National pride, global capital: a social semiotic analysis of transnational visual branding in the airline

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A RT I C L E
National pride, global capital: a social
semiotic analysis of transnational visual
branding in the airline industry
C R I S P I N T H U R L OW A N D G I O R G I A A I E L L O
University of Washington, Seattle, USA
A B S T R A C T
In this article we examine 561 different airline tailfin designs as a visualgenre, revealing how the global–local binary may be managed and realizedsemiotically. Our analysis is organized into three strands: (a) a descriptiveanalysis identifies the strikingly restricted visual lexicon and dominantcorporate aesthetic established by tailfin design; (b) an interpretive analysisconsiders the communicative strategies at play and the meaning potentialswhich underpin different visual resources; (c) a critical analysis links thesedecisions of design and branding to the political and cultural economies ofglobalism and the airline industry. Specifically, we show how airlines areable to service national identity concerns through the use of highly
http://www.ttc-switch.com/dissertation_writing/MBA/localized visual meanings while also appealing to the meaning systems ofthe international market in their pursuit of symbolic and economic capital.One key semiotic resource is the balancing of cultural symbolism andperceptual iconicity in the form of abstracted stylizations of kinetic effects.Although positioned unfairly in the global semioscape, airlines may resiststraightforward cultural homogenization by strategically reworking existingdesign structures and exploiting possibly universal semiotic meaning potentials.
K E Y WO R D S
corporate branding • globalization • perception • kinetic stylization •semioscape • social semiotics • universal iconicity
In 1997, at a reported cost of some £60 million (US$120 million), BritishAirways (BA) famously decided to break from its long-established aeroplanelivery based on the red, white and blue of the British national flag bylaunching what was described in the press as ‘a bold global image based noton a single logo but a series of related designs from around the world’.Copyright © 2007 SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore:http://vcj.sagepub.com) /10.1177/1470357207081002#p#分頁標題#e#
Vol 6(3): 305–344 [1470-3572(200710)6:3; 305–344]
v i s u a l c ommu n i c a t i o n
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G L O B A L D I S C O U R S E S : P R O F I T, I D E O L O G Y A N D#p#分頁標題#e#
S EMI OT I C S T R AT E G Y
http://www.ttc-switch.com/dissertation_writing/MBA/communication. (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2001: 46)Concerns expressed by scholars like García Canclini and Machin aboutthe potential homogenization of the semioscape are closely allied to the
of this intensification of the semiotic are undoubtedly marketing
T h u r l ow a n d A i e l l o : N a t i o n a l p r i d e , g l o b a l c a p i t a l 309
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Figures 2a–f Six globally recognized logos/trademarks (see also pp. 327 and 339).
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(f)
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T H E D I A L E C T I C O F V I S U A L ME A N I N G : P E R C E P T I O N
A N D C U LT U R E
G L O B A L B R A N D I N G : B A L A N C I N G I C O N I C I T Y A N D
S YMB O L I SM
We live in a time of . . . fluid communications with transnational
orders of information, style, and knowledge. In the middle of this . . .
we find codes that unify us, or at least permit us to understand
ourselves. (García Canclini, 1998: 379)
Usually, when scholars like García Canclini talk about globalization, about
transnational processes of codification, they reasonably assume that what
makes for unification is a matter of culture. Lash and Urry (1994), for
example, talk about how globalization is marked by a kind of ‘aesthetic
cosmopolitanism’ (p. 253). In globalization and social theory, as in visual
communication scholarship, questions of human cognition are somewhat
unfashionable. Nonetheless, on the basis of our analysis here, we suggest that
there are other factors at play which might also account for the global
semioscape; that might help explain how concomitant or embedded culturespecific
meaning systems are able to circulate as successfully as they do. We
refer here to the possibility that the perceptual qualities of certain images
may afford them universal significance.
