Semiotics

Semiotics (pronounced sem-e-ot-ics)

(1) The study of signs and symbols as elements of communicative behaviour; the analysis of systems of communication, as language, gestures, or clothing.

(2) A general theory of signs and symbolism, usually divided into the branches of pragmatics, semantics and syntactics.

(3) Of or relating to signs.

(4) As a (now archaic) specialized use in medicine, the scientific study of the symptoms of disease (known later as symptomatology).

1660s: From the Ancient Greek σημειωτικός (sēmeiōtikós) (fitted for marking, portending), stem of sēmeioûn (to interpret as a sign), from σημειῶ (sēmeiô) (to mark, to interpret as a portend), from σημεῖον (sēmeîon) (a mark, sign, token), from σῆμα (sêma) (mark, sign).  Semiotics is the sense now understood in English was an adaptation by English physician and philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) on the model of Greek logic to mean “the doctrine of signs”.  The medical sense was from the 1660s, the use to describe the study of signs and symbols with special regard to function and origin dates from the 1880s and the use in psychology began in 1923.

The structural model of semiotics.

Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols, with special regard to function and origin especially as means of language or communication.  Essentially a branch of the study of meaning-making and meaningful communication including the deconstruction of signs and sign processes, indication, designation, likeness, analogy, allegory, metonymy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication.  Semiotics has evolved to be closely related to linguistics, but can be treated, at least to some point, as a parallel stream.  The semiotic tradition explores the study of signs and symbols as a significant part of communications which can be, but are not of necessity tied to linguistics.  Indeed, semiotics is probably best known for non-linguistic sign systems.  Semiotics became popular with anthropologists who enjoyed the way cultural phenomenon could be studied without any lineal relationship to a specific language.  In a similar vein, zoologists used the method to examine how organisms make predictions about, and adapt to, their semiotic niche in the world.  In general, semiotic theories take signs or sign systems as their object of study including the communication of information in living organisms without structured language in the sense of human text.

Lindsay Lohan in a hotel bathroom, perhaps perplexed by unlabelled taps.

A classic example of semiotics is the convention that red indicates hot water and blue cold but not all manufacturers conform to this standard, some tapware designers apparently offended by the idea of any sort of label making a vulgar intrusion on their carefully crafted shapes.  In the days when Intourist (Интурист in the Russian, a contraction of иностранный турист (foreign tourist); the Soviet Union's notoriously erratic travel agency) enjoyed what was close to a monopoly in the operation of hotels in the USSR, the travel diaries of politicians, journalists and others lucky enough to enjoy a visit would not infrequently comment on the plumbing, taps either not labelled or with labels which would only by apparent coincidence be a reliable guide, faucets which might in the morning have conformed, swapping roles by the evening.

A semiotic convention (left) and examples of variation (right).

It's well understood that Green is for safety (like an exit door) and red for danger (such as a fire).  However, except where stipulated in regulations (which tend to be local rather than national), there's no guarantee the colors used in one place will translate to another and manufacturers' parts lists often include interchangeable components in a variety of colors so users can choose although, where consequences can be both severe and with implications over vast areas (such as sites dealing with nuclear energy), the color-coding and language of signs is done to an international standard.  The reason for danger signs being usually red is likely one of human historical association, red the color of blood and fire so linked with anger and danger.  Plasma physicists point out also that red is the color least scattered by air, water or dust molecules and thus remains visible for longer and at greater distances in adverse environments .  The effect of scattering is inversely related to the fourth power of the wavelength of a given color and because red has the highest wavelength, it gets scattered the least and is thus able to travel the longest distance through fog, rain etc before fading away.  It's the same reason the sky appears blue, the fine particles in the atmosphere scatter blue light most among all the components of white light.

Sometimes though, a color is just a color.  Temporary signs such as those warning of "men at work" or "wet floor" are typically in made in bright (even lurid) colors with the text rendered in a shade with maximum contrast, the object being to attract attention.  Curiously though, manufacturers do offer these in grey and black, perhaps because of the popularity of white and cream as floor colors in commercial spaces.

Pragmatic

Pragmatic (pronounced prag-mat-ik)

(1) Of or relating to a practical point of view or practical considerations.

(2) Advocating behavior that is dictated more by practical consequences than by theory or dogma

(3) In philosophy, of or relating to pragmatism.

(4) Of or relating to pragmatics.

(5) In historiography, treating historical phenomena with special reference to their causes, antecedent conditions, and results.

(6) Of or relating to the affairs of state or community (archaic).

(7) An officious or meddlesome person, especially a priest (archaic).

(8) In logic, the branch of semiotics dealing with the causal and other relations between words, expressions, or symbols and their users.

(9) In linguistics, a sub-field in which the analysis of language in terms of the situational context within which utterances are made, including the knowledge and beliefs of the speaker and the relation between speaker and listener.

1580-1590: From the Middle French pragmatique, from Late Latin prāgmaticus (relating to civil affair and in Latin (as a noun) used to describe a person versed in the law who furnished arguments and points to advocates and orators (a kind of attorney although also used in general of “practical men” (as opposed to theoreticians)), from the Ancient Greek πραγματικός (pragmatikós) (active, versed in affairs), from πρᾶγμα (prâgma) (a thing done, a fact) which, in the plural was πράγματα (prágmata) (affairs, state affairs, public business etc (something like the modern “current events”)) from πράσσω (prássō) (to do) of which the Modern English “practical” is the descendent).  Pragmatic is a noun & adjective, pragmatist is a noun & adjective, pragmatize, pragmatizing & pragmatized are verbs, pragmaticality, pragmaticalization, pragmatism & pragmaticalness are nouns, pragmaticistic is an adjective and pragmatically is an adverb, the noun plural is pragmatics (pragmatisms & especially pragmatists the more commonly used). 

