Going Shopping

I feel the need to learn some basics of semiotics. It might come in handy! Looking at the place of a sign; wondering who made the sign; and speculating who reads the sign.

But I also want to bring my discovered signage into the home. So, we all go shopping!

Well, I do. I am Mother of Household.

I could get distracted at this point, and examine what social relationships have become normalised in my house, to make me, mother, retain a 'state of vigilence' over the family's food supply, food preparation, and food consumption, and how, to meet those tasks, I'm the person who conventionally shops for food on a Tuesday night. Alone.

But I'm sure this task about semiotics is not for me to linger (rather resentfully) upon ideas about how my reality has been constructed; my place and position in society normalised; my value system assumed; and my compliance taken for granted.

I'm just here to do some shopping, and pick up ideas about signage on food!

First, I need to look at the place of shops in our town.

I notice, on my walk through this small corner of Milton Keynes, how I pass several types of shops. Including a number of shops that cater for, or are run by, ethnic minorities. I'm guessing that this local scene broadly reflects the UKs immigration pattern as a whole. People have arrived at this bit of England with many stories - including historic ties, family obligations and economic motives - from the Caribbean, India, Pakistan, East Africa, China, Bangladesh and, more recently, Poland and other places within the constantly reforming geopolitical-economic shape that is the EU.

In our streets I see small independent shops, perhaps set up with family money and employing family members, stocking a wide range of goods sourced from countries outside the UK. I wonder if the presentation and advertising of the shops are 'coded' to reflect the culture of the shop-owner, or the intended customer who scours the streets looking for a familiar sign. Could I find visual similarities as well as differences between say, the Coop and the Euro Halal Meat Shop?

I notice many men (not exclusively) serving and shopping, or sitting in the cafes. In Britain I have to live alongside many ethnic groups and I believe it's my responsibility to know something about each other's ideologies and cultures. In Muslim ideology, I read women have a job to stay at home and rest while the man exercises authority and power in the outdoor world. He gets to do the shopping, she the cooking.

Whereas in my (humanist & atheist) household, I get to do both! If I did choose, obviously I'd carve my responsibilities towards food vigilance, shopping, preparation, cooking, washing up, waste management, and food thinking in general, not solely inside or outside, but 50/50.

I'm becoming distracted again. Back to the point. I must apply a semiotic analysis to food packaging within a culture, paying particular attention to place, authors, and readers. I must 'look beyond' the packaging to find what underlying conventions, organisations, distinctions and rules may have given rise to a bit of food wrapping plastic. I need to make explicit that which is implicit.

Look, some shops do not operate as shops at all. They each have their own histories; their own stories to tell. I cannot know these; I can only guess. I would need to make up a narrative in my head. Then I would impose that narrative on this blanked-out shop, whether the story explained things well or not.

Anyway, in pursuit of this project, I go to A Place of Food Product - a large transnational supermarket that many people in the UK like to claim publicly - thanks to this company's (alleged) exploitative practices and rapacious growth on high streets - that they cannot support them, no, never, by shopping at this place!

Tesco.

(They gave me a coupon worth five pounds. I'm just about to spend it now.) Tesco stocks a load of food from many countries. They collate some of their items in a World Food aisle. I spend time here, trying not to get caught while I photograph tins.

Why does Tesco stock this stuff? Perhaps they've researched (better than me) the ethnic mix in our town; they know that offering Chin Chin is one way to reach into the pockets of an African population. (The independent African & Caribbean shop run by the two giggling ladies did close down last year, so maybe the Tesco haters have a point.)

The columns of foodstuffs representing Africa and the Caribbean, Greece, Poland, India, has, I see, been joined recently by North America. (I think Thailand may have disappeared, or been dispersed.)

I wonder if my local town has a large North America community of shoppers, or whether I'm watching the Americanisation of England, or maybe Tesco monitors statistics on holiday destinations and aspirations (US sights are in and elephant trekking is out), or whether the supply chain is more stable and products more easily sourced, from Oregon rather than Bangkok? I even wonder about the present state of political and economic stability in Thailand.

