The Trans Formative Power of International Semiotics

Signs and Wonders
The Transformative Power of International

Semiotics
By Alex Gordon
The success of semiotics as a research methodology has led to the absorption of

some of its key methods into mainstream research (e.g. communication
decoding, identifying emergent culture). If it is to have a future, semiotics must
consider the role it will play as a methodological force in qualitative research.
This paper offers a hypothesis as an answer to this timely question. It starts by
identifying and analysing the ‘British School’ of marketing semiotics, situating its
main idea (capturing residual, dominant, and emergent trends) as historical and
evolutionary, before going on to discuss whether this approach to development
needs to be updated in the light of post-modern conditions. It will demonstrate
how, with a more nuanced understanding of this more flexible post-modern
position (inter-connectedness), semiotics could become an even more dynamic
agent for change, and provide clients with even more powerful research insight.
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Introduction
Semiotics, a methodology that has been at the cutting-edge of qualitative

research for a number of years, is now due for re-appraisal. Looking through a
semiotic lens, this paper intends to consider the link between the signs of socio-
cultural conditions and the resultant effect on brand ‘stories’. It will seek to
promote the need for an ‘inter-textual’ view of the semiotic process in the
research industry. In particular, it will call for applying greater intellectual
imagination to the use of semiotics in aiding brand planning. It will finally argue
that to optimise results semiotics could be moved in a new direction, which will
make it an even more valuable research methodology.
The intention of this paper is to offer itself up as hypothesis, as an idea, a

Platonic ideal, rather than a radical manifesto for wholesale change. Indeed, the
ideas offered here should be seen as an addition to existing conceptions of
semiotics, rather than a critique of the current uses of semiotics.
Semiotics has always recognised that signs in society are constantly ‘played’
with and employed to stand for something else, and that this ‘play’ relies on a
fluidity of form and an acceptance of experimentalism. For instance, if we see a
young girl wearing a red coat, we not only see a piece of clothing worn to
provide warmth for the wearer. We also perceive the coat as a sign which
stands for/represents other cultural references: little red riding hood, wolves,
danger, blood and life, erotic sexuality (lipstick), horror movies, the ghoulish
figure in the film ‘Don’t Look Now’, the girl in the film ‘Schindler’s List’, a bull
fight and its associations with danger, cruelty, excitement and chivalry, a
Chinese lottery ticket, strawberries and apples, Snow White’s apple, the shirts of
a football team (Arsenal, Man Utd, Barcelona), Communism and revolution.
As we can see, it is entirely natural for semiotics to call upon the resources and
activities of other areas – technology, architecture, art history, popular culture,
popular myths and legends, sport, politics - to enhance the exploration of its
Signs and Wonders: The Transformative Power of Semiotics – A Paper for ESOMAR Worldwide Qualitative
Research Conference, November 2004
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own pathways (see the essays of Roland Barthes and Umberto Eco as a prime
example). Semiotics is dependant upon the restlessness of socio-culture and
therefore it cannot be a static discipline that relies upon the repetition of a
formula. This paper will argue that semiotics must be free to expand its orbit,
taking in a broader range of issues arising from changing socio-cultural trends in
order to fulfil its main benefit to the qualitative research industry: identifying the
underlying socio-cultural conditions influencing consumer behaviour.
In order to know where semiotics might go, it must be clear where it has come
from. I therefore intend to offer a very brief summary, in the next section, of
the central dilemma that semiotics finds itself in, before moving on to the main
purpose of this paper, navigating a new path for semiotics.
Where are we?

