What makes a semiotician tick? SEMIOVOX’s Josh Glenn has invited his fellow practitioners in the field of commercial semiotics, from around the world, to answer a few revealing questions.

Leeds (England)…

SEMIOVOX

When you were a child/teen, how did your future fascination with symbols, cultural patterns, interpreting “texts,” and getting beneath the surface of daily life manifest itself?

KISHORE BUDHA

Growing up in a deeply religious family, I was immersed in a world filled with symbols and rituals. These were deeply ingrained in our daily life, yet, as a child, their profound meanings often eluded me.

Around the age of nine, my perspective began to shift as consumer culture started to infiltrate my awareness, introducing a new array of symbols. Advertisements spun narratives using items like bubblegum, cola, toothpaste, “vanishing creams,” and life insurance. These commercial symbols posed a significant contrast to the religious ones of my upbringing. This comparison was subtle, as a child’s mind is preoccupied with more immediate concerns.

By the age of fifteen, a sense of financial independence further empowered my questioning nature. I began to challenge everything, even those things with deep symbolic significance to others. This marked a crucial turning point in my life.

SEMIOVOX

Describe your first encounter(s) with the theory and practice of semiotics.

KISHORE BUDHA

My interdisciplinary postgraduate coursework (MA) introduced me to a diverse array of critical theories, including semiotics — which resonated with its modest yet compelling framework for examining the everyday material world in our daily interactions. Unlike some other theories, it felt grounded and tangible.

Semiotics proposes that everyday objects, or “signs,” carry inherent meanings we instinctively derive. Interpreting these meanings often happens effortlessly. However, the strength of semiotics — its flexibility — is also its paradox: there’s no definitive formula for deciphering sign meanings. Pure semiotic skills don’t automatically translate to adept meaning-making. I realised that integrating other theoretical frameworks was crucial, both to deepen interpretations and to choose the most relevant lens to interpret a specific sign.

SEMIOVOX

How did you find your own way to doing semiotics?

KISHORE BUDHA

While needing a job to fulfill both my professional aspirations and care for my family, I sought a role where I could leverage my existing knowledge and expertise. My undergraduate background in marketing management, coupled with experience in media, technology, and diverse brands, provided a strong foundation. Of all the concepts explored during my postgraduate studies, semiotics stood out as the most practical and elegantly structured framework with clear commercial relevance.

My freelance work in semiotics, advertising copywriting, and brand strategy agencies during my PhD proved invaluable. This hands-on experience directly equipped me for a professional role, and within a year of completing my doctoral studies, I landed my first full-time position as a semiotician at 1HQ.

SEMIOVOX

What are the most important attributes of a good semiotician?

KISHORE BUDHA

• A semiotician must demonstrate awareness of clients’ precise needs and clearly explain how semiotics will provide favourable commercial impact.
• It’s crucial for a semiotician to build rigorous interpretations and a grounding in formal logic helps in making sound arguments.
• They should engage in extensive reading, even of materials that may be controversial. This practice ensures they can provide the most relevant and comprehensive interpretations.
• An effective semiotician must set aside personal ideologies and not fall for current trends and popular opinions when interpreting signs and symbols.
• They should be capable of presenting and arguing for cultural viewpoints they might personally disagree with, demonstrating the courage to offer cultural explanations that may not be widely accepted or fashionable.
• Be aware of dialectics! While semioticians tend to be progressive, it is important to acknowledge the inherent tension between existing structures and desired change.

SEMIOVOX

What three books about semiotics have you found the most useful and enlightening in your own work?

KISHORE BUDHA

• Augustine of Hippo’s De Doctrina Christiana, which was written as a foundational text for teachers of the Christian practice. In Book One, Augustine explains the role of signs and symbols in understanding the literal and figurative meaning of Christian texts.
• David Eagleman’s Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain provides much-needed evidence about the role of the subconscious in instinctive behaviour. It provides a basis to include psychoanalysis into semiotic decoding, though you have to be careful with using the latter in your analysis.
• Mary Douglas’s Thought Styles: Critical Essays on Good Taste. A great book for understanding the anthropological method.

SEMIOVOX

When someone asks you to describe what you do, what is your “elevator pitch”? How do you persuade a skeptical client to take a chance on using this tool?

KISHORE BUDHA

“I help marketing activities stay culturally relevant and meaningful to consumers.”

While some clients are familiar with semiotics, convincing them to take a chance on its application in a specific project demands more than just a clever pitch. They’re smart individuals facing tight deadlines, budget constraints, and administrative pressures. Often, their hesitation stems from the project brief itself, which might call for direct consumer evidence (quantitative or qualitative) rather than the deeper insights semiotics offers.