Shoes can be "pragmatic".  Who knew?  Lindsay Lohan's promotion for the collaboration between German fashion house MCM & Crocs, introducing the "pragmatic" Mega Crush Clog.

In the sense of the meddlesome priest, use dates from circa 1610 in the sense of “meddling; impertinently busy" and was either short for earlier pragmatical, or from the fifteenth century French pragmatique, from the Latin pragmaticus (skilled in business or law) from the Ancient Greek pragmatikos (fit for business, active, business-like; systematic) from pragma (genitive pragmatos) (a deed, act; that which has been done; a thing, matter, affair," especially an important one; also a euphemism for something bad or disgraceful; in plural, "circumstances, affairs" (public or private, often in a bad sense, "trouble"), literally "a thing done") from the stem of prassein & prattein (to do, act, perform), related to the modern practical.  From the 1640s, pragmatic came to be used in the sense of "relating to the affairs of a state or community" and the modern sense of "matter-of-fact, treating facts systematically and practically" is from 1853; influenced by the use in nineteenth century German philosophy of pragmatisch.  The noun pragmaticism, which as late as 1865 could be used to mean "officiousness", by 1905 had been adopted by American philosopher CS Peirce (1839-1914) to refer to the doctrine that abstract concepts must be understood in terms of their practical implications; he coined the use to distinguish his philosophy from pragmatism.  The 1540s adjective pragmatical (pertaining to material interests of a state or community) by the 1590s had extended to "concerned with practical results", the formation from the Latin pragmaticus.  It was, during the 1600s & 1700s often applied in the negative (unduly busy over the affairs of others) which is how pragmaticism same to be associated with “intrusive officiousness” and meddling from the 1610s, the layer of "busy over trifles” or “self-important" noted in 1704.  The noun pragmatism had by 1825 assumed something like its modern sense, then meaning “matter-of-fact treatment" borrowed from the Greek pragmat- (stem of pragma) as "that which has been done".  As a philosophical doctrine, it was used in the English language by 1898 and generally accepted as a borrowing from the 1870s German Pragmatismus.  Despite that, it wasn’t accepted as the name a political theory until 1951 although the historical record can be misleading, a pragmatist being a "busybody" from circa 1630 yet by 1892, noted as an "adherent of a pragmatic philosophy”.

Pragmatics in Theoretical Linguistics

Pragmatics exists in what practitioners in the field call the symbiosis of linguistics and semiotics; essentially the study of the ways in which context either is or can be vital to understanding the meaning(s) of text.  Highly technical, it has built a number of models (sometimes called codes) which, if (sometimes cumulatively, sometimes lineally) applied, can determine meaning(s) which may not be obvious or confused by ambiguity.  Pragmatics studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on the structural and linguistic knowledge of both speaker and listener, but also on the context in which the words are used, all pre-existing knowledge of those involved, and matters of implication and inference.  Properly applied, the ability to understand another intended meaning is called pragmatic competence.  Word nerds are especially pleased by the word grammaticopragmatic (of or relating to grammar and pragmatics).

Basically the product of squabbles between academics anxious to become dominant in some aspect of the suddenly sexy discipline of linguistics, pragmatics was created in reaction to the structuralist linguistics models of the 1960s.  Pragmatics both borrows from structuralism and builds its own critique, especially from the way structuralism tended towards finding all meaning at least can come purely from the abstract space language creates.  It probably was a useful discussion to have but it’s never been entirely clear where semantics ends and pragmatics begins or if that’s even a helpful way to think about meaning.  The discipline seemed never to move in the direction of making pragmatics a toolbox of use to those beyond the field.  Instead, there emerged mysterious forks such as indexicals, intuitionistic semantics and computational pragmatics, all of which appear weird beyond immediate understanding.

The Pragmatic Sanction of 1713

Archduchess Maria Theresia (1727) by Andreas Møller (1684–circa 1762), oil on canvas, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

There have been quite a few pragmatic sanctions, the first known to be that issued in Constantinople in 554 by Justinian I (Justinian the Great, 482-565; Byzantine emperor 527-565).  Nearly twelve centuries later, the Sanctio Pragmatica (Pragmatic Sanction) was an edict issued in 1713 by Charles VI (1685-1740; Holy Roman Emperor 1711-1740); it was a device to ensure the Habsburg hereditary possessions, could be inherited by his eldest daughter, the sanction necessitated by the lack of a male heir and a law which precluded female inheritance.  However, for Charles to promulgate the sanction was one thing, having it respected by others was another and, immediately upon the accession to the throne in 1740 of his daughter, the archduchess Maria Theresa (1717-1780), the predicted War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) began.  Had the pretext of female succession not existed, the desire of other European states, notably France, Bavaria and Prussia, anxious to gain territorial and commercial advantage over the Habsburgs, conflict would likely soon anyway have arisen.  The British became involved because of their geopolitical interests and the Dutch because they wished to rid themselves of French hegemony; as the war widened, Spain, Sardinia, Saxony, Sweden and Russia became involved in what was soon a multi-theatre affair on land and at sea.  It was a textbook case of mission-creep.

Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor (circa 1707) by Francesco Solimen (1657–1747), oil on canvas, in a private collection.

The war was concluded by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748.  Maria Theresa was recongised as Archduchess of Austria and Queen of Hungary but, regardless of the impressive but isolated tactical victories which typified European wars of the era, so inconclusive had been the battlefield that, except for the Royal Navy’s notable success in the blockade of French ports, things ended in such a series of stalemates that most of the treaty’s signatories were hardly content with the terms.  Even Maria Theresa, whose throne had been the ostensible reason for the spilling of so much blood, resented having to cede what she did though was mollified by the horse-trading of the Treaty of Füssen (1745) which permitted her husband to be elected Holy Roman Emperor as Francis I (1708-1765).  The British, although satisfied with the commercial rights gained, would spend years glumly counting the cost.