It must be made clear at the outset that this paper is a product of what we
might call the ‘British School’ of market research semiotics. By this I mean the
‘semiotic methodology’ that was established by the pioneers in the British field,
Semiotic Solutions (influential doyens Virginia Valentine and Monty Alexander)
which has been taken up by the small number of other semioticians in the UK,
including the author of this paper.
Valentine and Alexander adapted key ideas from critical theory, that branch of
academia concerned with the intersection between sociology, psychology, and
cultural production (literature, film. art etc). In particular they built on ideas
discussed by British cultural critic, Raymond Williams, in his book Marxism and
Literature. They picked up on Williams’ analysis of the development of society
as one that moves through residual, dominant and emergent trends, with the
latter becoming the former through the passage of time. Tracing a category
through its various historical stages to establish how and where it can leverage
emergent trends, formed the central plank of their semiotic theory, and has
become the acknowledged heart of the British school.
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In addition, the British school adapted semiotic principles first devised by the
what has come to be known as the ‘Paris School’ of semiotics, headed by the
great guru of marketing semiotics Algirdas Julien Greimas. This highly formal
approach to semiotics insists that semiotics must be a deconstructive process.
That is, it must take apart the text (the brand’s communication e.g. packaging,
advertising) to reveal the different levels that make up its structure. It is
claimed that through revealing the structure of a text, we can get to the heart of
its meaning, or the meaning that is made from it. This particularly posits all
texts (brand communications) as ‘stories’ to be deciphered in the manner of
analysing a literary or filmic text.
For Greimas, every text is made up of a series of codes which represent deeply-
embedded cultural ideas, and that together these codes construct a myth on
which the brand premises its power. In this way, a brand text is similar to a
fairy tale text, which is full of ‘codes’ representing the hero, the villain, the
victim, the quest, the rescue, the resolution etc. The brand communication
takes the consumer on a similar narrative journey to a fairy tale, with the brand
often acting as the ‘hero’. The recent campaign by Pepsi in which the brand
(personified by David Beckham) plays the hero rescuing the besieged town from
pillagers and villains, calls upon a shared knowledge of the myths of Western
films and medieval knights. The consumer associates the signs of such
traditions of heroism, strength, energy, power and nobility with Pepsi, and the
brand’s identity is thus significantly raised.
British semioticians have passionately campaigned for the development of

‘semiotic awareness’ to become a natural part the qualitative research process.
In particular they have sought to make the ‘code-breaking’ and ‘myth-forming’
semiotic practices a standard part of the analysis stage of any project. Their
remarkable success has been a testimony to the thirst for new techniques in
qualitative research and to the innovation that semiotics can bring.
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Ironically their success might have created a crisis for semiotics. If semiotic
thought of this nature is becoming a standard part of the qualitative process,
then what role will there be in the future for semiotics as an independent
methodology?
Beyond the Dilemma

The British school is often criticised by Greimasian purists as being entirely
committed to trend analysis rather than seeing a brand as a structured text to
be examined according to its various constituent parts. The central dilemma
that marketing semiotics now finds itself in is the debate between the two
schools. On the one hand we have the highly formulaic Paris school, which
follows an established pattern for analysing a brand and a category, and on the
other hand we have the British school, committed to an historical view of
semiotics. The former critiques the latter for offering trend analysis and insists
on its sole authenticity, while the latter defends its position on the basis of
undoubted success, and we are left somewhat confused as to which school
represents the best path to follow for brand benefit. Both schools ultimately
achieve their aim of aiding brand planning, according to their own methods.
This paper wants to move this debate forward and suggest that semiotics could
now build on the work of both schools, and introduce a further essential element
of analysis - the reading into rather than extracting out of a text. I want to
suggest that both schools – Paris and British - have established orthodoxies that
are now worth scrutinising in the light of more contemporary socio-cultural
developments in the wake of postmodernism.
This paper wants to promote the idea that semiotics should extend its reach
towards a region of its methodology that has not been as central to its
processes as it should: the inter-textual connections critical to the success of
what we can begin to call transformative semiotics. In this way it might be able
to enhance the role that semiotics can play in the future.
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Connectivity: Reading into a Brand Text
As we shall see, individual texts (e.g. a car, an MP3 player) do not have a
singular intrinsic meaning as autonomous entities, but derive their significance
from a number of connections, which are in turn related to other connections in
a process of theoretically infinite semiosis. That is, just because a deodorant
bottle appears to have one identity (that of a deodorant bottle) it also at the
same time stands as a sign of many things: its shape, size, texture and colour
tell a story about the identity of the user (macho v feminine), about a broader
changing socio-cultural dynamic (tradition v modernity). The bottle can be
reliant upon a range of cultural references (buildings, celebrities, film, music) to
convey a powerful meaning. These meanings are usually not perceived by the
consumer at the surface level, but impact upon them at a deeper level. The
semiotician up to now has been charged with the task of bringing these
meanings to the surface.
But that is not where the semiotic process must stop. Semiotics must also
begin to recognise that the brand is a text which is subject to precisely the same
inter-textual constructs as a novel or film: it produces ideas (not just holds them
within) which have meaning in relation to other texts which these brand texts
take up, cite, parody, refute, or generally transform. A text can be read by us
only in relation to other texts, and this ‘reading’ is made possible by the
familiarity the consumer has with a range of cultural artefacts at a given
moment. In mere seconds, a brand as text can inspire the consumer to think of
a dozen different cultural and social references, to relate them back to the brand
and therefore increase the meaning and presence of the brand in their life.
Often brand communication attempts to do this overtly, through advertising that
might recall and/or refer to other well-known cultural artefacts, thus linking the
brand with that cultural product and its mythology.
A classic example of this effect can be seen in an advertising campaign for the
Ford Puma in which footage of the actor Steve McQueen driving a Ford Mustang
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in the 1968 film Bullitt was superimposed into a contemporary Ford Puma (see
figures 1 & 2).
Figure 1
Figure 2
In this way the ad deliberately encouraged the viewer/consumer to remember

