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.

Montreal / New Delhi…

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?

CHIRAG MEDIRATTA

If you were born in India before the 2000s, you did not and could not decide your own religion, caste, class, social standing, gender, daily routine, or education. All of these were pre-decided in our collectivist society… which is gradually negotiating individualism now.

Most of us grew up chanting the name of Hindu gods at home and/or at school, by choice or not. Our earliest experiences — songs, TV shows, movies, fiction, poetry — were all about a designated God. This did not sit well with me. At age 11, I remember walking with my mother, the only agnostic I knew then, to a nearby temple. Hundreds of people outside the temple were forbidden to enter; many of them were begging for food. It was my first encounter with caste-class-religious discrimination. With tears in my eyes, I asked my mother: “What did they do that God does not allow them inside? Why aren’t the priests feeding them? Why do they sleep outside at night while the temple remains empty?” I decided I’d never enter a religious site again — unless they “walked their talk.”

I became fascinated with the study of comparative religion. Using an ancient 56k modem to explore the Internet, I went down a rabbit hole learning about all of them — Paganism, Satanism, Hinduism, Christianity, occult religions. This led me to encounter religious symbolism — I’d later get myself inked with an adaptation of religious symbolism, as a way of refuting theism — and I developed a new fascination with symbols and symbolism, and more generally with how we interpret and make meaning.

SEMIOVOX

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

CHIRAG MEDIRATTA

At 14 or 15, while reading a blog post about the symbolism of freemasonry, I encountered a definition of “semiotics,” and this led me to Barthes’ Camera Lucida, which made my brain hurt. Years later, while earning a Master’s at MICA, I heard Dr. Harmony Siganporia’s lecture on semiotics — which blew my mind. Despite being a notorious class absconder, I regularly attended hers. I was hooked by the notion that everything that humans observe, create, think, understand, feel, and sense are “signs” — which are open to interpretation and in a constant state of creative flux. I suddenly felt as though I could perceive the world in additional dimensions… and that my adolescent intellectual curiosity would finally be satisfied.

SEMIOVOX

How did you find your own way to doing semiotics?

CHIRAG MEDIRATTA

The years I spent at the Army Public School in New Delhi — the school’s motto is “Truth is God” — had helped me develop an investigative “lens,” and my conversations and coursework with Harmony offered me tools to analyze the what, how, and why of human behavior. All of which led to my winning B-school competitions, and writing a dissertation on ethnography and semiotics. However, getting started in commercial semiotics was difficult — because so many people aren’t familiar with semiotics, and dismiss it as “over-thinking” or “intellectual fluff.” Determined to stick with it, I started using terminologies like context and cultural insight rather than semiotics. Using more generalized terminology unlocked for me the further insight that we’re all semioticians — we all “decode” as part of our everyday lives.

Eventually, I did begin using the term semiotics explicitly — at the encouragement of [brand strategist and consumer researcher] James McLintock, who helped motivate me to craft my own semiotically driven research, strategy, and branding practice. At a personal level, around this same time, I began to explore the connection between semiotics and spiritual growth.

In 2017, I founded Fresh Think, a global strategy, research, and branding company in India, now expanded to Canada. We’ve used semiotic concepts and tools to help brands launch new products, and tweak their products & services for a better cultural fit — but we’ve also used them to support socio-political activism on minorities’ rights in India, sharpen vegan activism, produce ethnomusicological documentaries, innovate with meditations, and more. With Chris Arning’s support , I presented my long-term research on “decoding the vegan identity” at Semiofest in 2018.

Three years ago, I began teaching applied semiotics at KJ Somaiya University, and at my alma mater MICA. Right now, I’m designing mini-modules to help businesses leverage semiotics for strategy. And during the Covid-19 moment, a friend and I founded the nonprofit Umeed Project, and we also helped develop tech solutions for that crisis. (We were able to help two million people access emergency food, medical supplies, and more.) None of these things would have been possible without my background in human-centric research and a semiotic way of seeing.

SEMIOVOX

What are the most important attributes of a good semiotician?

CHIRAG MEDIRATTA

• Empathetic curiosity is crucial. Only a curious mind asks questions, and it’s reflection and empathy that help us to frame the right questions. We must question the conceptual structures of reality that are created, re-created, and negotiated every day. And (like my adolescent self) we should be obsessed with how different people construct reality.
• Passionate detachment is an important counterbalance to uncontrolled empathy. In order to be a keen observer of structures of meaning-making and “conceptual architecture,” we must zoom out and away from our own too-narrow perspective. Without all the nonsense and culty baggage of religious practices, semioticians can and do undergo transformative spiritual journeys — in search of the truth — even while working on commercial projects. As Gandhi said, “truth is within ourselves.”
• Profound storytelling is where all of the previous work is headed. Having “decoded” new ways of seeing a product category or cultural territory, we need to “recode” for our clients or audiences — helping them see what we see, and figure out how to act on these insights. Our storytelling requires agile mental switching, depth, and constant practice.

We’re not just “conducting” semiotic analysis — we’re living in and out of it.

