The language of commodities Groundwork for a semiotics of consumer goods

Abstract

Consumer research has long since acknowledged the symbolic character of commodities but only recently is semiotics being discovered as a possible source of approaches to study the signs of the marketplace. After a survey of the state of the art in related fields of research, a semiotic model is proposed to show that commodities are prototypically perceived within three semiotic frames as utilitarian, commercial and as socio-cultural signs. The meanings of these signs are not inherent in the physical products. They are generated in the producer's discourse about the product, in the consumer's interaction with it or in his or her evaluation of it against the background of the system of commodities. The system of commodities is a semiotic system (a language) par excellence, since competition tends to maximize differences and minimize similarities between products. In contradistincton to its marked paradigmatic structure, however, the semiotic system of commodities has only a weak syntagmatic dimension.