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Just as airlines manage the global/local tension by skilfully reworking
the genericity of a globalized aesthetic and by incorporating local visual
material, the basic content of tailfin designs may also be transnationally
stylized though an aerodynamic appearance afforded by perceptually motivated
kinetic effects. In fact, it is the interaction of the perceptual and
cultural/historical qualities of airline corporate branding which provides a#p#分頁標題#e#
less obvious explanation for why local and global meanings are able to coexist
so successfully.
In Figure 10, culturally specific national emblems are quite apparently
used as important and probably very meaningful sources of national pride in
tailfin design. Different examples are the stylized flags of France and South
Africa in the Air France (Figure 10a) and South African Airways (Figure 10b)
tailfin designs, as well as the Maori ‘koru’ or fern frond in Air New Zealand
(Figure 10c) and the ‘jumpee’ or white orchid flower in Thai Airways
International (Figure 10d). In each case, however, these emblems are
rendered more internationally significant by drawing on a more universally
recognized semiosis – specifically, the kinetic stylizations of darting,
gradation, diagonalization, tapering and, for Air New Zealand, brush
stroking. Given our earlier discussion, the international significance of the
designs is a matter of more than ‘just’ cultural resonances such as the codified
mythologies of national flags or the intratextuality of airline liveries. Nor are
they to be explained simply by their physical situation (i.e. the obtuse
triangulation of the tailfin itself). Instead, we suggest that these designs may
signify transnationally through the apparent universality of their experiential
meaning potential or perceptual iconicity.
T h u r l ow a n d A i e l l o : N a t i o n a l p r i d e , g l o b a l c a p i t a l 329
Figures 10a–h The balance of meaning: cultural symbolism, perceptual iconicity and
visual self–othering.
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(e) (f) (g) (h)
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In taking this position we know we run the risk of sounding
objectivistic; however, we remain convinced of the co-constitution of
objectivity/subjectivity and universality/relativity (see Lakoff and Johnson,
1980; Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2001; Chandler, 2002). For the most part,
therefore, we speak of the universality of kinetic effects in tailfin design in the
same way that cultural anthropologist Douglas (1966) considers the
universality of social distinctions of cleanliness and impurity, or cognitive
linguists Lakoff and Johnson (1980) discuss the ubiquitous use of
orientational metaphors such as ‘up and down’. For example, Lakoff and
Johnson view the tendency to value ‘up’ as superior and ‘down’ as inferior to
be rooted in both our biological/physiological and cultural experiences of
the spatially higher and the spatially lower. Similarly, Kress and Van
Leeuwen (1996) propose a spatio-semantic framework for the syntagmatic#p#分頁標題#e#
arrangement of print media and visual imagery. What links these different
perspectives is an appreciation of the dialectic interplay of culture and
perception in symbolic life.Whether or not perceptual or experiential visual
resources guarantee universally available meanings remains a moot point.
While we would distinguish perceptual iconicity from the kinds of
figurative iconicity we discussed earlier (e.g. birds, the colour blue or globes),
iconicity is always an act of perception – compared with symbolism, which
relies on inference and judgement (Hodge and Kress, 1988). Culturally
and historically specific tailfin motifs, then, may be rendered globally
recognizable by virtue of their perceptual, not to say material, qualities. Of
course, however ubiquitous birds are, their physicality, representation and
significance may be culturally – or at least geographically – relative. Hence
the localizing use of specific, regional birds by some airlines. Nonetheless, as
with Japan Airlines (Figure 10g), Garuda Indonesia (Figure 10h) and Sri
Lankan Airlines (Figure 7c), this may also be done in conjunction with a
degree of kinetic stylization which functions not only to amplify the visual
significance but, we suggest, also to universalize it. There is, therefore, a
balancing of the culturally specific meanings (e.g. national emblems), crosscultural
understandings (e.g. creatures of flight) and perceptual qualities
(e.g. kinetic effects) in so many tailfin designs. Returning to our schema from
before, we might depict this interplay of modes of signification or degrees of
modality as in Figure 11.
