Archive for: Quotidian

Daily maintenance of cultural awareness is one of the tasks in planning tourism development worldwide. In order to integrate tourism into the context of general cultural and social development, it is necessary to continuously inform and educate all tourism stakeholders about the correct and ethically acceptable ways of using tourism resources. Since cultural resources often become degraded, sometimes with inability to revitalize, special attention must be paid to tourism planning and touristic value commercialization. Through the process of cultural emancipation, it is necessary to minimize the conflicts that may arise between the guest, the host and the space as the environment in this interaction. One of the models can be found in the positive impact which ethical codes can exert on the development of the culture of behaviour in tourism, as a social phenomenon.

This article analyses a phenomenon in the Hispanic everyday life – the custom of taking an after-lunch nap, known worldwide as siesta. Etymologically, the word siesta originates from the Latin word sexta [hora] (sixth [hour]) and the custom of siesta comes from The Rule of Saint Benedict. It was Saint Benedict who laid down the rule of quiet time in the afternoon after the sixth hour, in Roman times. The expression sexta hora was used to denominate the noon as the warmest part of the day. La siesta is one of the strongest Spanish traditions, and most probably, one of the easiest to embrace as a foreigner, because it brings a sense of calmness and tranquility in everyday life. The word siesta can be found in many other languages which shows how popular this custom really is. In this paper we are trying to investigate if this Spanish custom is disappearing due to the busy modern way of life. From the perspective of interculturality, we are interested in the question if having a siesta represents a stereotype, and if this custom is still part of teaching Spanish as a foreign language.

The paper deals with Don DeLillo’s novelistic mediations of dailiness and representations of everyday life, focusing on the ways of communicating the sense of numinosity and latent implications of everyday practices and experiences. The paper analyses representations of the moments of characters’ or implied narrator’s intensified, mystical or suspicious susceptibility in relation to private or common dailiness, as well as conventional figures of flânerie, treated as narrative and stylistic devices. Different models of perception, always more or less mediated, as well as the evaluation of everyday things, scenes and situations including mystical attitudes, paranoia and melodramatic overreactions, all of which induce proliferations of meanings and excessiveness on daily basis, are also explored.