Photo courtesy of Seema Khanwalkar
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.
Ahmedabad…
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?
SEEMA KHANWALKAR
I grew up in Chennai, the capital city of the southernmost Indian state, where I was exposed to… religious icons, the sound of slokas, geometric patterns made on clean ground with rice flour, stone carvings and painted ceilings in temples, and a heady mix of belief systems; vibrant colours on fabrics; political myths and icons; the larger-than-life imagery of our movie stars; the taste of tamarind, coconut, jaggery, rice, pounded masala, dosa and idli, ghee, and a magnificent variety of chutneys; Carnatic music sung to perfection, violins and mridangam. By contrast, I identified as an Indian from the “north” — so my identity will always be contested. My sense of fashion and aesthetics is influenced by the kaleidoscopic visuals of my childhood. For some, the “modern” may be stark, clean, orderly; for me, it is liquid, oozing, rhizomatic.
I found the past confusing and the future unpredictable — it was difficult to navigate between conservative and progressive outlooks, between tradition and modernity, between India’s South and North and West. So I lived in a world of imagination — a “now-how,” always in the present.
Competing cultural discourses, intense visuals, imagination — these, for me, are the foundations of a fascination with symbolic interpretation. I don’t know where it all began, nor where it is going. But every node of experience is deep, has a pattern, and can be traced.
SEMIOVOX
Describe your first encounter(s) with the theory and practice of semiotics.
SEEMA KHANWALKAR
First in my university studies in English Literature, and then in my Master’s course in Linguistics, in New Delhi, I became fascinated with linguistics — grammar and meaning. We studied Saussure, as well as the Indian grammatical traditions of Panini’s Ashtadhyayi (5000 BCE) and Bhartrhari’s (5th century CE) doctrine of shabda-brhaman. As I continued, I also learned to appreciate Abelard, the French school, Greimas, and Peirce.
I particularly enjoyed applying semiotic theory to literature and cultural texts — using it to decode their underlying layers of meaning. I developed an appreciation for folk idioms, folk art, textiles, and narratives which I learned to perceive as not merely lovely but deeply meaningful.
SEMIOVOX
How did you find your own way to doing semiotics?
SEEMA KHANWALKAR
In my doctoral studies, from 1989–1994, I undertook a study of folk culture in Goa, a state in Western India. I analyzed 500-year-old performative oral narratives via structural analysis in the linguistic tradition of Saussure and Peirce, before gravitating towards Greimas, Lacan, theories of orality, Lévi-Strauss, and the Tel Quel School’s narrative theories. Kristeva exerted a powerful pull. It was a heady five years of field work, research, translations, and analysis.
SEMIOVOX
What are the most important attributes of a good semiotician?
SEEMA KHANWALKAR
Humility. We must let culture speak for itself, unravel in its own way. Culture has its own theory.
SEMIOVOX
What three books about semiotics have you found the most useful and enlightening in your own work?
SEEMA KHANWALKAR
- Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics. The first and most basic book, providing a firm grounding in method. It deeply influenced me towards a future in linguistic anthropology and semiotics.
- Lévi-Strauss’s Structural Anthropology — both volumes. Very powerful, in-depth, and a classic that I think every serious student of semiotics should attempt to live up to.
- A.J. Greimas’s Structural Semantics: An Attempt at Method. Philosophical, enriching. It gave semiotics and semantics a strong methodological grounding that continues today.
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?
SEEMA KHANWALKAR
Consumption operates according to deep cultural patterns, and these patterns have layers of meaning. Layers of meaning can be understood only if you do a semiotic “deep-dive decode” — because meaning isn’t something pre-packaged, sitting there on a shelf just waiting to be picked up. The question is: Which layer of meaning means the most to your brand?
SEMIOVOX
What specific sorts of semiotics-driven projects do you find to be the most enjoyable and rewarding?
SEEMA KHANWALKAR
I prefer long-term projects that result in anthropological insights. Short-term semiotics projects — clients often want results in four or five days — are not for me. Perhaps it’s my academic background, but I want a project to simmer, absorb, slow-cook — only then will insights emerge. My first-ever project, for India’s Tata tea (via Semiotic Solutions London), spoiled me. We had three weeks to do our research and analysis, before developing a semiotic myth called “Psychological Slurp.” I believe that this study changed the tea discourse in India forever.
SEMIOVOX
What frustrates you about how semiotics is practiced and/or perceived, right now?
SEEMA KHANWALKAR
See above: How can you give a deep semiotic insight in five days? My mentors, Virginia Valentine and Monty Alexander, used to demand a minimum of five weeks of project work. Clients these days seem less interested in truly deep, rich insights.
SEMIOVOX
Peirce or Saussure?
SEEMA KHANWALKAR
Both. In applied semiotics, you need to use both. Saussure’s binary oppositions actually help us to appreciate Peirce, if you ask me.
SEMIOVOX
What advice would you give to a young person interested in this sort of work?
SEEMA KHANWALKAR
Nothing can substitute for the hard labour of method. Don’t short-circuit the methodology for the sake of quick spin-doctor insights. Semiotics is not about brilliance, it is about patiently exploring a realm that is long-standing and deeply fulfilling.
It is not about the money, at the end of the day. It is about the quality of work.
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