In geopolitical terms however, the consequences were profound.  In what came to be known as the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756, the central dynamics in European affairs became the alliances between Austria and France and between Prussia and Great Britain, creating a template for the shifting military and political relationships which would be maintained, adjusted and sundered all through the eighteenth century in an attempt to maintain the balance of power.  The newly built coalitions, with Russia augmenting the Austro-Franco alliance, would fight the Seven Years War (1756-1763) in which Britain and Prussia would prevail, only because of something of a Prussian miracle and the Royal Navy’s control of the seas.  Under Germanic linguistic influence, the word assumed a handy role as a kind of political shorthand; article seven of the 1712 Croatian Constitution being remembered to this day as the Pragmatic Sanction.  The clause permitted a Habsburg princess to become hereditary Queen of Croatia despite, in a typical Balkan squabble, opposition from both the Hungarian parliament and royal court.  Considered ever since a symbol of Croatian independence, the Pragmatic Sanction is included still in the preamble of the Constitution of Croatia.

Blueprint

Blueprint (pronounced bloo-print)

(1) A process of photographic printing, used chiefly in copying architectural and mechanical drawings, which produces a white line on a blue background; also called a cyanotype.

(2) A physical print made by this process.

(3) A slang term for a digital rendition of the process.

(4) A slang term for such a drawing, whether blue or not.

(5) By analogy, a detailed outline or plan of action (in text or image).

(6) To make a blueprint.

(7) A technique for optimizing the performance of internal combustion engines by machining (or matching) components to their exact specifications.

1887: The construct was blue + print (blue print and blue-print (1882) were the rarely used alternative spellings).  The figurative sense of "detailed plan" dates from 1926 and use as a verb is from 1939.

Blue dates from the sixteenth century and was from the Middle English blewe, from the Anglo-Norman blew (blue), from the Frankish blāu (blue) (possibly via the Medieval Latin blāvus & blāvius (blue)), from the Proto-Germanic blēwaz (blue, dark blue), from the primitive Indo-European bhlēw (yellow, blond, grey).  It was cognate with the dialectal English blow (blue), the Scots blue, blew (blue), the North Frisian bla & blö (blue), the Saterland Frisian blau (blue), the Dutch blauw (blue), the German blau (blue), the Danish, Norwegian & Swedish blå (blue), the Icelandic blár (blue).  It was cognate also with the obsolete Middle English blee (color) related to the Welsh lliw (color), the Latin flāvus (yellow) and the Middle Irish blá (yellow). A doublet of blae.  The present spelling in English has existed since the sixteenth century and was common by circa 1700.  Many colors have in English been productive in many senses and blue has contributed to many phrases in fields as diverse as mental health (depression, sadness), semiotics (coolness in temperature), popular music (the blues), social conservatism (blue stocking; blue rinse), politics (conservative (Tory) & Whig identifiers and (unrelated) the US Democratic Party), labor-market segmentation (blue-collar), social class (blue-blood), stock market status (blue-chip) and, inexplicably, as an intensifier (blue murder).

Print dates from circa 1300 and was from the Middle English printen, prenten, preenten & prente (impression, mark made by impression upon a surface), an apheretic form of emprinten & enprinten (to impress; imprint).  It was related to the Dutch prenten (to imprint), the Middle Low German prenten (to print; write), the Danish prente (to print), the Swedish prenta (to write German letters).  The late Old French preinte (impression) was a noun use of the feminine past participle of preindre (to press, crush), altered from prembre, from the Latin premere (to press, hold fast, cover, crowd, compress), from the primitive Indo-European root per- (to strike).  The Old French word was also the source of the Middle Dutch (prente (the Dutch prent) and was borrowed by other Germanic languages.

Lindsay Lohan, blueprinted.    

The sense of "a printed publication" (applied later particularly to newspapers) was from the 1560s.  The meaning "printed lettering" is from the 1620s and print-hand (print-like handwriting) from the 1650s.  The sense of "picture or design from a block or plate" dates from the 1660s while the meaning "piece of printed cloth or fabric" appeared first in 1756.  The photographic sense emerged apparently only by 1853, some three decades after the first photographs, the use evolving as printed photographs became mass-market consumer products.  Print journalism seemed to have been described as such only from 1962, a form of differentiation from the work of those employed by television broadcasters.

Blueprinting internal combustion engines is the practice of disassembling the unit and machining the critical components (piston, conrods etc) to the point where they exactly meet the stated specifications (dimensions & weight).  Essentially, the process is one of exactitude, using precision tools to make components produced using the techniques of mass production (which inherently involves wider tolerances) and modifying them by using tighter tolerances, meeting exact design specifications.  It’s most associated with high-performance racing cars, especially those which compete in “standard-production” classes which don’t permit modifications to most components.  In some cases, especially with factory-supported operations, the components might be specially selected, prior to assembly.  As a cost-containment measure (a means of creating a "level playing field" to ensure the competitiveness of less well-resourced teams), some competitions for "standard production vehicles" explicitly banned blue-printing.

Blueprint of the USS Missouri (BB-63), an Iowa-class battleship launched in 1944.  Missouri was the last battleship commissioned by the US Navy.

