One of the great things of the keynote speach of De Soto on the ESOMAR con- gress in Montreal, november this year, was the way he boiled down the whole eco- nomy system as a sign system. The so called ‘dark economy’ – economic activity that is not accounted for in the official statistics is an economy system using another sign system, a sys- tem that doesn’t communi- cate with the official one.
I think that the best part of his speech was where he suggested to align those sign systems as a means to fight poverty: once the ‘poor class’ has an entrance in official economy there chances increase. I think this was a courageous point of view, given the reactions from the audience. Some of them held a more romantic view: please let these people have there own system, let us learn from them.
The wonderful concept of clashing sign system, or partly communicating signsystems is a concept we could build all marketing theories on.
I think the most important aspect that should be taken into account is the differences between intended signs (as in the picture) and unintended signs. The latter is a system that is always on the move in a complex process, not only the meaning of signs is constantly changing on top of that the choice of what aspect we ‘choose’ or what aspects ‘evolve’ as signs. Small changes can have huge impact. I think ’sign-thinking’ is too important to leave it in the ’semiotic’ cluster.