SEMIOVOX

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

CHIRAG MEDIRATTA

• Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida holds a special place in my heart for reasons described earlier. The reality of this world is elusive — and we’re constantly distracted by “content” when the concepts and structure of the conversations are more crucial and exciting. I read Barthes on the “photographic paradox” over and over again… because it beautifully captures the flux of memory, death, and identity.
• John Berger’s Ways of Seeing. I know I’m not the only semiotician for whom this book is important. Berger’s ability to convey complex concepts in a simple way is remarkable, as is his message about the importance of cultural context in interpretation (which connects to me early interest in how visuals help shape culture). At first, I thought the book’s title was too cocky — but it truly has changed my ways of seeing.
• Sean Hall’s This Means This, This Means That: A User’s Guide to Semiotics is a thought-provoking resource that keeps returning to the notion that designers (whether of visuals, structures, ideas, etc.) have an ethical and social responsibility to challenge the status quo in the name of positive change. It also serves as a handy “cheat sheet” for those of us attempting to persuade reluctant clients to pay attention to cultural contexts and “readers.”
• One more recommendation: Michel Foucault’s essay “This is Not a Pipe,” an analysis of Magritte’s painting La trahison des images, left Harmony Siganporia’s students dazed and confused… in a good way. It’s a fantastic exploration of how language and representation work to shape our notion of reality.

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?

CHIRAG MEDIRATTA

I’ll tell someone who’s not in marketing or consumer research that I run a “behavioural and cultural research and strategy company. By ascertaining how and why people feel what they feel, we help businesses and brands become culturally relevant and emotionally relatable.”

To someone in the business, I might instead say that I’m an ethnographer and semiotician “focused on ‘human-centred’ business strategies to help brands ‘future-proof’ with cultural relevance. I specialise in understanding irrational human thinking to build brands people love.” I’ll explain that we humans create, understand, sense, and interact via signs and symbols — and that they need to understand what this looks like for their own brand and category. It’s amazing how few potential clients have heard of semiotics, but they’re usually intrigued by the notion.

SEMIOVOX

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

CHIRAG MEDIRATTA

Whenever possible, my company tries to take on projects that will immerse us in a new “world” — and with clients who understand that our exploration will surface “unknown unknowns.” Projects around specific behaviors, social constructs, global cultural differences, and identity construction are the most fun — not least because they help us learn more about ourselves. Memorable projects include:

• Understanding evolving concepts of ‘design’ and ‘creativity’ in India. Our research ranged from the 15th century to the present — from everyday phrases, idioms, language, words, and visual depictions to unobserved and habituated phenomena.
• Exploring ‘polyphony’ in Gen-Z youth culture in India. I’ve conducted nearly 20 Gen-Z studies (in India, the US, and the UK) by this point — the latest combined ethnographic immersions, quantitative research, and semiotic analysis to uncover insights into happiness with self, family, society, relationships, and work for both metropolitan & non-metro Gen-Zs.
• As mentioned, since 2016 I’ve been analyzing the evolving vegan identity in India — and looking at how businesses, policies, and the food industry are negotiating and innovating around it. One of my very favorite topics.
• India is a country where sex was once practised to attain spiritual enlightenment and was a group activity — but it has become a country where sex is now considered a shameful topic. So it’s been fascinating to work with a few clients on decoding sex in India — helping them launch culturally relevant products and change their brand positioning gradually.

SEMIOVOX

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

CHIRAG MEDIRATTA

I have to chuckle sadly when a potential client…

• Assumes that a semiotician only studies religious symbols or graphic signs
• Claims that doing an image analysis in a focus group is a “semiotic study”
• Cannot imagine how this “intellectual” practice can help in a number-crunching business
• Believes that we can do a complex study of how humans think and operate with imprints beyond our control… in just a couple of days or weeks

Having said all this, it’s gratifying when a client who at first was defensive when presented with “cultural codes” and “imprints,” and who was difficult to convince about how subconscious meaning-making works, suddenly reports that now they’re seeing these patterns everywhere. It feels good to unlock a new way of seeing for someone else.

It ticks me off, though, when my fellow semioticians don’t talk about how everyone is a semiotician — because languages in themselves are a symbol. Are we all not trying to understand what shared meaning a particular word holds for us while being introduced through different concepts? I hope that someday semiotics is as common a subject in school as history — so that everyone learns the necessary tools to interpret any kind of information. And at a commercial level, I hope that every marketer researcher gets an introduction to semiotics.

SEMIOVOX

Peirce or Saussure?

CHIRAG MEDIRATTA

Saussure, Barthes, and Greimas.

I love the complexity in Peirce’s theory of semiosis — the triadic relationship and the first-, second- & third-ness — but Barthes’ rhetorics, need for cultural context, and concept of “myth” opened my eyes a long time ago. Saussure’s unit, binary oppositions, diachrony, and the foundations of structuralism led me to Levi-Strauss and Eco’s limits for interpretation (the point that interpretation always is and must be embedded in a cultural context — a humbling eye-opener). Greimas’s semiotic square is incredibly useful in applied semiotics work, especially around category codes, brand positioning, and innovation.

This is my heart’s and mind’s “polycule” of semioticians.

SEMIOVOX

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

CHIRAG MEDIRATTA

Here’s what I tell my students:

• Spend time observing the everyday world, enough to get bored and saturated. At this point, your brain will begin to question mundane things. Your brain will hurt, once you begin to understand how many layers there are to the everyday world — and how much we don’t see!
• Talk to people about the mind-boggling things you’re beginning to perceive — but don’t overload them. Invite them into your perspective and see what they have to offer. If they, too, begin to discuss everyday life at a structural and conceptual level, then they’re on the path.
• Remain curious about how you and others think and feel. Where did it come from? Why is it so? Question everything. There are no right answers — only right questions.

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