It could be argued that without language we have no way of expressing ourselves to others, of getting across our thoughts and opinions. It is curious, then, that increasing we are willing to pay only lip service to the meaning of words. We seem to prefer to pick them up and misuse them at will – to quote Humpty Dumpty – we somehow believe that ‘when we use a word it means just what we choose it to mean.’
Perhaps this maltreatment of language is acceptable in everyday conversations; when we have to make commentary off-the-cuff. Perhaps not: Barack Obama, just last week, came under fire for his choice of words when he said that the “Cambridge police acted stupidly for arresting Henry Louis Gate, Jr.” On reflection Obama admitted that he “could have calibrated those words differently.” Did he mean to say ‘stupidly’? Perhaps he was really searching for ‘foolishly’, ‘idiotically’, or ‘naively’. All of which are synonyms of ‘stupidly’, but all of which have slightly different meanings.
If even off-the-cuff comments are met with scrutiny, surely when we do have a chance to think exactly and precisely about what we are trying to say we do so carefully? Not so if we are to focus on the world of advertising. Adverts, in general, are a team effort; the result of numerous people, both client and agency, working together to create something. The main objective of which is to quickly and effectively influence the audience.
Given this it does seem bizarre that some adverts seem not to have been passed through the filters of meaning. Phileas Fogg Crisps provide an excellent example of where only a passing thought has been give to the semantics of the copy. Phileas Fogg, and his journey, is a very engaging but nonetheless fictional creation. To use the semiotic technique of ‘notness’, Fogg and his journey are bogus: they are not ‘authentic’. How egregious an error, then, for Phileas Fogg Crisps themselves to use the strap line ‘a world of authentic ingredients’! Surely the very use of this word undermines the entire advert; the use of the fictional character Fogg subverts and mocks the meaning of ‘authentic’.
It is easy to gloss over such errors as insignificant or trivial, but in a very real sense there are times when ignoring the cultural and social associations we have with words can lead to problems.
In 2002, Royal Mail Group rebranded as Consignia. This was chosen to summarise what all three organisations (Post Office, Royal Mail and Parcelforce) did, i.e. they consigned parcels, packages and letters. What this failed to take into account was the semiotic analysis of ‘consign’. To a semiotician ‘consign’ has comparatively negative associations i.e. he is consigned to history, or consign that to the rubbish bin. Unwittingly Royal Mail was setting itself up for a fall. The importance of semiotic analysis had been overlooked and so, at extra cost to the taxpayer, the original Royal Mail Group branding was restored.
What are the implications of this for research? We must not get complacent at only focusing on what is tangible and recorded in our own data. Instead we must always pay attention to the hidden meaning and codes that sit behind our language. We must give more attention to the importance of semiotics and its associated branches of semantics, syntactics and pragmatics. For in the words of Samuel Beckett, ‘Words are all we have’: we must not waste them.
Patrick Young
Tags: Barack Obama, Consignia, DVL Smith Ltd, Henry Louis Gate, Humpty Dumpty, Jr, Patrick Young, Phileas Fogg, Phileas Fogg Crisps, Royal Mail, Samuel Beckett, semantics, semiotics