I wander up and down before World Food, trying not to look suspicious. Even though the next item looks interesting as an example of semiotics, I decide against buying it,

because we're vegetarian.

If I were to buy Luncheon Meat, then my children might consider my present study (linguistic landscapes, soundscapes, culturescapes, psycho-and mytho-geographies) is all going a bit too far - taking us uncomfortably into the living styles and values of the 'alien others' (the meat-eaters).

Enough of this in-my-head narrative! Back to the task. What does food packaging tell me about authors and readers, and the culture I live in?

I buy these items instead.

Indian rice snack. Egg noodles. Two varieties of chocolate bar. (Two!) Plus a tin of butter beans in tomato sauce.

I find the following languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Arabic (rice snack); English, Chinese (not sure about Korean), (noodles); Turkish, English (chocolate bar 1); Polish, English (chocolate bar 2); Greek, English, German, French (beans).

If we are including machine-readable language, then add to all of them, the language called Bar Code.

Why is this packaging the way it is? This tin of beans provides an example of globalised product travelling across multi-national distribution networks, sure. It also hints, along with the other foodstuffs, of other trade networks, business relationships, and legal obligations across South Asia, Asia to England, and through Europe.

This tin needs to be read by many people in many different locations. Perhaps the fact that we have to read each other's languages adds to the exoticism of the product; its appeal to 'foreign'; and (thanks to a British package holiday culture) my momentary aspirational musings about a 2-week trip to Athens.

But can I assume that the varieties of information on food labels reflect not only destination consumer markets, but also legal requirements on the cross-border movements?* I suppose in the UK/EU we need to know who to investigate if the product is contaminated; if it violates hygiene regulations; or if it contravenes labelling requirements of any importing country.

I suppose it's also someone's job to check which products are tax-exempt and how many tax-exempt products are flowing in or out of each country at any one time in the year.

Now I'm thinking about trade balances, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, economic diplomacy, insurance contracts, lorries, and the network of employment practices and supporting infrastructure of clipboard suppliers who got this tin of beans into my shopping basket.

But there's more. (Oh dear.) The food manufacturing company or their agent has, in each case, put onto the bean-tin job, the author who may also be a packaging designer. A person who perhaps has talents (or not) in sales merchandising; experience in above-the-line or below-the-line advertising; one who's just starting their career, or is jobbing as a packager with a duff computer graphics package, a hostile employer, and very little wage.

Male or female, in what country? Self-employed, on what contract? Who can tell? The author and collator of text and image doesn't get their name on any item. The designers of packages, labels, logos, materials, point-of-sale advertising and transit systems are made invisible.

Does a consumer recognise when an experienced designer has devised a clever design to solve a transit problem? I don't. (Even though I've taken a course module in packaging design!)

Everyday foodstuffs which need to be competitively priced, take up minimum space in transit, must remain sealed, create their impact on the customer's eye by uniformity of colour or shape and contain a useable product that can be instantly recognisable from a distance - all this leads to a standard bag, tin, box or container bearing a photo of food you can find on the inside. That's the convention the author/designer is involved with. (Did I find it out from the label? Or did I just use the label as an excuse to say it?)

Perhaps now I need to look at the different impacts these labels and packaging styles have on the reader. What is the impact on me?

In this case, negative. Thanks to the cartoon cat wearing a bib on the front. Is the cartoon supposed to be me, dressed as a cat? Is it designed to appeal to a mummy who must see the world as her child sees it, so she can better meet the needs of her child? Is it a character I would recognise from Brazil's children's TV? Perhaps the cartoon is aimed at the child, and not the parent?  

Whatever, Polvilho loses. The cat is infantilising. I put the pack back on the shelf, sure that my own children will look at the image as puzzled as me, and even though I hesitated for a moment to consider how possession of a bag of sweet starch from Brazil should be good for an at-home discussion on the politics of food (and 24 home-cooked experimental biscuits).

It's at this point, I begin to feel frustrated with the whole exercise. Yes, I can describe how packaging and labelling impacts on me the individual reader, on my personal psychology, my individual narrative about myself, my value systems, my aspirations, my memories, ideas and ideals about products, my social roles, my understanding of languages in my locality etc etc etc. Pages and pages!