The first blueprint was developed in 1842 by English mathematician, astronomer, chemist & experimental photographer Sir John Herschel (1792-1871).  What he then termed a “cyanotype process” eliminated the need to copy original drawings by means of hand-tracing, a cumbersome, time consuming (and therefore expensive) process.  At what was then an astonishingly low cost, it permitted the rapid and accurate production of an unlimited number of copies.  The cyanotype process used a drawing on semi-transparent paper that was weighted down on top of a sheet of paper which was then placed over another piece of paper, coated with a mix of ammonium iron citrate and potassium ferrocyanide (derived from an aqueous solution and latter dried).  When the two papers were exposed to light, the chemical reaction produced an insoluble blue compound called blue ferric ferrocyanide (which became famous as Prussian Blue), except where the blueprinting paper was covered and the light was blocked by the lines of the original drawing. After the paper was washed and dried to preserve those lines, the result was a negative image of white (or whatever color the blueprint paper originally was) against a dark blue background.  White was by far the most used paper and the most common cyanotypes were thus blue with white lines.  At least by 1882 they were being described as “blue prints” but by 1887, they were almost universally called blueprints and in engineering and architecture had become ubiquitous, Herschel’s photochemical process producing copies at a tenth the cost of hand-tracing.

"Blueprint" came to refer to the process as much as the product and not all blueprints were "blue": Factory blueprint (quotation drawing produced on diazo machine) of 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR (W196S Uhlenhaut Coupé).  Two were built, one of which sold in June 2022 for a record US$142 million at a private auction held at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, making it the world's most expensive used car.

Refinements and economies of scale meant that during the early twentieth century the quality of blueprints improved and costs further fell but by the 1940s, they began to be supplanted by diazo prints (known also as “whiteprints” or “bluelines”).  Diazo prints were rendered with blue lines on a white background, making them easier to read and they could be produced more quickly on machinery which was simpler and much less expensive than the intricate photochemical devices blueprints demanded.  Accordingly, reprographic companies soon updated their plant, attracted too by the lower running costs, the diazo machinery not requiring the extensive and frequent maintenance demanded by the physically big and intricate photochemical copiers.

1929 Mercedes-Benz SSKL printed in blueprint style.

One tradition of the old ways did however endure.  The diazo machines caught on but “diazo print”, “whiteprint” & “blueline” never did; the drawings, regardless of the process used, the color of the paper or the lines (and many used black rather than blue) continued to be known as “blueprints”.  That linguistic tribute persisted even after diazo printing was phased-out and replaced with the xerographic print process, the standard copy machine technology using toner on bond paper.  Used for some time in commerce, large-size xerography machines became available in the mid-1970s and although originally very expensive, costs rapidly fell and the older printing methods were soon rendered obsolete.  As computer-aided design (CAD) software entered the mainstream during the 1990s, designs increasingly were printed directly from a computer to printer or plotter and despite the paper used being rarely blue, the output continued to be known as the blueprint.

Blueprint of the Chrysler Building, New York City, 1930.

Even now, although often viewed only as multi-colored images on screens (which might be on tablets or phones), such electronic drawings are still usually called blueprints.  Nor have blueprints vanished.  There are many things (buildings, bridges, roads, power-plants, railroads, sewers etc) built before the 1990s which have an expected life measured in decades or even centuries and few of these were designed using digital records.  The original blueprints therefore remain important to those engaged in maintenance or repair and can be critical also in litigation.  Old blueprints can be scanned and converted to digital formats but in many cases, the originals are fragile or physically deteriorated and finer details are sometimes legible only if viewed on the true blueprint.  Centuries from now, magnifying glasses in hand, engineers may still be examining twentieth century blueprints.

Inflammable & Flammable

Inflammable (pronounced in-flam-uh-buhl)

(1) Easily set on fire; combustible; incendiary, combustible, inflammable, burnable, ignitable (recommended only for figurative use).

(2) Easily aroused or excited, as to passion or anger; irascible; fiery; volatile, choleric.

1595–1605: From the Medieval Latin inflammābilis, the construct being the Classical Latin inflammā(re) (to set on fire) + -bilis (from the Proto-Italic -ðlis, from the primitive Indo-European i-stem form -dhli- of -dhlom (instrumental suffix).  Akin to –bulum, the suffix -bilis is added to a verb to form an adjectival noun of relationship to that verb (indicating a capacity or worth of being acted upon).  The construct of the Classical Latin inflammare (to set on fire) was -in (in, on) + flamma (flame).  As an indication of shifts in use, the verb inflame & noun inflammation are now most commonly used in clinical medicine to describe swellings, a site especially "reddish" often called "angry".  Inflammable is a noun & adjective, inflammation, inflammableness & inflammasome & inflammability are nouns, inflammatory is an adjective and inflammably is an adverb; the noun plural is inflammables. 

Flammable (pronounced flam-uh-buhl)

Easily set on fire; combustible; incendiary, combustible, inflammable, burnable, ignitable (technically a back-formation from inflammable).

1805–1815: From the Classical Latin flammā(re) (to set on fire) + -ble (the Latin suffix forming adjectives and means “capable or worthy of”).  Flammable is an adjective, flammability is a noun and flammably is an adverb; the noun plural is flammabilities.

Google ngram (a quantitative and not qualitative measure): Because of the way Google harvests data for their ngrams, they’re not literally a tracking of the use of a word in society but can be usefully indicative of certain trends, (although one is never quite sure which trend(s)), especially over decades.  As a record of actual aggregate use, ngrams are not wholly reliable because: (1) the sub-set of texts Google uses is slanted towards the scientific & academic and (2) the technical limitations imposed by the use of OCR (optical character recognition) when handling older texts of sometime dubious legibility (a process AI should improve).  Where numbers bounce around, this may reflect either: (1) peaks and troughs in use for some reason or (2) some quirk in the data harvested.

Need for standardization

Flammable and inflammable came to the same thing.  English, a mongrel vacuum-cleaner of a language, has many anomalies born of the haphazard adoption of words from other tongues but the interchangeability of flammable and inflammable is unfortunate because of the use in signs to warn people of potentially fatal danger.

Using flammable and inflammable to mean the same thing is confusing and at least potentially dangerous and the recommended use is flammable (things prone to catching fire) and non-flammable (things not).  To add another layer of meaning less language-dependent, borrowing from semiotics, danger should be indicated with red, safety with green.

