Abstract

Heritage management often focuses on the conservation of tangible entities with little guidance on the interaction of intangible attributes. Scholars apply the processes of discourse and discursive practices recognizing heritage locations. Dialogues between the planners and partakers communicate the contexts of knowledge, culture, and situation as well as the function of performance and ongoing activity. Discourse analysis interacts with multimodes of contexts, texts, images, designed objects, communicative functions, rules, and principles to convey the meaning and construct positive relationship within the study sites. Past studies have pointed out that artistically created icon, images, and artworks that represent distinctive cultural, natural, and traditional context can form the destination image and improve tourism development. Researchers apply discourse analysis to understand the heritage in its presence through time and interface with local contexts, social practices, cultural experiences, and traditions. Researchers use written text to embody the interaction and connection processes of the researchers’ thoughts, concepts, and arguments. Discourse is a mode of organizing knowledge, ideas, or experience that is rooted in language and its concrete contexts; however, discourse is not limited within the linguistic fields. This article aims to expand the application of discourse analysis beyond the limit of language and written text. Chinese or Japanese characters are the conception of pictographic and ideographic language, but they are also the construction of logical aggregate, phonetic complex, transference, or borrowing. This notion presents the opportunity to extend the definition of discourse beyond text and language by using icons, images, multimedia, or designed objects as the means of communication, conversation, and dialogue. This study presents three cases in Asia as the vehicle of creating interactive multimodal dialogues for intangible heritage management.