What do cars say about their owners? Illustrate and critically discuss how cars signify as part of a semiotic system.
For general guidance about what is expected in your essays for this module,
see the
general criteria.
Please remember to avoid footnotes and to include an
alphabetical list of 'References' which have been cited in the text
(not a Bibliography of anything you have read for the essay). This list should include
author's names, date, book titles (in italics), place of publication and publisher.
Within the text always cite author's surname, date and page number. Double-space your
text and number your pages. For more detailed notes on writing essays in this
department, click
here.
Advice for this particular assignment:
The most relevant lectures for this topic are:
Lecture 1: What is a Sign?;
Lecture 3: Paradigms and Syntagms;
Lecture 4: Codes.
The association of particular meanings with brands makes branding susceptible to semiotic analysis.
In structuralist semiotics, Saussure emphasised the relational identity of signs. A semiotic system depends on the
differences between signs. What matters in 'positioning' a product is not the relationship of advertising signifiers to real-world referents,
but the differentiation of each sign from the others to which it is related. A structuralist semiotic analysis of a category of products
(such as cars) as a semiotic system would include specifying how each model is differentiated from other models produced by both the same
makers and by those of other makers of cars perceived in some way as similar (e.g. family cars).
There are various general categories of cars (such as family car, estate car, executive car, hot hatch, luxury car, coupé, MPV, supermini).
In semiotic terms, each of these categories constitutes a paradigm - a set of items bearing sufficient similarity for it to be reasonable
to imagine each as an alternative. It would not be reasonable (except where a car fits into more than one category/paradigm) to regard
cars from different paradigms as reasonable alternatives - one could not fairly compare a family car with a supercar, for instance.
Semiotic analysis of the car market as a semiotic system would require the investigation of the brand differentiation between cars
which are widely perceived as belonging to the same paradigm.
Note that the paradigms itemised here may be those of professionals in the car industry but if we are examining the semiotics of
cars within the advertising system a social semiotic perspective would prompt us to investigate the extent to which they reflect the
categories used by consumers.
Check car enthusiasts' forums, car magazines, Top Gear and so on to discover what particular kinds of cars are thought to
say about their owners, and why. Try to show how a semiotic approach can help to reveal how this system of related signs works and
what its main elements are. What codes are drawn upon in making sense of the relations between different cars?
Whilst some surprising meanings can come to be associated with brands, as Greg Myers notes, 'It may seem that with enough advertising
a product can take on any meaning. This is a common fallacy of both critics and proponents of ads. But these meanings are not
infinitely flexible; they have to rely on the way the brand is used, and how it relates to other brands. All the meanings shift
when a new sign is introduced or new links are made' (Myers 1999: 19). Semiotic systems and their paradigms are unstable - they change over time.
Note also that this is an assignment for which the
inclusion of relevant pictorial illustrations is required.
For guidance on capturing stills, click here.
Remember to include a list labelled either Figures or Image sources after your
list of References.
Some suggested reading
- Alexander, Monty (nd) 'The Myth at the Heart of the Brand'
[WWW document] URL
RESTRICTED
- Argyle, Michael (1994)
The Psychology of Social Class. London: Routledge
- Banks, Marcus (2001)
Visual Methods in Social Research. London: Sage
- Beasley, Ron, Marcel Danesi & Paul Perron (2000)
Signs for Sale: An Outline of Semiotic Analysis for Advertisers and Marketers. New York: Legas
- Beasley, Ron & Marcel Danesi (2002)
Persuasive Signs: The Semiotics of Advertising. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter
- Chandler, Daniel (1997)
'Introduction to Genre Theory' [WWW document] URL
http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/Documents/intgenre/chandler_genre_theory.pdf
- Chandler, Daniel (2007)
Semiotics: The Basics (2nd Edn.). London: Routledge.