the original film. The film also enables the brand to appropriate many of the
signs and ideas for which Steve McQueen himself stood for, both as an individual
and as an American movie star, characteristics he showed not only in Bullitt but
also in The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, Papillon, The Cincinatti Kid,
The Thomas Crown Affair etc. In addition the ‘Puma’ name further encourages
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the development of a semiotic link between the animal, the car and the
character of McQueen himself. As a result the consumer is bound to create a
series of semiotic connections which characterise the vehicle (and by extension
the owner) as: non-conformist, powerful, cool, emotionally detached yet
passionate, stylish, fast, risk-taking, untamed, reckless, determined,
resourceful, isolated, heroic, courageous, sexy, dangerous, and overall evoking
1960s American values. Much of this would have been unconsciously stimulated
in the consumer’s mind by remembered images of McQueen in the films, of
natural history photos and programmes of pumas and related big cats, of sports
cars, and knowledge of 1960s culture in general.
Increasingly, semiotics must attempt to show the ways in which brands hold
what French cultural critic Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu 1990) called ”cultural
capital”, and should assist in the transformation of brands to express a greater
level of such equity. It is worth considering how and when this cultural capital is
perceived by the consumer, before going on to see how semiotics can use this
‘moment’ for brand benefit.
The Semiotic Moment
In his chapter on ‘The Making of An Anthropologist’ in his classic text on mythic

structures in Amazonian tribes titled Tristes Tropiques, Claude Lévi-Strauss
(Levi-Strauss 1962), described codes as: “sets of categories drawn from a single
area of experience and related to one another in ways that make them useful
logical tools for expressing other relations”. In identifying a range of functional
connections, Levi-Strauss saw myths as being constructed by the logical
interaction between many different socio-cultural artefacts and expressions,
which appear random, but in fact draw their individual power from their relation
with each other.
Indeed a more contemporary semiotician, the Russian theorist Yuri Lotman,

believes that the present is distinguished by a semiotic consciousness, a world in
which we all gain a sixth sense of the visual realm. He refers to an intangible
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but highly present semiotic zone we all constantly access, which he calls a
semiosphere. Lotman suggests that almost as an organic process, human
beings have evolved the sensory semiotic capacity to receive, interpret, and
assimilate visual codes of all kinds instantaneously, and without a conscious
sense of this taking place. In this sense the consumer undertakes the semiotic
processes of decoding a text, and inferring myth and meaning, in a similar way
to the unconscious processes involved in smelling, hearing, seeing and tasting.
As Yoshihiko Ikegami (Ikegami 1991) put it: “To admit the essential unity of
man is to posit a common anthroposemiotic root that has produced an
integrated semiotic whole called culture.” However, where these are
unconscious daily processes, the semiosphere has assumed a more vital role in
the process of living in the contemporary world. As cultural critic Peter Wollen
so eloquently put it: ‘In an age marked by an ever-increasing and ever-
accelerating proliferation of signs, of all types, the immediate environment
becomes itself increasingly dominated by signs, rather than natural objects or
events. The realm of signs becomes not simply a ‘second nature’ but a primary
reality’. He is referring to the way in which signs such as the Nike swoosh has
attained a supremacy over the object to which it is allied, for instance a pair of
trainers. For Wollen, unconsciously processing signs is now the most powerful
means of establishing meaning for the consumer, and that ‘reality’ has become
defined as a world of signs, not of objects. In other words the somewhat
intangible brand ‘idea’ is now more important, more ‘real’ than the tangible
manufacturing process. In this “primary reality”, any sphere of human activity,
from music to cooking to politics, can be an object of semiotic study; and it is
precisely because any signifying activity calls for semiotic investigation that the
emergence of semiotics has brought about a major reorganisation of qualitative
research.
Indeed, as Virginia Valentine put it in a paper she wrote at a recent MRS

