The tourist semiosis of lake landscapes through aesthetics and “perfomativities”

We used Semiotics to more closely examine visual representations of lake landscapes and corporeal “performativities”, specifically employing type/token distinction, a remarkable feature of the sign model by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839 ‑1914). Thus, the core goal was to address the following question from a southern empirical semiotic lab, Mirim Lagoon (Brazil/Uruguay): How do tourists and leisure ‑seekers encounter lake landscapes and make sense of them in aesthetic and performative terms? We applied a qualitative methodological approach based on visual and textual information, followed by interpretational analysis informed by type/token distinctions and complementarity. Visitors engage with lake landscapes visually, corporeally, and performatively regarding the materiality of these “vacationscapes”. The collective gaze complements and confronts conservative observation at these landscapes, still focused on Romanticism. After providing advances in our current comprehension of these inter ‑related phenomena, we raise some questions for further examination, together with practical implications.