V i s u a 330 l C ommu n i c a t i o n 6 ( 3 )
Figure 11 Schema for the balancing of symbolic and iconic meaning potentials in tailfin
design.
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In and of itself, the balancing of these modalities is a key visual
resource, one which allows for local and globalized meanings to co-exist and,
in fact, to work off each other. Whereas a Western, for example, traveler
might not be able to infer the particular cultural meaning of the ‘koru’ or
‘jumpee’, they will still be able to recognize it as a signifier for flight and/or
movement. The design of Saudi Arabian Airlines (Figure 10f) exemplifies this
interplay best with its combination of appropriate visual lexemes (e.g. the
colour blue, a globe) and its incorporation and reworking of the Saudi
national emblem of a date palm and two crossed swords. Importantly, these
are kinetically stylized through the tapering of the globe and the additional
streamlining of the swords and tree. (A comparison with the official emblem#p#分頁標題#e#
confirms this stylization: see the homepage of the Saudi embassy in London
[http://www.ukemb.mofa.gov.sa].) In the sense that Bell (1999) explains
audience design, many tailfins thereby reveal a skilfull management (no
doubt deliberate on the part of designers) of the polysemous capacity of
signs (or styles) to invoke multiple meanings and identities simultaneously
(cf. also Bakhtin, 1981[1935]). The system works, semiotically speaking,
through the deployment and manipulation of key visual resources, including
the balancing of perceptual motivation and cultural convention. In this way,
a careful compromise is struck between the desire to represent local cultural
meanings and the need to be relevant to an international market – of
servicing national pride and securing global capital.
Visual self-othering and the commodification of the exotic
It is not simply the case that tailfin designers must mitigate or translate the
provenance or symbolism of local/national imagery. There is also a case to be
made for strategically retaining something of the relative unintelligibility or
ambiguity of local meanings. Herein lies a mystique worthy of commodification.
As the BA rebranding debacle showed, national identity and
national sentiment have symbolic value not only for the domestic market.
In the face of global economics, multinational corporations – manifested
most obviously in the airline industry by so called ‘global alliances’ –
and transnational governance, nationality is often thought to exercise less
and less influence. And yet, as Lull (2001) reminds us, the ‘nation is a
discursive product that is perpetually marketed back to its own people and to
other nations’ (pp. 15–16). As Lull then goes on to note, the nation state
continues to function as a political and symbolic resource of ‘extraordinary
importance’. The nation state may well be imagined, but it is by no means
imaginary (Gupta and Ferguson, 1992: 11). Certainly, national emblems and
national stereotypes are exploited by marketers (and others, e.g. politicians)
for economic and political gain. Thurlow and Jaworski (2003) refer to this as
the ‘globalization of nationality’ (p. 600) following Smith’s (1990) discussion
of the modernist nationalization of pre-modern ethnicities (e.g. the
Victorian reinvention of Scottish and Welsh rituals).7
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As all marketers know, where there is meaning there is money. In
looking to balance a concern for national identity and global image, airlines#p#分頁標題#e#
therefore recognize the symbolic and economic value in exploiting the
potential, connotational meanings of local emblems. Just as language users
invoke identities through their stylized performances of others’ ways of
speaking (see, e.g., Bell, 1999), airline marketers also self-style or self-other
(Jaworski and Coupland, 2005), in order to define and project an identity
specifically meaningful to their foreign audience. To this end, symbolic
capital is also generated through the strategic display of exotic markers of
difference. (Tourism marketing is, of course, rife with this; see Thurlow et al.,
2005.) Paradoxically perhaps, the (figurative) stylization of an airline as
exotic will typically require a restriction of (perceptual) stylization.
The symbolic capital of self-othering is exemplified in AeroMexico’s
use of a winged Aztec warrior or Saudi Arabian Airlines’ self-orientalizing use
of Arabian swords and a palm tree (Figures 10e and 10f). Here, designers
fulfill genericity through standard visual content and kinetic stylization, but
in ways which retain the symbolic cachet of these metonymic national
stereotypes. So, although running the risk of being obscure to the international
audience, national emblems also service airlines’ need to be
sometimes exotic. This is a way of establishing a definitional identity (or
corporate brand) for commercial gain and, of course, economic profit.