Conference (Valentine 2003): “Semiotics succeeds by revealing the connections
and disconnections between brand and culture”. Indeed the axis on which a
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successful semiotic analysis pivots is the making of connections between cultural
artefacts. What does the emergent trend in one part of culture signify and what
are the implications for the client’s brand and its future role in society?
Monty Alexander, another leading British semiotician and Valentine’s partner at

Semiotic Solutions, is also insistent that making such connections – or as he
describes them ‘patterns’ - lies at the heart of the semiotic process: “patterns
point up molecular links, which can reveal important sub-structures. And using
these connections and sub-structures the researcher can go on to discern larger,
more complex, more holistic concepts about what is going on in the widest
sense: in the minds and cultures of target audiences, in the client’s market
sector, and in the culture as a whole”.
Yet, the British school of which these two are so centrally a part is committed to
the historical/developmental view of socio-cultural production; the move
through the coding of residual trends (eventually consigned to oblivion), through
dominant (contemporary) trends, and on to the emergent (future) trends. In
this ‘epochal analysis’ as critic Raymond Williams described it, each code: “is in
transition from one state to the other. The connections and ‘molecular links’
that Valentine and Alexander refer to, are for them to be found within the
structure of Williams’ ‘epochal analysis’ – the connections which lead from the
residual to the dominant and to the emergent, in continual movement in that
linear path.
Semiotics must start to propose structural connections in place of historical

development, making explicit the interdependence of social phenomena on one
another by analysing them in terms of systems of relations, and demonstrating
the extent to which what we call ‘man’ is the juncture of a series of
interpersonal systems which operate through him, not just the subject of
historical circumstance. In this position, each code is not “in transition from one
state to the other” but remains permanently valid and available. Indeed, Levis-
Strauss (Levi-Strauss 1962) suggested that the paradigm moment of the
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semiotic quest, when apparent chaos and randomness becomes intelligible and
connected, is not historically determined: “space and time become one…I feel
myself to be steeped in a more dense intelligibility, within which centuries and
distances answer each other and speak with one and the same voice”.
In other words, Lotman’s semiosphere must become a powerful reality for the
21st century semiotician. Even Greimas, the great marketing semiotician
himself, recognised that an historical approach is not the only answer for
semiotics when he said (Greimas 1990): “we must consider it less and less as
linear and uniplanar strings of significations in texts and discourses…meanings
become implicit through contact with specific objects, such as a paintings,
poems and narratives and are the result of the intertwinings of signifiers”.
If such connections are crucial to semiotics (as I believe they are), then its
ability to make them cannot rely solely upon the historical view of signification
(meaning-making) but also on a post-modern approach to connectivity by
promoting non-linear connections made possible by the semiosphere. Semiotics
needs to build on the historical model in order to account for cultural changes
beyond an historical explanation.
So how can semiotics make this inter-connection come alive for brand benefit?
Transformative Semiotics
If, as we have established, making connections is crucial, it must be more than

mere dissection and extracting out of a text (deduction, induction), but the
reading into a text (abduction) - the imaginative hypothetical link between the
brand and other key socio-cultural texts - which is going to impact the former.
Thus, making such cultural links, understanding the inter-textual nature of
semiotics, and realising that one socio-cultural development potentially creates
a radical shift in other socio-cultural dynamics, is critical. Recognising and
apprehending this process can ‘transform’ the nature of the client’s brand,
radically altering/disrupting the discourse around it.
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The most crucial role for semiotics in the future lies here, as a powerful tool for
transforming the culture of a brand and introducing a new discourse around it
through logically connecting the brand text and other socio-cultural texts (art,
architecture, technology, popular culture etc). This can only be successfully
achieved by abductive reasoning – the drawing of certain hypothetical
implications from a range of connected cultural products (art, film, architecture,
technology etc) and seeing in them implications for the brand.
Japanese semiotician Yoshihiko Ikegami (1991) throws light on the matter,