In- often is used as a prefix with adjectives and nouns to indicate the opposite of the word it precedes (eg inaction, indecisive, inexpensive etc).  Given that, it would seem reasonable to assume inflammable is the opposite of flammable and the reason for the potentially deadly duplication is historic.  Inflammable actually pre-dates flammable, the word derived from the Latin verb inflammare (to set on fire), this verb also the origin of the modern meaning “to swell or to provoke angry feelings”, hence the link between setting something on fire and rousing strong feelings in someone.  So, at a time when Latin was more influential, inflammable made sense.  However, as the pull of Latin receded, words with in- (as a negative prefix) became a bigger part of the lexicon and the confusion was created; by early in the 1800s, flammable increasingly came to be used and in the next century, as the use and storage of flammable substances grew, use was widespread.  The modern convention is (or should be) to use flammable literally (to refer to things which catch fire) and inflammable figuratively (to describe the arousal of passions, the swelling of tissue etc.  Surprisingly, the rules applying to warning signs have yet to adopt this standardization.

The Mean Girls (2004) Burn Book (left) and Lindsay Lohan burning an “inflammatory” tabloid magazine, Lindsay Lohan: The Obsession, GQ Magazine, October 2006.

Uses figurative and literal: In Mean Girls, the Burn Book gained its notoriety from being packed with inflammatory comments.  Lindsay Lohan in 2006 picked up the concept in a photo-shoot by Terry Richardson (b 1965) for GQ (Gentlemen's Quarterly) magazine.  Titled Lindsay Lohan: The Obsession, the theme was her as a case-study of the way “tabloid publications” handled celebrity culture, the joke being a magazine with “inflammatory content about her” being literally set aflame, the glossy paper of course being flammable.  It’s appears a consensus in the “media studies” crew that this aspect of “tabloid culture” peaked in the first dozen-odd years of the twenty-first century, the reasons for that including (1) the period having an exceptionally large cast of suitable subjects, (2) smart phones with HD (high-definition) cameras becoming consumer items meaning potential content proliferated (ie what once would not have been photographed now became available to editors as low cost images) and (3) social media sites not having attained critical mass, all factors which at the time enabled the lower-end glossies to flourish.

1972 Ford Ranchero 500 (left) and a circa 1972 Ford Pinto (right).

“Hot Rod Flames” first became popular when the West Coast hot rod community began adding them to their modified machines.  Rendered usually in red, orange and yellow to emulate actual flames, in the decades since they’ve appeared in many colors, sometimes in hues which would never be seen in nature and they’re now a commodity with templates and adhesives widely available; the motif was also picked up by the tattoo community.  Traditionally, when applied to a hot rod or other modified vehicle, the placement of the lick of the flames was quasi-realistic in that the effect was intended to be that of a flaming car in motion.  One widely circulated image however was of a Ford Pinto (1970-1980) with the flames travelling “the other way”: from the back towards the passengers.  The artwork was a sardonic comment on the Pinto’s reputation for bursting aflame if struck from behind by another vehicle, the allegation being Pintos were unusually flammable (the media tended to prefer the more dramatic “explosive”) in such cases because of the placement of the gas (petrol) tank and design of the fuel system.  In truth the Pinto’s susceptibility probably was little different from that of many other vehicles with a similar layout but what gained the modest machine notoriety was the discovery of “inflammatory” comments in internal corporate memorandum in which executives discussed the relative costs of rectifying the problem compared with the likely costs of legal settlements compensating incinerated victims and their families.

Proxemics

Proxemics (pronounced prok-see-miks)

(1) In sociology and psychology, the study of the spatial requirements of humans and animals and the effects of population density on behavior, communication, and social interaction.

(2) In linguistics, the study of the symbolic and communicative role in a culture of spatial arrangements and variations in distance, as in how far apart individuals engaged in conversation stand depending on the degree of intimacy between them.

1963: A portmanteau word, the blend mixed by US anthropologist and cross-cultural researcher Edward Twitchell Hall (1914–2009) for an academic paper published in 1963 (which built on ideas in his book The Silent Language (1959)), the construct being prox(imity) + -emics.  Proximity was a compound word, the construct being proxim(ate) +‎ -ity, from the Middle French proximité from the Latin proximitās & proximitāt-  from proximus (from the primitive Indo-European prokwismmos, from prokwe (from whence prope)).  The novel –emics was an extracted borrowing from the word phonemics (the study of phonemes or distinct units of sound in a language; phonology).  Proxemics is a noun, proxemical & proxemic are adjectives and proxemically is an adverb.  Proxemics (the study of the effects of the physical distance between people in different cultures and societies) is one of those words which appears to be a plural but is a singular form.  For those learing English it may seem strange proxemic is an adjective and proxemics a noun singular.

Empirical research

Proxemics is the study of human use of space and the effects that population density has on behavior, communication, and social interaction.  It’s one of a number of disciplines in the study of non-verbal communication, including semiotics (sign language), haptics (touch), kinesics (body language), vocalics (para-language), and chronemics (structure of time).  Analogous with the way animals use urine and physical posturing to define their territory, the idea is that humans use personal space and concrete objects to establish theirs.

The theory suggests there are four types of distances people keep: intimate (up to 18 inches (.5m)), personal (18 inches to 4 feet (.5-1.2M)), social (4 to 10 feet (1.2-3m)), and public (over 10 feet (3m+)) although those are the distances chosen deliberately by individuals; forced closeness such as experienced on public transport are not part of proxemics.  The theory exists within the discipline of behaviorism and is thus observational rather than being derived from explicit instruction which is why personal distance and physical contact varies by culture, the physical distance between communicators indicating also the nature of their relationship.  Beyond relationships, proxemics attempted to explain other cultural and anthropological phenomena, such as the organization of built environments and living spaces, furniture, walls, streets and fences all being arranged in ways that delineate territory, whether for living, working or meeting others; territories historically existing to provide comfort for inhabitants and induce anxiety in intruders.