Another, perhaps more subtle, example of this same strategy is the use of the
mythological Garuda bird or the crane in the tailfins of Garuda Indonesia
(Figure 10h) and Japan Airlines (Figure 10g), respectively. In these cases, just
enough explicit meaning is available, but little more; that is, just enough for
people to recognize an ‘exotic’ bird while not perhaps sensing its local
significance as an institutionalized national emblem. In effect, therefore,
international travellers are made aware that they are ‘missing’ meaning if the
emblem is to appear foreign and exotic. It is in this way that the careful
semiotic balancing of design components enables domestic travellers to value
the tailfin design (‘That’s our bird’) while also enabling foreign travellers to
appreciate its difference (‘That’s their bird’).
R E L O C AT I N G G L O B A L I SM: D E S I G N ‘ S T R U C T U R E ’
A N D S EMI OT I C A G E N C Y
Globalization is the direct consequence of the expansion of European
culture across the planet via settlement, colonization and cultural
memisis. . . . [and is a process whereby] every set of social
arrangements must establish its position in relation to the capitalist
West. (Waters, 1995: 3)
Attention to local conjunctures needs to be linked, at all points, to
global processes without falling into the by-now-tired modernist#p#分頁標題#e#
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binary of the universal (global) sublating the particular (local),
explained through a colonizing master-narrative of undifferentiated
homogenizing forces meeting endlessly specific and hyper-detailed
adaptations doomed to defeat. (Wilson and Dissanayake, 1996: 6)
In these two statements, the authors may at first seem to be presenting
opposing visions; however, together, they account for an important feature of
globalization. While global capital–culture continues to be totalizing in its
demand, its influence and effects are never completely and uniformly
realized – nor is it simply imposed and/or embraced. On the contrary.
Globalizing forces may ‘invade local culture’ (Giddens, 1999), but their
impact is often confused and mystified by domestic priorities. By the same
token, the reduction of the semioscape (or any other transnational flow) to
overly binarized global and local processes obscures the co-constitutive
nature of the interplay between them (Wilson and Dissanayake, 1996; also
Hall, 1991). In fact, our micro-analysis of just one textual example – the
generic practices of airline tailfin design – has, we think, revealed this
interplay nicely. While airline branding represents a clearly Westernized (or
Western-driven) aesthetic, it is by no means a completely homogenizing
imposition. Indeed, visual semiosis affords plenty of negotiation of this
global genre, and airlines are able strategically to co-opt the aesthetic to their
advantage. Likewise, to say local agents glocalize is also to simplify
directionality and agency in this process. Airlines assert national pride while
also embracing global capital.
In terms of the conceptualization offered by Thompson (1995),
airline corporate branding epitomizes globalization: it is an economic–
political–symbolic activity which occurs in a global arena, is organized on a
global scale, and entails a degree of reciprocity and interdependence. In fact,
what is so striking about the limited visual repertoire we see in our analysis is
that there are no regulations which dictate the design of tailfins; instead,
these are largely independent, commercial choices. Having said that, the
marketplace inevitably demands (inter)dependence and self-regulation. As
such, the industry aesthetic is characterized precisely by the kinds of
‘globalized diffusion’ – rather than imposition or localized appropriation.
Although very different from the type of televisual formats, or genres, that
Castells (1996) discusses when explaining his idea of ‘supertext’, the tailfins of#p#分頁標題#e#
many international airlines are in many ways excellent examples of this
blending of meanings drawn simultaneously from symbolic resources at
both the local and global level (see also Thompson, 1995, on ‘symbolic
distancing’). Of course, the symbolic and economic dimensions of
globalization are inextricably interwoven, and the deployment of semiotic
resources such as the ones found in tailfin designs is, at once, a means of
distinction and conformity within the agendas that are set by global
capitalism. Semiosis therefore plays a crucial role in the positioning of a local
actor (such as a flag-carrier) in the international market.