noticing that this ‘inter-textuality’ is marked out as: “a framework in which
cultural texts…can be impartially collated with each other”. If we understand
the brand as one of these cultural texts then this is the essence of what we can
begin to call transformative semiotics – the ability of semiotics to help transform
the culture of a brand and hopefully its fate in the market for the better, through
recognition of the brand’s relationship with broader social and cultural
phenomena.
The work of this inter-textual connectivity, of transformative semiotics, is an

appreciation of the causal links between different socio-cultural phenomenon
and the brand in question. These can be intuited and located by the
semiotician, who should be capable of making such connections, but who will
provide strong evidence to support her (or his) hypotheses. For the semiotician,
connectivity must be like establishing nodal links in an electronic circuit, which
when complete has the effect of creating a chain reaction which illuminates the
nature of the brand and the world it lives in.
The job of the semiotician must increasingly be to show how apparently

unrelated artefacts actually fit together, to provide a deep insight into the
fundamental inter-connectedness of socio-culture.
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Deconstructing, or de-coding the brand, will only reveal half the ‘story’. A
process of reconstruction must be included to assist clients and make semiotics
a more powerful tool. In this way semiotics becomes a dynamic agency for
change rather than merely a reductive methodology interpreting meaning.
Transformative semiotics seeks to be that agency for change by making a series

of fundamental connections, and by applying them to brand positioning and
communication to raise the ‘cultural capital’ of the brand itself.
Crucially, once these connections have been established and the semiotician has
established the nature of meaning-making between the brand, consumer and
socio-culture, she/he can provide guidance for managing brands to ensure that
future meaning-making is successful.
Semiotics and Postmodernity
To truly capture and understand such contemporary international social and

cultural phenomena, is not only to trace their historical evolution, but to grasp
their place and function in various contemporaneous systems of activity, and to
identify the distinctions which give them their significance. This is a rather post-
modern position which privileges the synchronised existence and relative value
of socio-cultural phenomena, rather than determining their value in a
hierarchical historical development structure. It is worth briefly defining post-
modernism so that we have a context for the discussion about its impact on
semiotics.
Postmodernity cuts through such historicism and insists on the relative merit
and presence of a variety of cultural artefacts. Modernist ideals combined
enlightenment values and technological development, and harnessed them in
the prospect of creating a utopian future (e.g. Marxism, and Raymond Williams’
‘epochal analysis’). Postmodernity has lost faith in the ability of modernism to
actually fulfil its utopian promises, and thus denies the possibility of such
positive movement. Instead it promotes a fractured or schizoid culture which
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creates uncertainty, atrophy, anxiety, ennui, anomie, and existential doubt in a
world in which nothing is 'real' but merely a series of unsatisfying copies.
Postmodernity posits the collapse of philosophical, religious, political, social, and

cultural 'truths' and absolutes. Instead it advocates a state of relativism and
ironic detachment in which high and low culture are interchangeable. Thus for
postmodernity, irony supersedes modernist profundity, and ‘reality’ is a series of
poor quality reproductions (Mona Lisa serviettes). Crucially it is typified by the
cross-fertilisation of genres, a privileging of inter-textual relativism in which
Jesus, Shakespeare, Homer Simpson, and Walt Disney are served at the same
bloated buffet. Indeed, even politics and philosophy themselves are subject to
the mockery of ennui and the elevation of kitsch, and thus references to Marx
are now just as likely to mean Groucho as Karl.
The job of transformative semiotics is to expose what is latently evident the

whole time, to make us aware of the postmodern inter-textual fabric of our
world, and to link it to the attributes of the client’s brand so that we can
understand the influences both on the character of the brand itself and of the
motivations behind the consumer, both of whom are subject to the whims of
postmodern connectivity.
In discussing the complexities of the issue, Monty Alexander tried to steer a

clear path through the residual-dominant-emergent minefield (Alexander 2000):
“These three code classifications are never fixed at any one time. The whole
process is one of continuing movement: emergent to dominant, dominant to
residual, residual to oblivion. While apparent reverse movements sometimes
occur (for example a 70s style revival) there are never true reversals, much
more a backwards (postmodern) glance: the 1970’s through the eyes of 2000.”
While Alexander is of course operating within Williams’ ‘epochal analysis’, he

