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.

Mexico City…

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?

GISELA GRIMBLAT

As a teenager, when I arrived at someone’s house for the first time, I would take a look at their bookshelf. I found this a good way to get to know a person. Later, I studied psychology and psychoanalysis, methods of deciphering the latent from the manifest.

Also, I was born in Argentina but have now lived in Mexico for more than twenty years. Biculturalism permeates both my personal and professional life. My qualitative research has been enriched by this bicultural experience, allowing me to examine culture from both an insider and outsider perspective. Intuitively I have always included context in my analysis.

SEMIOVOX

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

GISELA GRIMBLAT

I graduated with a degree in Psychology from Buenos Aires University (Argentina), a school with a strong Lacanian psychoanalysis focus. Saussure and Lévi-Strauss were among our reading materials. At that time I was deeply captivated by psychoanalysis, not by semiotics.

SEMIOVOX

How did you find your own way to doing semiotics?

GISELA GRIMBLAT

When I discovered commercial semiotics, I was fascinated — it’s extremely interesting, creative, and it helps me organize and integrate previous knowledge. I understand it as an interpretative and constructive tool that allows us to capture culture. (I mean culture in the broad sense — traditions, routines, modes of consumption, shared appropriation.)

I find commercial semiotics very similar to psychoanalysis, as it seeks to uncover meaning beyond the surface. The British psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott talks about a ‘third space,’ which exists neither internally nor externally: it’s a zone where cultural elements reside. This space has a porous nature, blurring the lines between the self and the other, what is mine and what is different from me, and it awaits significance. Human life takes place on the level of cultural meanings. The Costa Rican psychologist Lorena Vargas Mora elaborates on this concept, considering this space as psychocultural, semantic, linguistic, and ritualistic. It’s a common ground representing cultural belonging for those who inhabit it, as well as an imaginary framework assigned by the social group to its members for a sense of belonging. These theorists lead me to believe that semiotics can bridge the gap between the psyche and culture.

SEMIOVOX

What are the most important attributes of a good semiotician?

GISELA GRIMBLAT

Active observation, by which I mean: seeing beyond, being attentive to details, finding patterns, detecting what repeats versus what is unique, asking “Where we have seen this before?” — and connecting the dots.

SEMIOVOX

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

GISELA GRIMBLAT

• Roland Barthes’ Mythologies. I love the simplicity and clarity with which Barthes practices and applies semiotics. Furthermore, in the same clear style he compares myth with psychoanalysis in three aspects. (1) The disproportion between signifier and signified that occurs in a myth, as in the Freudian slip; (2) the distortion, that in the case of a myth the signified is distorted by the concept; and (3) the insistence of the behaviour reveals its intention. This leads me to think of the Argentinian psychiatrist Juan David Nasio’s assertion that the unconscious is repetition.
• Jean Baudrillard’s The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures. In the logic of signs and symbols, objects respond to the logic of desire operating as a mobile and unconscious field of signification.
• In commercial semiotics, I find both Laura Oswald and Rachel Lawes to be extraordinary.

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?

GISELA GRIMBLAT

I don’t often mention the word ‘semiotics.’ Instead, I focus on discussing the benefits of analyzing cultural meanings. This approach helps position my work as relevant in the current context — as it will aid the client in understanding traditions, values, shared practices, beliefs, and more. Semiotics provides elements that facilitate connection with diverse audiences.

SEMIOVOX

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

GISELA GRIMBLAT

I’ve always loved exploratory projects, seeing them as rich opportunities for learning. I particularly enjoy projects that involve qualitative research and semiotics. I’m fascinated by immersions and safaris — going out into “the street,” whether with clients or by myself.

SEMIOVOX

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

GISELA GRIMBLAT

Both “semiotics” and “culture” are too often perceived as grandiloquent, complicated, and distant concepts.

Some complain that our field is too “open,” but I love that there is room to put one’s own signature on applied semiotics — according to one’s personal interests and background.

SEMIOVOX

Peirce or Saussure?

GISELA GRIMBLAT

Both. To Saussure we owe the arbitrary relation between signifier and signified; he perceived language as a system of signs — where a sign has value in relation and context. Lacan’s work, though “post-Structuralist,” is indebted to Saussure. Peirce’s triadic pattern interests me because Freud’s triadic conception offers interesting parallels.

SEMIOVOX

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

GISELA GRIMBLAT

Today is an excellent time for the kind of work we do, whether we call it “semiotics” or not. Brands and agencies show a keen interest in learning, understanding, and integrating culture.

MAKING SENSE WITH… series: MARTHA ARANGO (Sweden) | MACIEJ BIEDZIŃSKI (Poland) | BECKS COLLINS (England) | WHITNEY DUNLAP-FOWLER (USA) | IVÁN ISLAS (Mexico) | WILLIAM LIU (China) | SÓNIA MARQUES (Portugal) | CHIRAG MEDIRATTA (India / Canada) | SERDAR PAKTIN (Turkey / England) | MARIA PAPANTHYMOU (Greece / Russia) | XIMENA TOBI (Argentina) | & many more.

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