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Airlines are clearly adept at deploying the inherently discursive nature
of globalization, recognizing that it is as much a matter of consumer lifestyle
and marketing brand as it is of economic reconfigurations (Thurlow and
Jaworski, 2003). Just as the inflight magazine is a globalizing genre which
renders airlines simultaneously international and national, other aspects of
airlines’ corporate branding manage to blend and balance the otherwise
disparate demands of national pride and global capital. This expression of
the double-bind ‘act globally, act locally’ and the concomitant re-imagining
of nationality is what Jaworski and Thurlow (2004) elsewhere explain as a
kind of new internationalism. Certainly, in an increasingly competitive
marketplace, the success of international airlines depends on strategic
differentiation and global positioning; on a careful balance of the locally
meaningful, the internationally identifiable and the ‘globally’ recognizable.
Shifting the goal posts: the dialectics of globalism
One point we have tried to make though our micro-analysis is the potential for
local communicative agency in spite of the structuring effects of a globalized
design aesthetic. In many respects, corporate branding in the airline industry
evidences what Lash and Urry (1994: 285) see as a defining characteristic of
disorganized capitalism: the decentering of power (away from historical
bases such as the UK and the USA) and the absence of a clearly identified
hegemonic power base. It should not be forgotten (or underestimated),
however, that power is by no means distributed equally and influence seldom
flows evenly across national borders. Indeed, the kinds of global flows
identified by Appadurai (1996) are disjunctive and non-isomorphic, marked
by concentrations (Thompson, 1995) of people, technologies, financial
resources, information, news images and ideologies. Furthermore, such#p#分頁標題#e#
global forces are evidently not neutral but always subject to economic
privileges and political agendas – ultimately to unequal relations of power.
Needless to say, the global semioscape is equally variable and uneven.
Advantaged by the greater symbolic value of their semiotic practices and
resources, certain people (or countries) are able to accrue symbolic credit in
addition to (infra)structural privileges established over time (cf. Lash and
Urry, 1994: 287). Indeed, the genericity and dominant aesthetic of airline
branding is still heavily motivated by the economic priorities and advantages
of richer (Western) countries. And the design agenda continues therefore to
be set by richer countries.
In a quintessentially semioticized maneuver, many of the major
international airlines (especially in western Europe, east Asia and in the USA)
have recently been reinventing themselves by means of rebranding – a central
part of which entails the redesign of their liveries and, specifically, their
tailfins.8 Briefly, we see this happening in two related ways evidenced in
Figure 12 and characterized by the contemporization, ‘aestheticization’ and,
ultimately, globalization of the design aesthetic.
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In Figures 12a to 12d, we show the relatively recent rebranding
of Austrian Airlines, Luxair of Luxembourg, Ethiopian Airlines and Finnair of
Finland. Created by different agencies (e.g. Landor Associates, Sek & Grey
of Finland), contemporary design tastes demand softer, more curvaceous
lines. (In terms of kinetic effect, this has the added benefit of enhanced
streamlining.) In the overall airline livery, the current fashion for a smoother,
less cluttered (or busy) aesthetic is mirrored by a number of other recurrent
choices: the increasing roundedness of lettering (a loss of capitalization
arguably related to the impact of the internet and other technologically
motivated typographies); the loss of the cheat-line along the side of
aeroplanes in favor of a ‘cleaner’, monochrome, often white, fuselage (or a
diffuse line which ‘bleeds’ across the fuselage); and a reduction in the use of
heavily saturated colors in favor of greater pastelization. What accounts for
T h u r l ow a n d A i e l l o : N a t i o n a l p r i d e , g l o b a l c a p i t a l 335
Figures 12a–h Examples of recent design re-brandings.
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
old new old new
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(g)
(h)
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these subtle changes in the fashion of corporate design is beyond the scope of
our article; there are other changes, however, which are more telling.