- Chandler, Daniel and Rod Munday (2011)
Dictionary of Media and Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press
- Crow, David (2003)
Visible Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics. Crans-près-Céligny, Switzerland: AVA
- Danesi, Marcel (1994)
Messages and Meanings: An Introduction to
Semiotics. Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press
- Danesi, Marcel (1999)
Of Cigarettes, High Heels and Other Interesting Things:
An Introduction to Semiotics. London: Macmillan [a wide-ranging elementary introduction]
- Featherstone, Mike, Nigel Thrift & John Urry (Eds) (2005)
Automobilities. London: Sage
- Flower, Raymond & Michael Wynn Jones (1981)
One Hundred Years of Motoring. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill
- Fox, Kate (2005)
Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour. London: Hodder & Stoughton
- Frostick, Michael (1970)
Advertising and the Motor Car. London: Lund Humphries
- Fussell, Paul (1984)
Caste Marks: Style and Status in the USA. London: Heinemann
- Goldman, Robert (1992)
Reading Ads Socially. London: Routledge
- Goldman, Robert & Stephen Papson (1996)
Sign Wars: The Cluttered Landscape of Advertising. New York: Guilford Press
- Gray, Richard (2011)
'How your car could be giving away clues about your personality', The Telegraph, Sunday 30th October [WWW document] URL
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8857618/How-your-car-could-be-giving-away-clues-about-your-personality.html
- Gunter, Barry & Adrian Furnham (1992)
Consumer Profiles: An Introduction to Psychographics. London: Routledge
- Hadfield, Greg & Mark Skipworth (1994)
Class: Where Do You Stand?. London: Bloomsbury
- Hall, Sean (2007)
This Means This, That Means That. London: Laurence King
- Haugen, David M. & Matthew J. Box (Eds) (2005)
Cars (Examining Pop Culture). Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press
- Hammond, Richard & Andy Wilman (2005)
What Not to Drive. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
- Hoffman, Reid R., Thomas S. Turrentine & Kenneth S. Kurani (Eds) (2006)
A Primer on Automobile Semiotics.
University of California, Davis: Institute of Transportation Studies
- Hirschman, Elizabeth C. (2003)
'Men, Dogs, Guns and Cars: The Semiotics of Rugged Individualism',
Journal of Advertising 32(1): 9-22
- Holbrook, Morris B. & Elizabeth C. Hirschman (1993)
The Semiotics of Consumption:
Interpreting Symbolic Consumer Behavior in Popular Culture and Works of Art. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter
- Lawes, Rachel (2002) 'Demystifying Semiotics: Some Key Questions Answered',
International Journal of Market Research 44(3): 251-64;
[WWW Document] URL
http://www.ijmr.com/AboutIJMR/Sample3.pdf
- Leymore, Varda Langholz (1975)
Hidden Myth: Structure and Symbolism in Advertising. New York: Basic Books
- Marsh, Peter & Peter Collett (1989)
Driving Passion: The Psychology of the Car. Boston, MA: Faber & Faber
- Miller, Daniel (Ed) (2001)
Car Cultures. Oxford: Berg
- Mitchell, Jacqueline (2008)
'What Your Car Says To The Opposite Sex?', Forbes Magazine, 5th February [WWW document] URL
http://www.forbes.com/2008/02/05/cars-sex-signals-forbeslife-lovebiz08-cx_jm_0205oppositesex.html
- Moss, Gloria (2009)
Gender, Design and Marketing: How Gender Drives Our Perception of Design and Marketing.
Aldershot: Gower.
- Myers, Greg (1999)
Ad Worlds: Brands, Media, Audiences. London: Arnold
- Nadin, Mihai & Richard D. Zakia (1994)
Creating Effective Advertising Using Semiotics. New York: Consultant Press
- Oswald, Laura (2012)
Marketing Semiotics: Signs, Strategies, and Brand Value. Oxford: Oxford University Press
- Persaud, Raj (2003)
'What does your car say about you?', The Telegraph, Saturday 1st March [WWW document] URL
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/2721198/What-does-your-car-say-about-you.html
- Pettifer, Julian & Nigel Turner (1984)
Automania. London: Collins
- Redshaw, Sarah (2008)
In the Company of Cars: Driving as a Social and Cultural Practice. Aldershot: Ashgate
- Schmitt, Bernd & Alex Simonson (1997)
Marketing Aesthetics: The Strategic Management of Brands, Identity, and Image. New York: Free Press
- Scott, Linda M & Rajeev Batra (Eds) (2003)
Persuasive Imagery: A Consumer Response Perspective. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum
- Sharpe, Deborah T. (1975)
The Psychology of Color and Design. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams
- Silk, Gerald (1984)
Automobile and Culture. New York: Abrams
- Stephens, Nichole M., Hazel Rose Markus & Sarah S. M. Townsend (2007)
'Choice as an Act of Meaning: The Case of Social Class',
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 93(5): 814-30
- Storry, Mike & Peter Childs (Eds) (1997)
British Cultural Identities. London: Routledge
- Umiker-Sebeok, Jean (Ed) (1987)
Marketing and Semiotics: New Directions in the Study of Signs for Sale. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter
- Vaknin, Judy (2008)
Driving it Home: 100 Years of Car Advertising. London: Middlesex University Press
- van Leeuwen, Theo (2004)
Introducing Social Semiotics. London: Routledge
- Williams, Gareth (2000)
Branded? Products and Their Personalities. London: V&A
- Wollen, Peter & Joe Kerr (Eds) (2002)
Autopia: Cars and Culture. London: Reaktion
Note: Treat with extreme caution sources labelled with this symbol!