Thus, the best way to persuade clients is to write compelling proposals that explain how a commercial challenge will be addressed.

SEMIOVOX

What specific sorts of semiotics-driven projects do you find to be the most enjoyable and rewarding?

KISHORE BUDHA

Projects where myths and ideologies of a culture pierce through time and space are the most exciting ones, particularly where you can bring political-economic factors into the analysis.

SEMIOVOX

What frustrates you about how semiotics is practiced and/or perceived, right now?

KISHORE BUDHA

Semioticians never share the details of their method or a project, so it is hard to make any generalisations about their practice. I would love to see more semioticians consider the economic and structural aspects of culture.

SEMIOVOX

Peirce or Saussure?

KISHORE BUDHA

Both. Peirce for the rigour of logic and Saussure for the sociological/structural complexity.

SEMIOVOX

What advice would you give to a young person interested in this sort of work?

KISHORE BUDHA

• Read, read, read.
• Find someone with whom you can spend hours discussing signs, preferably over a bottle or two of wine.

MAKING SENSE WITH… series: MARTHA ARANGO (Sweden) | CHRIS ARNING (England) | CHRIS BARNHAM (England) | AUDREY BARTIS (France) | ANDREA BASUNTI (England) | HIBATO BEN AHMED (France) | MACIEJ BIEDZIŃSKI (Poland) | MYRIAM BOUABID (Tunisia) | KISHORE BUDHA (England) | MARIANE CARA (Brazil) | GIULIA CERIANI (Italy) | BECKS COLLINS (England) | INKA CROSSWAITE (South Africa) | DORA JURD DE GIRANCOURT (France) | NATASHA DELLISTON (England) | PANOS DIMITROPOULOS (China) | ROB DRENT (Netherlands) | VLADIMIR DJUROVIC (China) | JOËL LIM DU BOIS (Malaysia) | WHITNEY DUNLAP-FOWLER (USA) | ROMÁN ESQUEDA (Mexico) | MALCOLM EVANS (England) | NICK GADSBY (England) | PETER GLASSEN (Switzerland) | JOSH GLENN (USA) | PAULINA GOCH-KENAWY (Poland) | STEFANIA GOGNA (Italy) | EUGENE GORNY (Thailand) | SAMUEL GRANGE (France) | GISELA GRIMBLAT (Mexico) | AIYANA GUNJAN (India) | FRANCISCO HAUSS (China) | EMILY HAYES (England) | YOGI HENDLIN (Netherlands / USA) | HANNAH HOEL (New Zealand) | KATRIN HORN (Austria) | IVÁN ISLAS (Mexico) | SARAH JOHNSON (Canada) | LOUISE JOLLY (England) | GEMMA JONES (Netherlands) | CHRISTO KAFTANDJIEV (Bulgaria) | SEEMA KHANWALKAR (India) | KAIE KOPPEL (Estonia) | LUCIA LAURENT-NEVA (England) | RACHEL LAWES (England) | CHARLES LEECH (Canada) | ELINOR LIFSHITZ (China) | WILLIAM LIU (China) | RAMONA LYONS (USA) | KATJA MAGGIO (Netherlands) | LUCA MARCHETTI (France) | SÓNIA MARQUES (Portugal) | MAX MATUS (Mexico) | CHIRAG MEDIRATTA (India / Canada) | CLIO MEURER (Brazil) | ELODIE MIELCZARECK (France) | THIERRY MORTIER (Sweden) | RAHUL MURDESHWAAR (India) | SERDAR PAKTIN (Turkey / England) | MARIA PAPANTHYMOU (Greece / Russia) | VIJAY PARTHASARATHY (USA) | GABRIELA PEDRANTI (Spain) | JAMIN PELKEY (Canada) | GAËLLE PINEDA (France) | ALEXANDRA ROBERT (France) | GREG ROWLAND (England) | KARIN SANDELIN (Sweden) | CARLOS SCOLARI (Spain) | COLETTE SENSIER (England) | HAMSINI SHIVAKUMAR (India) | GIANLLUCA SIMI (Brazil) | TIM SPENCER (England) | TIM STOCK (USA) | XIMENA TOBI (Argentina) | DIMITAR TRENDAFILOV (Bulgaria) | ALFREDO TRONCOSO (Mexico) | ADELINA VACA (Mexico) | JENNIFER VASILACHE (Switzerland) | ANTJE WEISSENBORN (Germany) | COCO WU (Singapore / China) | & more to come.

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