Rebranding is one change, albeit cosmetic, which helps to keep
airlines looking (and feeling) up-to-date and cutting-edge. In a fiercely semioticized
world, design may be all that is needed: an airline like Northwest
Airlines may repaint its aircraft without necessarily replacing them. (Thurlow
and Jaworski, 2006, discuss similar semiotic maneuvers in the use of
frequent-flyer programs.) In this sense, the rebranding itself assumes the role
of signifier, communicating a refreshed or renewed product – or at least
persuading customers that this is the case. Following the ideas of
Featherstone (1991) and Du Gay and Pryke (2002), however, we note with
interest how another type of current rebranding additionally manifests
aestheticization in its privileging of design over substance. Where the same
curvature of line and minimization of detail is seen in the new corporate
images created for Northwest Airlines, Japan Airlines and Gulf Air (Figures 10e
to 10g), each rebranding also entails an increasing abstraction of logos
whereby specifically national semantic content is visually diluted (e.g. the
geographic compass location for Northwest, the localized crane motif for
JAL, the national colours for Gulf).9 In the case of Georgian Airlines (Figure
12h), formed in 2004 as a new flag-carrier, the rebranding by Lila Design
(Netherlands) involves a total change of tailfin design which drops the
Georgian flag altogether in favor of a generically consistent (i.e. the spiral)
but nationally ‘insignificant’ pattern. This diminishing of national specificity
seems to be an even more strategic move to re-evalute the visual currency in
pursuit of greater profit margins and extended, global reach. Here, for
example, is how an April 2003 press release from the agency TrueBrand
(USA) explained the much publicized rebranding of Northwest Airlines (see
Figure 12e):
The new identity clearly communicates the airlines [sic] brand
attributes, which were defined in employee and customer research as
global, savvy, confident, higher quality and forthright. This strategic
design solution will save the carrier 20% in future painting costs. [It] is
a pragmatic move, signaling confidence and the attitude of a global
player intent on building an ever stronger market position and brand.
(source: www.truebrand.com, emphases added)
Even though airline liveries have always been changing (see Ruud Leeuw
[www.ruudleuw.com]), the amount of rebranding activity in the airline
industry over the last several years has been especially extensive. Led by a#p#分頁標題#e#
number of major US and European design agencies – most particularly
Landor Associates (Austrian, Japan Airlines and Gulf Air) – this apparent
globalizing aestheticization of tailfin design appears also to mirror the one
described by Machin (2004) in his examination of global image banks such
as Getty Images where photographic images are valued more and more for
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their stylization and genericity. Smaller airlines such as Georgian (Figure
12h) and Ethopian (Figure 12c) must simply keep up if they are to project
the kind of international (or global) image needed to remain competitive
against the dominance of richer countries and larger carriers. Just as newer
airlines (see our online resource) have positioned themselves within the
visual order, symbolic capital is reconfiguring itself and a new design
structure is emerging.
C O N C L U S I O N : T H E T E X T U A L I Z AT I O N O F
G L O B A L I SM
Although politicians and economists often talk of globalization as if it were a
given reality, and as if the world were already globalized, in truth,
globalization is typically invoked as a discursive resource to explain and
justify the ongoing re-orderings of global capitalism (Fairclough, 2003;
Thurlow and Jaworski, 2003).Micro-level analyses such as the one presented
here are able to show how globalism is being worked out in practice; however
insignificant or innocent these semiotic moments may seem, they act as
channels and agents of global capital. This is what Fairclough (2003) refers to
as ‘textualization’ – the process whereby social and economic realities are
represented and established discursively. It is also the socially constructed,
discursive nature of ‘globalization’ which makes it so suitable for analysis by
social semioticians and critical discourse analysts.