acknowledges the presence of postmodernism. However he couches it in
modernist language, e.g. “backwards”. For postmodernity there is no
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backwards, or for that matter forwards, only a perpetual, unceasing ‘now’ which
constantly borrows and discards signifiers from a constellation of timeless codes
which move in and out of consumer perception.
Let us take an example. When considering the tea category the consumer
unconsciously assimilates codes of colonialism, Victorian British etiquette, class,
political freedom, friendship, coffee shops, gossip versus business conversation,
formality v casualness, contemporary ecological trends, post-colonial self-
determination etc. These are all grabbed from Yuri Lotman’s semiosphere, the
metaphyiscal space referred to previously, which refuses to follow a linear
historical path. In this semiosphere, equally ancient Rome co-exists with
androids and cyborgs (think of how films such as Gladiator and Terminator are
products of the same medium - cinema).
Transformative Semiotics in Action
Let us then consider some practical projects which show how the engagement of
transformative semiotics enabled a greater understanding of the ‘cultural capital’
of a brand text, enabling the brand to move forward strategically.
Study One
The first study considered the coding of design routes for new European
packaging for Tuborg beer. This not only examined some of the main cues from
the packaging (the crown, the issue of heraldry, the gold v silver v green
colouring, the breaking out of the heraldic borders, font), but also the broader
underlying socio-cultural issues which affect packaging beyond the label itself
(see figure 3).
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Figure 3
In this context, understanding the cultural implications of the actual bottle

design proved critical in the Turkish market, due to its marked difference from
other Western European markets, because of the prominent role of Eastern,
Islamic-inspired culture in that market.
This, it turned out, was a matter of differing aesthetics between the West and
the East, and in particular the relationship of female shape and how it was
related to masculinity. The transformative semiotics analysis offered the
hypothesis that the traditions of Western aesthetics favoured the tall slender
bottle. It further hypothesised that this bottle was connected to the New York
skyline and the tall, thin model favoured by the fashion houses and the
paparazzi as the essential expression of beauty in the West (see figure 4).
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Figure 4
By contrast, the essence of the Turkish, Eastern aesthetic, is for shorter,

rounder, curvature, as reflected by the traditionally (clichéd?) voluptuous belly
dancer, and the cupolas of the Istanbul skyline (see figure 5).
Figure 5
In this way, semiotics was able to explore the complexities of introducing

Tuborg’s long slim bottle into the Turkish market. The transformative semiotics
analysis went on to connect the aesthetics of the bottle with masculine social
customs.
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The analysis hypothesised that for Turkish men, holding an Efes bottle - the
indigenous Turkish beer brand (see figure 6) - is an expression of their
masculinity (is it like holding and capturing a beautiful Turkish woman?), and of
their connection to national aesthetic traditions (the cupola).
Figure 6
Holding, and being seen to hold a tall thin bottle could, it was hypothesised,
signify suspicious homosexuality (holding a male figure, a tall slim man!) and
potentially anti-nationalist sentiment. Thus Efes represents heterosexual
aspiration alongside national pride. In addition, Transformative semiotics
showed how this debate connected with the broader socio-cultural problematics
in Turkish culture vis á vis its debates between Tradition and Modernity (the
balance between a Muslim heritage and modern European democracy).
This appeared to be at a tangent to the apparent concerns of a packaging