But I wouldn't expect anyone to read it. 

So what is the point of any semiotic study?

I have to ask myself this, even though this question may not be welcome to a practicing semiotician. Surely there must be a point - one that brings improvement for humanity, or advancement in how we live with each other.

I'm told, by teasing apart these labels and packages, by considering place, author and reader, I can not only identify what signs have been presented to me, I can also see how 'the way things are' has been constructed as unarguable, common-sensical and natural: this is the very process by which the dominant ideology takes possession of the meaning of any sign(s) and presents them to me as a reader, fait accompli.

I'm also told that the dominant ideology puts work into this steamrollering. We must all pretend that contradictions, problems, puzzles, gaps, discordant voices, do not exist, that any space or silence is not up-for-grabs, but image/text/space is already inhabited, or possessed, or controlled. 

Take that bag of Chapatti Flour up there with its multilingual language. It says, 'Do not bother going to the independent store run by your sister's husband's nephew. Come to Tesco instead! We already speak your language and we're cheaper!

Indeed, such is the power of the dominant ideology - or a power I assume it must have and therefore I yield to it - is the implication that were I to try and do something about it - such as wrestle control of any space, silence, or agenda - then I would soon feel the force of the controlling force come down upon me.**

Hence in fear I lurk by Tesco's World Food aisle, waiting for security to 'escort me' from the building for illicit photography. I covertly handle their product, and prepare my narrative that I'm on a school project, so all is well, and please do not call the police.

But can I find examples of dominant ideology doing its business upon me via the actual signage on these food items?

I'm sure if I look hard enough I can find contradictions, silences, and gaps in the narrative. If I can find them, I can exploit them! I can turn a space in the story into a site of struggle. With semiotics as my sword, I can better identify whose view of reality is being preferenced, and I can jolly well carve a liberation in it somewhere. My impulse for improving society and the state of us all would be satisfied!

I'm taking another look.

I notice how none of the packages I originally chose have a person represented on them. No hands, no faces, no bodily parts. Here is an absence. No male, no female. This tells me, either sex can buy these products. Anyone!

I consider this. Commerce doesn't really care whether I'm Muslim, Athiest, Spaghetti Monster: it just uses signs to better give me, as a consumer, an identity. The signs work to differentiate the market, disappear the agents, hide the authors, ignore arguments over design contracts, pretend packaging problems don't exist, forget transit difficulties, submerge tax and health legislation. Commerce doesn't care whether I buy this item at Tesco or the Euro Halal Shop, so long as products are shifted and profits returned. All that commerce requires is my complicity in the identity structured for me.

So why am I buying this product (beyond needing to eat)? And, what's more, why am I shopping? Did I answer both of those questions by filling in a visual gap on their packaging with some identity that I assumed myself: Mother Does the Shopping?

Am I 'maintaining my engagement' with the sign system, establishing 'my sense of identity' by placing my hand as the one who takes the package, manages the contents, disposes of the waste, and washes up the bowl?

I'm coming to a conclusion about this Semiotics part of the course. It's this.  

Next week? You do the family shop.

(I'm expecting soon to be politely told, 'Mother, activism in the home is not the point of semiotics'.)



* If we need to know, the rice product is from India (from the New Okhla Industrial Development Authority, outside Delhi), distributed in the UK from Suffolk. The noodles are product of Korea, packed for an address in Singapore and given importer addresses in Indonesia and the UK. Chocolate bars 1 and 2 are made in Turkey and Poland respectively but on the packaging are unrevealing about the distributors, as are the beans - happy to tell us they are product of Greece - but giving no distributor or importer information.

**Is it true? I can only say that I in the past I have taken a group of children with clipboards and no prior agreement into Tesco and, in front of the strawberry and mango smoothies, started to conduct a lesson on marketing practices, basic economic principles, and business ethics. Yes, within two minutes the floor manager was onto us. But he was polite, helpful, interested in our project, and gave us a tour of the smoothie department. As a PR exercise, it reflected extremely well on Tesco, and he invited us back to learn more about the way supermarkets work. (Drat.)