Corporate branders are unquestionably very astute and skilled at what
they do; seldom, however, do they have an articulate (meta)language for
explaining how it is that their designs ‘work’. Nor are commercial agents
often inclined to reflect on the ways their practices function ideologically and
politically. On this basis, what we hope to have shown in this article is, first,
an example of how visual meaning is generated in complex ways, for example
through combination, localization and abstraction. Indeed, structuralist
semioticians have demonstrated well how meaning is generated by the paradigmatic
selection and syntagmatic arrangement of signs such as this.Meaning
potential, however, is also realized by degree; by the deployment of resources,#p#分頁標題#e#
but also by the extent to which they are activated and balanced. In these
terms, one key semiotic resource we have looked at here is the balancing of
cultural and perceptual iconicity. As such, our consideration of airline tailfin
design reminds us that the possibly universal perceptual qualities of visual
meaning must be central to analyses of visual communication.
What we have also offered in this article is a specific, micro-analytic
example of how globalism is negotiated and realized through visual semiosis.
Our analysis shows, we think, the complex tussle between globalizing and
localizing forces, between international and national orientations, between
semiotic uniformity and semiotic diversity – and the interplay of all three.
On the face of it, the synergistic relation between the perceptual and the
cultural in visual imagery appears nicely to parallel the global/local
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synergism of the ‘transnational imaginary’ (Wilson and Dissanayake, 1996:
2). However, the link between the semiotic and structural synergies is more
than analogous; the two are themselves dialectically co-constituitive. Visual
discourse not only manifests socioeconomic realities or, as with the corporate
branding of airlines, manages them better; discursive practices also work to
reinscribe and reproduce patterns of economic exchange.
Processes of homogenization and heterogenization are not simple
either-ors; nor are participants in the global market without agency and
control. Indeed, the visual affords creative and powerful means (or
meanings) for local agents to rework the dominant,Western aesthetic in the
global semioscape. Airlines and their marketers also strategically invoke
design genericity in order to leverage the symbolic and, ultimately, economic
capital of more well-established airlines. Just as visual branding enables
larger airlines to re-present themselves as up-to-date, competitive global
players, smaller airlines are able to deploy many of the same semiotic
resources in their effort to keep up with the constant reformulations of
global capitalism. Which is not to say that the playing field is even.
Capital always favors those who started first, those who control the
mechanisms of cultural and economic production. Just as globalism
keeps reconfiguring itself, so too it seems the global semioscape is constantly
being refashioned.
A C K N OWL E D G EME N T S
We are especially grateful to NARA-Verlag [www.nara-verlag.de] for permission
to reproduce the tailfin images from Hengi (2000) selected for reference#p#分頁標題#e#
here.We would also like to thank Sean Almeida and Paul Ford for their help
in preparing the article’s accompanying website (see p. 312). Our work on
this article is made possible in part by funding from the Leverhulme Trust
(grant no. F/00407/D) to the Centre for Language and Communication
Research at Cardiff University where, as an Associate Research Fellow,
Crispin Thurlow is part of a research programme on Language and Global
Communication [www.global.cf.ac.uk/].
N OT E S
1. Margaret Thatcher is said to have declared, ‘We fly the British flag,
not these awful things’, while draping a handkerchief over a model
of a newly-liveried BA plane (BBC News Online: [http://news.bbc.
co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/198805.stm]).
2. Commercial aircraft costs based on information available at the
Boeing website [www.boeing.com/commercial/prices/].
3. Hengi’s (2000) listing is very similar to another comprehensive
collection of airline trademarks and logos available online
[www.aerosite.net].
V i s u a 338 l C ommu n i c a t i o n 6 ( 3 )
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4. One of the world’s oldest commercial airlines, Germany’s flagcarrier
Lufthansa (founded in 1926) is said to have also been the
first to develop a company logo – in this case, the bird-and-sun
motif which we found to be so ubiquitous in our corpus. In Figure
13, airline trademarks from the 1950s likewise indicate the origins
of the standard lexicon in use today.