Practicing pre-pandemic proxemics: The septuple of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Politburo's Standing Committee at the Eighteenth Congress of the CCP, Beijing, China, November 2012.

Note the social distancing, an indication of early planning for the COVID-19 pandemic.  The unfortunate fellow (second from left) who spoiled the photograph by wearing the wrong color tie, was expelled from the party and transferred to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) as deputy assistant sanitation inspector.  Still, it does indicate how good things can be if things are not troubled by decadent Western concepts such as the imposition of DEI (diversity, equity & inclusion) legislation.  In some matters, Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025) has learned much from the CCP.    

Practicing pandemic proxemics: Lindsay Lohan in Dubai, April 2020, group photograph of a nonuple, expressing thanks to Dubai Police Force for their help during the difficult time.

Semaphore

Semaphore (pronounced sem-uh-fawr or sem-uh-fohr)

(1) A “line-of-sight” apparatus (mechanical, hand-held or activated and now even electronic) for conveying information by means of visual signals (typically flags or lights, the positions of which are changed as required).

(2) Any of various devices for signaling by changing the position of a light, flag or other identifiable indicator.  Historically, a common use of “semaphore” was as a noun adjunct (also called a noun modifier or attributive noun) including “semaphore flag”, “semaphore chart”, “semaphore operator etc.

(3) A codified system of signaling, especially a system by which a special flag is held in each hand and various positions of the arms denoting specific letters, numbers etc.  It remains part of Admiralty signals training.

(4) In biochemistry (as semaphoring), any of a class of proteins that assist growing axons to find an appropriate target and to form synapses.

(5) In biology (as semaphoront), an organism as seen in a specific time during its ontogeny or life cycle, as the object of identification or basis for systematics.

(6) In botany (as semaphore plant), a synonym for the telegraph plant (Codariocalyx motorius), a tropical Asian shrub, one of the few plants capable of rapid movement and so named because the jerking motions of the leaves recalled in observers the actions of the arms of Admiralty signallers and the name dates from the Raj.

(7) In programming, a bit, token, fragment of code, or some other mechanism which is used to restrict access to a shared function or device to a single process at a time, or to synchronize and coordinate events in different processes, the thread increments the semaphore to prevent other threads from entering the critical section at the same time.

(8) In figurative use (in human and animal behavior), certain non-verbal communications, used consciously and unconsciously, the concept often explored as a literary device.

(9) To signal (information) by means of semaphore

1814: From the French sémaphore, the construct being the Ancient Greek, σῆμα (sêma) (mark, sign, token) + the French -phore (from the Ancient Greek -φόρος (-phóros), the suffix indicating a bearer or carrier) and thus understood as “a bearer of signals”.  The Greek –phóros was from pherein (to carry), from the primitive Indo-European root bher- (to carry).  The verb was derived from the noun.  Semaphore is a noun & verb, semaphorist, semaphoront & semaphorin are nouns, semaphored is a verb, semaphoring is a verb & adjective, semaphoric & semaphorical are adjectives and semaphorically is an adverb; the noun plural is semaphores.  The noun semaphorism is non-standard but is used in behavioral linguistics to describe patterns of language used to convey meaning in a “coded” form which can be deconstructed for meaning only by sender and receiver.  The form semaphoreology seems not to exist but if anyone ever makes a discipline of the study of semaphore (academic careers have been built from more improbable origins), presumably there will be semaphoreologists.

Chart of the standard semaphore alphabet (top left), a pair of semaphore flags (bottom left) and Lindsay Lohan practicing her semaphore signaling moves (just in case, should the need arise); this is the letter “N”.

Semaphore flags are not always red and yellow, but the colors are close to a universal standard, especially in naval and international signalling.  There was no intrinsic meaning denoted by the use of red & yellow, the hues chosen for their contrast and visual clarity, something important in maritime environments or other outdoor locations when light could often be less than ideal although importantly, the contrast was sustained even in bright sunshine.  Because semaphore often was used for ship-to-to ship signalling, the colors had to be not only easily distinguishable at a distance but not be subject to “melting” or “blending”, a critical factor when used on moving vessels in often pitching conditions, the operator’s moving arms adding to the difficulties.  In naval and maritime semaphore systems, the ICS (International Code of Signals) standardized full-solid red and yellow for the flags but variants do exist (red, white, blue & black seem popular) and these can be created for specific conditions, for a particular cultural context or even as promotional items.

L-I-N-D-S-A-Y-space-L-O-H-A-N spelled-out in ICS (International Code of Signals) semaphore.  One can't tell when this knowledge will come in handy.

Early automobiles were sometimes fitted with mechanical semaphore signals to indicate a driver’s intention to change direction; these the British called “trafficators” (“flippers” in casual use) and they were still being fitted in the late 1950s, by which time they’d long been illuminated to glow a solid amber.  What the mechanical semaphores did was use the model of the extended human arm, used by riders or drivers in the horse-drawn age to signal their intentions to others and although obviously vulnerable to damage, the devices were at the time a good solution although the plastics used from the 1930s were prone to fading, diminishing the brightness.  When electronics advanced to the point where sequentially flashing turn indicators (“flashers”) cheaply could be mass-produced the age of the semaphore signal ended although they did for a while persist on trucks where they were attached to the exterior of the driver’s door and hand activated.

Hand-operated semaphore signal on driver's door of RHD (right-hand-drive) truck (left), an Austin A30 with electrically-activated semaphore indicating impending leftward change of direction (centre) and electrically-activated right-side semaphore on 1937 Rolls-Royce Phantom III Gurney Nutting Touring Limousine (right).

