The Relationships Between Quaker, The Company, And Semiotics :: essays research papers

The Relationships Between protagonist, The Company, and SemioticsFor my presentation I have looked at one of Peterboroughs oldest and biggestmanufacturer, The quaker company. More specifically the outside and inside ofthe building. As I was driving towards the building I thought, what was sosignificant about the Quaker building and how could a picture of a Quaker be sosignificant in todays culture. I also thought that this whole image of Quakercould not be that everywherewhelming, however, with great embarrassment I wascompletely mistaken. This one business and more specifically building has somany signified meanings and linguistic meanings that I did not no where to startfrom.When I stood at the foot of the pitchers mound of the Quaker building I was overwhelmed bythe enormous size of it and how it sits on a hill overlooking the north end ofdowntown Peterborough. I started to think that this is the signifier, its bigand its on a hill. Now if you think about this for a minute you fuck off torealize that simply the size and position of this building has many meanings,which are of course subconsciously.The Quaker building has many meanings and therefore the signified list is reallylong, but firstly we will look at the signifier. The sign is the word Quaker,plain and simple, and the signifier is Q-u-a-k-e-r. However the word Quaker isnot just a word, it means many, many things, which is where the signified comesin. The actual building is huge, which gave me the feeling that they are asuccessful company and that their product must be all over the world. Thebuilding is also white brick. This, without even knowing it gives you a feelingof safety and purity(just as their products should be). Then there is the factthat it is situated on the backsheesh of a hill, when you put meaning to this, there isthe feeling of greatness and domination. In my opinion these meanings orsignifieds work like a funnel, they all at first have nothing to do with eachother, but when you put them together they all funnel into one thing, amarketing ploy to buy their product. My channelize is, that they new exactly where toplace theirbuilding and what colour to paint it for the sole purpose of sellingtheir products. They new what meanings people would pull from these signs andsignifiers.When looking at the word Quaker you get a feeling of comfort. It gives animpression of going back to past times where morals and family values were at