5. It is worth noting that, in Mythologies, Roland Barthes (1972)
interpreted the Citroën trademark (see Figure 2b earlier) in
similarly kinetic terms: that it ‘was proceeding from the category of
propulsion to that of spontaneous motion, from that of the engine
to that of the organism’ (p. 89). Other well-known examples where
effects of motion are strategically deployed are DHL’s combination
of diagonalization and gradation (Figure 2c), and the darting and
tapering of Nike’s famous ‘swoosh’ trademark (Figure 2a); FedEx
(Figure 2d) meanwhile embeds a figurative arrow (between the ‘e’
and ‘x’).
6. Livingstone (2002: 66) similarly discusses how ‘equiluminant
colours’ can be used to generate a sense of motion through the
appearance of vibration. For a demonstration of this with reference
specifically to Richard Anuszkiewicz’s Plus Reversed, see
[http://webexhibits.org/colorart/anuszkiewicz.html].
7. Given arguments about – and the economic realities of – the
deterritorialization of capital and the rise of multinational business,#p#分頁標題#e#
it is important to acknowledge that many of the larger international
airlines are becoming increasingly detached from the nation-state,
whether through privatization (e.g. BA), transnational mergers (e.g.
Air France and KLM) or ‘global alliances’ (e.g. oneworld, Sky Team
and Star Alliance). As such, the notion of the ‘flag-carrier’ is
necessarily rendered more complex (e.g. in the wake of BA’s World
Images rebranding, Virgin Atlantic famously declared itself the
T h u r l ow a n d A i e l l o : N a t i o n a l p r i d e , g l o b a l c a p i t a l 339
Figure 13 Old 1950s ‘Flying Springbok’ trademark from South African Airways (left);
old 1950s logotype from Régie Aérienne Interinsulaire of Tahiti (right).
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British flag-carrier by marking its planes with the Union flag).
Nonetheless, at the same time, smaller countries are still starting up
publicly funded flag-carriers in their efforts to establish nationhood
(e.g. Armenia, Yemen), just as countries like Switzerland have been
prepared to continue investing and losing public money in order to
sustain flag-carriers.
8. A short account of the branding strategy behind the Thai Airways
logo is available (25 July 2005) through the airline’s website [www.
thaiairways.com/About_Thai/Public_Information/Information/
THAI_logo.htm]. Replacing an earlier visual stereotype (a Thai
classical dancer) used since 1960, the orchid logo was designed in
1975 by Landor Associates to ‘create a more international image’; in
2005, this too was tweaked for a ‘new look [that] not only has a
refreshingly contemporary approach, [but which] will also help to
promote THAI’s brand image and impact in the many countries it
serves.’ This example shows nicely the constant re-evaluation of
visual currencies (see Figure 14).
9. In another case of globalizing aestheticization, Irish flag-carrier Aer
Lingus faced a public outcry in 2003 after announcing that it was to
drop, or at least deprioritize, the national emblem of the shamrock
from its aeroplanes. (Guardian Unlimited [http:// observer.
guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,915312,00.html])
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B I O G R A P H I C A L N OT E S
CRISPIN THURLOW’s research on ‘discourse and difference’ examines the
ways people use language and other semiotic modes to negotiate and
produce the boundaries of cultural diversity and social inequality. His books
include Talking Adolescence: Perspectives on Communication in the Teenage
Years (Peter Lang Publishing, 2005) and the forthcoming Tourism Discourse:
The Language of Global Mobility. He is currently working on a major project
which examines super-elite mobility and the discursivity of elitism.
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Address: Department of Communication, University of Washington, Box
353740, Seattle,WA 98195, USA. [email: [email protected]]
GIORGIA AIELLO is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication
at the University of Washington. Her doctoral project, ‘Visions of Europe:
The Symbolic Production of Transnational Identity in Contemporary
European Visual Discourse’, is a social semiotic analysis of the ways selected
visual texts ‘imagine’ European identity in the wake of European integration
http://www.ttc-switch.com/dissertation_writing/MBA/and globalization.
Address: as Crispin Thurlow. [email: [email protected]]
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