ways relate to it. The third theoretical approach is about myths and how they operate in different contexts. The method used in this essay is primarily a semiotic analysis of the communication of the walks, where I mainly use the analysis levels denotation and connotation to try to reveal what the websites use to attract tourists to participate in their particular activity. The results when it comes to the semiotic analysis can be split into different themes such as color, horror, the 19th century East End and mystery and unfinished business. These themes are primarily what the companies focus on when they try to draw eyes to their websites. When it comes to morbid tourism and postmodernity many of us tend to pick our trips based on what we can´t reach in our every day lives. Today, we live with death in different ways, much because of media, and the media is also the place where various tourist attractions usually are communicated.