CS: It sounds like semiotics is a practice of interpretation. Qualitative research is also a practice of interpretation. So, what’s the difference between semiotics and qualitative research?

FT: Qualitative researchers interpret what consumers say. They work with what we call consumer “speak.” Semioticians interpret what consumers are seeing and hearing (e.g., a McDonald’s ad). They work with what we call consumers’ “surround.”

This means that semioticians do not interview consumers as qualitative researchers do. They don’t observe consumers’ behaviors and practices as ethnographers do.

Semioticians read and interpret the “texts” that consumers read, watch, and listen to—the texts that influence consumers’ thought processes and beliefs. Semioticians identify what consumers may themselves not be conscious of and may not be able to articulate and express—but nevertheless influence their choices and preferences.

CS: What kinds of things do semioticians learn that help clients? What do these signs and the meanings they carry have to do with consumers’ desires, choices, and behaviors?

FT: A person’s desire — say for consumer goods—is partially influenced by the meanings culture has attached to these objects. Consumers’ regulation of their desire for goods is also based on the meanings and values culture has attached to those objects.

Whether a person desires to eat dog meat or chocolate-coated dragonflies is based on the meanings and values attached to dog meat as a type of meat or insects as a type of food. Thus, the desire and its fulfilment are regulated socio-culturally.

Going back to the pickup truck mentioned earlier, in an era when we were not conscious of sustainability, big trucks represented freedom, power, and dominance of the road. However, at a time when we are becoming more conscious about how our automobile choices impact the environment, more representations of big trucks increasingly represent waste, excess, and global warming.

Thus, what an object represents or symbolizes within a culture impacts desire for it—whether the desire is considered appropriate or not—and how the fulfilment of that desire is regulated.

This representation or symbolism is arrived at through social consensus processes. It is rarely the idea of a single individual. An individual pickup truck buyer in the U.S. is rarely likely to decide what the truck stands for or represents in conceptual terms.

CS: So, what is your method? How do you go about doing semiotics and semiotics analysis? What are your data? Where does interviewing fit in?

FT: Great questions! Semiotics is different than traditional qualitative research. As I was mentioning earlier, we do not typically interview respondents. For a semiotics-focused study, the semiotician collects data from culture that are relevant to the topic of study (e.g., chicken as food in popular culture). For high level, here are the steps to how we collect and organize the data that we will ultimately analyze.

1. In our chicken example, the semiotician would start by assembling texts about chicken. These texts could be visual images from:

• Media articles by food bloggers and journalists
• Ads and posters released by brands
• Images from food websites, food delivery apps, Instagram pages
• Videos made by vloggers, etc.

2. To create an unbiased sample of texts, the semiotician segments the formats in which the visual/verbal content is presented (e.g., segmenting visual images, videos, articles, and blogs by their formats to capture the full range of ways in which chicken is represented
visually and verbally).

3. Once the visuals and written texts are assembled into a sample, the semiotician would group the visual content first into similar or related themes.

The principle of substitutability helps identify the concepts that can be grouped together on the basis of similarity and the concepts that cannot be grouped together because they are too different. For example, visuals that highlight and dramatize the whole chicken can be grouped together. Those that highlight pieces of chicken can be grouped together. Equally, visuals of shredded chicken sprinkled on top of pizza and other such images of foods with shredded chicken can be grouped together.

CS: How do you move from these preparatory steps to the actual analysis? Are there any principles of analysis? Or tools and frameworks of analysis that are popular to use?

FT: Yes, semioticians definitely use frameworks! One of the most commonly used frameworks involves identifying binary oppositions and polarities in the texts and images being decoded.

The underlying theory is based on a fact of how meanings are made: meanings exist in oppositions. So, we understand happiness because we know its opposite, sadness. The same is true for love and hate.