research project. Yet the findings of the transformative semiotics analysis
proved vital in understanding the context of statements which emerged from
consumers in the groups, which took place after the semiotic analysis. Recorded
verbatims in the groups alluded to the points made above: “the Efes bottle feels
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better in the hand” and “I feel better holding the Efes bottle”; yet in both cases
the respondents were unable to articulate why this was the case. Thus because
it took the very basic element of semiotics (code analysis) and broadened the
analysis to think about inter-textual cultural metaphors, and their deeply rooted
presence in the psyche of the consumer, transformative semiotics was able to
offer a hypothetical context for their discussion. This gave the brand the
opportunity to transform itself by tapping into underlying consumer motivations,
a radical alteration that also aided future brand positioning.
Study Two
Another transformative semiotics analysis was undertaken of the cruising
category, to investigate the role of the ship in the communication, and to
establish an understanding of the underlying consumer motivations for cruising.
The transformative semiotics analysis connected the cruise experience with the
role of crossing water in ancient myth in which it was a signifier of journeying, of
a key significant passage in one’s life, a heroic voyage of self-discovery (e.g. the
Odyssey, Noah’s Ark, River Styx, Jason and the Argonauts). The analysis
hypothesised that given the age of the average cruise traveller (55-70), the
cruise experience was operating as more than merely a holiday, but as an
existential journey, as a time for reflection, and introversion, a time for thinking
about the past and contemplating the future during a period of transition.
Transformative semiotics identified the ship as the key signifier of this journey
and of its potential role as the literal vehicle of a journey of self-discovery. Thus
it was hypothesised that the ship needed to be seen as the signifier of such a
transformative experience. It needed to code the existential immensity of the
voyage, not only the pleasure. Transformative semiotics suggested that given
the timing (in life) of the consumer’s ‘holiday’, the ship could be appropriately
coded as the ‘salvatory’ force which grants philosophical comfort, and that
therefore the consumer looks up at the ship in abject adoration.
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Thus the transformation hypothesised by the semiotic analysis was that the ship
could become the focus of attention in imagery. It could be signified as majestic
and possibly divine in origin, with the point-of-view looking upwards at its prow.
Thus the viewer/consumer would always look up to the ship for redemption. In
particular the semiotic analysis showed how the image of the woman in white
(e.g. the Virgin Mary) was an ancient religious and art historic signifier of such
supplication by the viewer, who was traditionally frozen in awe at the sight. By
comparing the colours in Renaissance paintings, it was clear that there were
significant coding links to the ‘worship paintings’ of this period. (see figure 7).
Figure 7
As the semiotic analysis showed, the white ship corresponded to the Madonna’s
clothes and the winged angels, the sea corresponded with the Azure blue cloak,
and the pink cloak that she is often seen wearing corresponded with the
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swimsuit that the model was shown wearing in the print advert (see figures 8
and 9).
Figure 8
Figure 9
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In particular the whiteness of the ship appeared to signify the religious purity,
sanctity, and motherhood, implicit in its sheer awe-inspiring size. This further
implied the role of the brand as the parent aiding and protecting the consumer
on their voyage of discovery.
By reading in this semi-religious context, Transformative Semiotics was able to

offer hypotheses that could be fed into the qualitative discussion groups. When
these ideas were indeed introduced into the debate, it transpired that many of
the respondents had been prompted to go on a cruise following a particular
event: death (of a spouse), retirement, kids leaving home, divorce, re-marriage,
recovery from illness, yet spoke of the experience solely in terms of a
holiday/vacation and its fun and relaxing effect. While they understood it as an
opportunity for a holiday, the transformative semiotics explained why
consumers in the target age group chose a cruise rather than a beach holiday.
These were underlying culturally-driven motivations which were not consciously
recognised but were profound unconscious prompters.
By looking beyond the cruising category and connecting consumer experiences

with ancient myth, Renaissance painting, and photographic point of view,
transformative semiotics was able to reveal hidden consumer motivations,
radically impacting on the communication and future brand positioning of a
contemporary cruising brand by re-positioning the ship in the advertising (see
figure 10).
22
Figure 10
Conclusion
These are just two examples of the inter-textual currency of transformative
semiotics – to take imaginative hypothetical leaps between different disciplines,
drawing them together in a web of connection, which strengthens the brand at
the centre. Without such connections, the importance of the role of the ship and
of the timing of the holiday would not have been contextualised. There would
have been no substantive understanding of the underlying drivers for consumer
up-take of cruising. Similarly without linking the beer bottle with traditional
aesthetic principles working in opposition, and from there to gender dynamics,
the introduction of such a bottle into the market without such knowledge could
have had negative consequences for the Tuborg brand.
23
In both cases the learnings culled from the transformative semiotics analysis
were fed into the qualitative research process, strengthening the nature of the
discussion in the consumer groups, and providing much need context for some
of the emergent verbatims. Through an understanding of the vital inter-textual
link between socio-cultural phenomena, and the way that postmodernity
shatters the historical continuum, this disruption places all time-lines (residual,
dominant, and emergent) in one semiotic moment. Postmodernity conditions
the consumer to ‘grab’ and connect such phenomena from across time to the
brand itself, in a wholly unconscious process. By hypothesising the way that
this is done, transformative semiotics can be a vital independent tool in its own
right, and can move beyond the established orthodoxies of the Paris and British
schools. It can move beyond the historical development of the residual-
dominant-emergent axis, and take account of more contemporary socio-cultural
developments, as expressed by the postmodern condition.
Such practical examples offer a potential reconfiguration of semiotics, the