The A30 (1952-1956) was powered by an 803 cm³ (49 cubic inch) four cylinder engine while the Phantom III (1936-1939) was fitted with a 7338 cm³ (447 cubic inch) V12 (noted diarist Sir Henry “Chips” Channon (1897–1958) owned one) so the driving experience was very different but both used the same Lucas semaphore assembly.  Note the "BEWARE, TRAFFICATORS IN USE" notice in A30's rear window.  Because drivers are no longer attuned to look for the now archaic semaphores, some jurisdictions (while still allowing their operation), will permit road registration only if supplementary flashing indicators (now usually amber) are fitted.  In the 1960s many trafficator-equipped cars were modernized with flashers and it's now only collectors or restorers who prize the originality of the obsolete.

Low-emission Trabant (rated at 1 PP (pony-power)) with driver using semaphore signal to indicate intention to turn left, Barnim district, Bernau bei Berlin, GDR, 1981.

As late as the 1960s, in some places, trucks & vans still were being built with a hand-operated semaphore mounted on the driver’s door and specialized vehicles likely also to have an occupant on the passenger-side (such as fire-engines) sometimes had two.  If need be they could also be improvised, as in the low-tech “lollipop” sign being used in this image of a two-seater buggy, a vehicle crafted using the salvageable section of a Trabant which may have suffered frontal damage in a crash.  Trabants really could go fast enough to have damaging crashes and although not engineered with the “crumple zones” which were introduced in the West as a way of absorbing an impact’s energy before it reached the occupants, in their own way, crumple Trabants did.  In the GDR (German Democratic Republic, the old East Germany), the long-running (1957-1991) Trabant's bodywork was made with Duroplast, a composite thermosetting plastic (and a descendant of Bakelite).  It was a resin plastic reinforced with fibres (the GDR used waste from both cotton & wool processing) and was structurally similar to fibreglass although the urban myth Trabants were made from reinforced cardboard persists.  The first Trabants left the Saxony production line in November 1957, only weeks after the Soviet Union had startled the world (certainly those in Pentagon and such places) by launching Sputnik, the first man-made Earth satellite.  Launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit where it circulated for three months, it did nothing other than transmit radio pulses which, because of the flight path, could at various time be detected just about anywhere below.  Compared with what space programmes would become, it sounds now a modest achievement but at the time was a sensation and the event which triggered the “space race”.

Two comrades approaching their 1957 Trabant P50 in stylish korallenrot (coral red) over creme (cream).  Note the amber turn signals; Trabants were factory-fitted with flashers at a time Rolls-Royce and other manufacturers in the “advanced West” were still installing antiquated semaphores.

In the Eastern Bloc there weren’t many marketing departments but there was a vast propaganda apparatus and opportunistically, the name Trabant was derived from the Middle High German drabant (satellite; companion; foot soldier) which at the time was a positive association with the famous Sputnik but it later became emblematic of the economic and moral bankruptcy of the whole communist project: While by the fall of the Berlin Wall (1961-1989) Soviet satellites and related technologies greatly had advanced, the “Trubi” remained a little changed “1957 time capsule”.  Although much despised in the early 1990s in the aftermath of the break-up of the Soviet Union (1922-1991), opinions softened and the survivors of the more than three million produced (a greater volume than BMC's (British Motor Corporation) Mini (1959-2000)) gained a cult following.  More correctly, the marque gained a number of cult followings, some attracted by the “retro-cuteness”, some with genuine, Putinesque nostalgia for the old Soviet system and other with a variety of projects as varied as EV (electric vehicle) conversions, the installation of V8s for drag-racing and the re-purposing in many forms of competition.

Two comrades with their 1960 Trabant P50 in stylish two-tone pastellblau (pastel blue) over creme (cream) admiring the Leipzig Opera building, Saxony, circa 1961.

The Trubi is now a fixture in the lower reaches (a notch above the Austin Allegro) of the collector market.  The photograph of the horse-drawn Trubi, while not representative of the entire Eastern Bloc experience under communist rule, captures a sight which would not have been uncommon away from large urban centres (which could be grim enough).  Dr Henry Kissinger (1923-2023; US national security advisor 1969-1975 & secretary of state 1937-1977) said his abiding memory of Eastern Bloc cities was of “the smell of boiled cabbage and an unrelenting greyness.”  In fairness, English cooks probably inflicted worse on the noble cabbage than anything done behind the Iron Curtain but his sense of “greyness” was literal, the appalling air pollution of the GDR (its industrial base powered by burning lignite (from the Latin lignum (wood)) and other forms of low-grade, “dirty coal”), thus the griminess of the buildings.  Places like London similarly were affected and it was only after the 1952 “Great Smog of London” that the Clean Air Act (1956) became law, meaning air quality began slowly to improve.  That the photographs of the era look so drab is not because of the film stock; buildings literally were “dirty”.  Because of various other advances in health care, it’s difficult to quantify the contribution to reducing mortality achieved by reducing air pollution but few doubt it was significant.

Left & right semaphore signals (trafficators): Lucas part number SF80 for one’s Austin A30, Morris Minor or Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith.  In the 1950s, the price may have varied between resellers.

