SIGN-VALUE CURRENCY

Judith Williamson and Robert Goldman discuss sign-values and currency systems to demonstrate how meanings become commodities for exchange. A sign value is the worth a sign has compred to other signs; it is whatever meaning a sign has plus that which it takes on when it is associated with another sign. For example, Chanel No. 5 may have a given value as a sign with reference to other signs, and so may Catherine Deneuve, but each takes on an "added value" when placed against each other. Likewise, the phrase "Just Do It" takes on an additional value when correlated with the images Nike presents and the Nike product itself, and the Nike product takes on added meaning from the phrase.

These values then become parts of currency systems. Each sign has a greater or lesser worth but only in relation to other signs. Thus the "value" of Margeaux Hemingway, as Judith Williamson points out, is only meaningful in reference to Catherine Deneuve, and the reverse applies. Thus the process of signification, and the interplay of signifier and signified, become elements in production and competition. Sign components are used to try to create the most "value-ful" sign, the most efficient (in terms of bang for the semiotic buck, which is reader attention) communication.

Because meaning is fuel for semiotic language, meanings themselves become their own currency. In the seemingly never-ending bid to appropriate an appropriate cultural sign for a given product, meanings become a premium commodity, particularly as more and more become stolen and squeezed dry. If Nike uses "Just Do It" as a means of staking a claim on a self-realization philosophy, then Reebok must retaliate in kind by finding some other cultural message to plunder. When Chevy soaks us in vague Americana, Ford must up the ante. And once these signs (Just Do It) become firmly ingrained in our consciousness, they themselves are their own meaning systems to be re-used, turning ads into currency themselves.

-Ivan Drucker