enhancement of the international research process, and a practical semiotic
application for reinventing brand identity and mythology.
24
REFERENCES
Alexander, Monty (2000) Codes and Contexts: Practical Semiotics for the
Qualitative Researcher, Market Research Society Conference 2000
Bourdieu, Pierre (1990) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste,

London: Routledge
Clegg, Alicia (2004) ‘Just a Sign of the Times’ in Marketing Week, August 19 pp
35-36
Greimas, Algirdas Julien (1990) The Social Sciences: A Semiotic View,

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
Ikegami, Yoshihiko (1991) ‘Introduction’ in The Empire of Signs: Semiotic

Essays on Japanese Culture John Benjamins Publishing Company:
Amsterdam/Philadelphia p2
Jencks, Charles (2003) ‘The New Paradigm in Architecture’ in The Architectural

Review, February 2003
Kristeva, Julia (1969) Semiotiké, Paris: Seuil
Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1962) Tristes Tropiques, Paris: Union Générale D’Éditions

p.43
Valentine, Virginia (2003) ‘Special Report: Semiotics’ in Research Magazine

December 2003 pp.37-38
25

The Trans Formative Power of International Semiotics

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The Trans Formative Power of International Semiotics

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Signs and Wonders

The Transformative Power of International

The success of semiotics as a research methodology has led to the absorption of

Semiotics, a methodology that has been at the cutting-edge of qualitative

The intention of this paper is to offer itself up as hypothesis, as an idea, a

Where are we?

British semioticians have passionately campaigned for the development of

Beyond the Dilemma

In this way the ad deliberately encouraged the viewer/consumer to remember

The Semiotic Moment

In his chapter on ‘The Making of An Anthropologist’ in his classic text on mythic

Indeed a more contemporary semiotician, the Russian theorist Yuri Lotman,

Indeed, as Virginia Valentine put it in a paper she wrote at a recent MRS

Monty Alexander, another leading British semiotician and Valentine’s partner at

Semiotics must start to propose structural connections in place of historical

If, as we have established, making connections is crucial, it must be more than

Japanese semiotician Yoshihiko Ikegami (1991) throws light on the matter,

The work of this inter-textual connectivity, of transformative semiotics, is an

The job of the semiotician must increasingly be to show how apparently

Transformative semiotics seeks to be that agency for change by making a series

Semiotics and Postmodernity

To truly capture and understand such contemporary international social and

Postmodernity posits the collapse of philosophical, religious, political, social, and

The job of transformative semiotics is to expose what is latently evident the

In discussing the complexities of the issue, Monty Alexander tried to steer a

While Alexander is of course operating within Williams’ ‘epochal analysis’, he

Transformative Semiotics in Action

In this context, understanding the cultural implications of the actual bottle

By contrast, the essence of the Turkish, Eastern aesthetic, is for shorter,

In this way, semiotics was able to explore the complexities of introducing

This appeared to be at a tangent to the apparent concerns of a packaging

By reading in this semi-religious context, Transformative Semiotics was able to

By looking beyond the cruising category and connecting consumer experiences

Such practical examples offer a potential reconfiguration of semiotics, the

Bourdieu, Pierre (1990) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste,

Greimas, Algirdas Julien (1990) The Social Sciences: A Semiotic View,

Ikegami, Yoshihiko (1991) ‘Introduction’ in The Empire of Signs: Semiotic

Jencks, Charles (2003) ‘The New Paradigm in Architecture’ in The Architectural

Kristeva, Julia (1969) Semiotiké, Paris: Seuil

Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1962) Tristes Tropiques, Paris: Union Générale D’Éditions

Valentine, Virginia (2003) ‘Special Report: Semiotics’ in Research Magazine

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