Although the grim realities of post-war economics meant standardization began to intrude, even in the 1950s Rolls-Royce made much of things being “bespoke” and while that was still true of some of the coach-work, what lay beneath the finely finished surface was often from the industry parts-bin and the semaphore turn signals the company fitted to the Silver Wraith (1946-1958) and Silver Dawn (1949-1955) was Lucas part number SF80, exactly the same component used by the humble Austin A30 and Morris Minor (1948-1971) where the functionality was identical.  Presumably, were one to buy the part from Rolls-Royce one would have been charged more (perhaps it was wrapped in more elaborate packaging) and that’s a well-understood industry phenomenon.  The internet has made it easier to trace such commonalities but in the 1980s there was a most useful publication which listed shared part-numbers which differed only in the prices charged, a switch for a Lamborghini which might retail for hundreds available from the Fiat parts counter (a busy place folklore suggests) for $12 while those aghast at the price quoted for a small linkage in a Triumph’s Stag’s induction system were pleased the same thing could be bought from a Ford dealer for a fraction of the cost.  Rolls-Royce fitted their last trafficator in 1958 and when Austin updated the A30 as the A35 (1956-1968) flashers were standard equipment, metal covering the apertures where once the semaphores had protruded while internally there was a panel concealing what had once been an access point for servicing.  The Morris Minor, the last of which wasn’t (in CKD (completely knocked down) form) assembled in New Zealand until 1974(!) switched from trafficators to flashers in 1961, the exterior and interior gaps concealed al la the A35.

Left-side semaphore on 1951 Volkswagen Type 1 (Beetle).

The Latin sēmaphorum (the alternative form was sēmaphoru) is thought to be a calque of the Italian semaforo (traffic light), again borrowed from the French sémaphore in the literal sense of “signaling system”.  The modern Italian for “traffic light” is semaforo although (usually for humorous effect) sēmaphorum is sometimes used as Contemporary Latin.  Traffic lights have for over a century regulated the flow of vehicles in urban areas but the first semaphore signal predated motorized transport, installed in London in 1868.  It was introduced not because it would perform the task better than the policemen then allocated but because it was cheaper and was an example of the by then common phenomenon of machines displacing human labor.  The early mechanical devices were pre-programmed and thus didn’t respond to the dynamics of the environment being controlled and that applied also to the early versions of the now familiar red-amber-green “traffic lights” which began to proliferate in the 1920s but by the 1950s there were sometime sensors (weight-sensitive points in the road) which could “trigger” a green light if the pre-set timing was creating a needless delay.  Even before the emergence of AI (artificial intelligence) in the modern sense of the term, implementations of AI had been refining the way traffic light systems regulated vehicular flow and in major cities (China apparently the most advanced), cameras, sensors, face and number plate recognition all interact to make traffic lights control the flow with an efficiency no human(s) could match.

ASMR semaphore porn: 1955 Austin A30.  ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) describes the physical & psychological pleasure derived from specific stimuli (usually a sound).  For some, this can be the sight & sound of South Korean girls on TikTok eating noodles while for those fond of machines it can come from hearing semaphore turn-signals being raised and lowered.

Whether it was the early semaphore signals or the soon to be ubiquitous illumined red-amber-green lights, what the system relied on was compliance; inherently, lacking physical agency, a piece of colored glass can’t stop a car but that almost always is the effect of a “red light”.  In behaviorism, this was described as discriminative stimulus (SD) in that the red light culturally is understood as a universal cue signalling a punishment might follow any transgression (ie “running the red light”), thus the incentive to obey the signal and avoid negative consequences (crashing or being fined).  What SD does is control behavior through learned association.  The use of red comes from semiotics and the color is culturally assigned to “stop” as green is to “go”, these allocated by virtue of historical associations which long pre-date the technology in the same way semiotics are used (as red & blue) to denote “hot” & “cold” water when taps are labelled, meaning for travellers no knowledge of a local language is needed to work out which is which.  In the jargon, the red light is a “signifier” and the “signified” is stop.

Modern Mechanix magazine, January 1933.

Sir William Morris (1877-1963; later Lord Nuffield) held a number of troubling and even at the time unfashionable views and he’d been sceptical about producing the Morris Minor (1948-1971), describing the prototype as looking “like a poached egg”; in that he was right but the Minor proved a highly profitable, quarter century long success.  In the 1930s however, he did have the imaginative idea of adapting the by then familiar traffic light (in miniature form) to the automobile itself.  The concept was sound, Sir William’s proposed placement even anticipating the “eye level brake lights” of the 1980s and the inclusion of green in the code was interesting but the “mini traffic light” wasn’t taken up and lesson which should have been learned is that in the absence of legislation compelling change, the industry always will be most reluctant to invest and not until the 1960s would such mandates (for better and worse) begin to be imposed.

1947 Volvo P444 (1947-1958, left) and 2022 Volvo XC 40 (introduced 2017, right).  Volvo abandoned the semaphores years before the British but the designers clearly haven’t forgotten, the rear reflectors on the XC 40 using the shape.  Volvo replaced the semaphores with conventional flashers but not before the modernist Swedes had tried the odd inventive solution.

In idiomatic use, semaphore’s deployment tends to be metaphorical or humorous, the former used as a literary device, borrowed from behavioral psychology.  “To semaphore” can mean “wildly or exaggeratedly gesture” but can also convey the idea of a communication effected without explicitly stating something and that can either be as a form of “unspoken code” understood only between the interlocutors or something unconscious (often called body-language).  “Semaphoring a message” can thus be either a form of secret communication or something inferred from non-verbal clues.  Authors and poets are sometimes tempted to use “semaphore” metaphorically to describe emotional cues, especially across physical or emotional distance and one can imagine the dubious attraction for some of having “her sensuous lips silently semaphoring desire” or “her hungry eyes semaphored the truth”.  Among critics, the notion of “semaphoring” as one of the motifs of modernist literature was identified and TS Eliot’s (1888–1965) style in The Waste Land (1922) included coded fragments, often as disconnected voices and symbols, called by some an “emotional semaphore” while Samuel Beckett (1906-1989 and another Nobel laureate) was noted for having his characters exchange their feelings with repetitive gestures, signals and critically, silences, described variously as “gestural semaphore” or the “semaphoring of despair”.