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244So near, so far, so what is social distancing? A fundamental ontological account of a mobile place brandJournal of Place Branding and Public Diplomacy 1 (advance publishing Oct 2020). 2020.This paper offers a social phenomenological reading of the globally binding practice of 'social distancing' in light of the precautionary measures against the spreading of the Covid-19 virus. Amid speculation about the far-reaching effects of temporarily applicable measures and foresights about the advent of an ethos that has been heralded by the media as the 'new normal', the ubiquitous phenomenon of social distancing calls for a fundamental ontological elucidation. The purported hermeneutic th…Read more
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24This paper furnishes a brand storytelling account of the Covid-19 pandemic. By adopting a fictional ontological standpoint, the virus’ narrative space is mapped out by recourse to metaphorical modeling. The disease imagery stems from global mainstream media in the context of Covid-19’s brand globalization, as increasing interconnectedness of and interdependence between social, cultural and economic discourses. The main narrative components (actors, settings, actions, relationships) are outlined …Read more
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264Consuming the scapegoat: Mass shootings as systemically necessary cultural traumaInternational Journal of Marketing Semiotics and Discourse Studies 8 (Special Issue on Trauma & Consum): 1-16. 2020.Mass shootings constitute a recurrent and most violent phenomenon in the U.S. and elsewhere. This paper challenges the ready-made, solipsistically contained metanarratives on offer by mainstream media and formal institutions with regard to the psychological antecedents of the perpetrating social actors, while theorizing mass shootings as acts of violence that are systemically inscribed in the foundations of communities. These foundations abide by the logic of sacrifice which is propagated in ins…Read more
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39The purpose of this chapter is to unearth the cultural conditionals that silently buttress the recurrence of one of the most violent crimes of our times, namely mass shootings. These conditionals are rooted in a religious discourse that thrives on the notions of sacred and sacrifice as a violent act par excellence, yet of inaugural value for the constitution of a community and its symbolic order. The offered analysis draws on Kristeva’s semanalytic perspective, in an interdisciplinary dialogue w…Read more
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713From ideology to metametanarrative (addendum to Consuming antinatalism in social media)Interdiscursive Readings in Cultural Consumer Research. 2018.Despite Lyotard’s proclaimed end of metanarratives in a post-modern predicament, metanarratives appear to be making a comeback. This is the case for antinatalism, a relatively recent ideological formation or moral philosophical perspective that has spawned a new social movement with an active presence in social media. The organizational and structural aspects of NSMs render them amenable to being labeled as ‘post-modern’. In this context, the emergence of ideologies as moral philosophies, such a…Read more
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536On the discursive appropriation of the antinatalist ideology in social mediaThe Qualitative Report 24 (2): 208-227. 2017.Antinatalism, a relatively recent moral philosophical perspective and ideology that avows “it is better not to have ever existed,” has spawned a new social movement with an active presence in social media. This study draws on the discourse historical approach (DHA) to critical discourse analysis for offering a firm understanding as to how the collective identity of the Facebook antinatalist NSM is formed. The findings from the analysis of the situated interaction among the NSM’s members demonstr…Read more
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1122Carpool Karaoke: Deconstructing the directly lived experience of hearing oneself singingSocial Semiotics 27 (5): 624-637. 2017.The various ways whereby spatial conditions afford to monumentalize culture and to appropriate geographically demarcated places in terms of individual and collective meaning structures has been amply documented in urban cultural studies. However, considerably less attention has been paid to how cultural identity is produced against the background of musical temporality. By way of a phenomenological inquiry into the staged spectacle of James Corden’s (the host of CBS Network’s Late Late Show) Car…Read more
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224The Brand Imaginarium, or on the iconic constitution of brand imageIn Handbook of Brand Semiotics, Kassel University Press. pp. 390-457. 2015.Brand image constitutes one of the most salient, over-defined, heavily explored and multifariously operationalized conceptual constructs in marketing theory and practice. In this Chapter, definitions of brand image that have been offered by marketing scholars will be critically addressed in the context of a culturally oriented discussion, informed by the semiotic notion of iconicity. This cultural bend, in conjunction with the concept’s semiotic contextualization, are expected both to dispel ter…Read more
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339Interdiscursive Readings in Cultural Consumer ResearchCambridge Scholars Publishing. 2018.The cultural consumption research landscape of the 21st century is marked by an increasing cross-disciplinary fermentation. At the same time, cultural theory and analysis have been marked by successive ‘inter-’ turns, most notably with regard to the Big Four: multimodality (or intermodality), interdiscursivity, transmediality (or intermediality), and intertextuality. This book offers an outline of interdiscursivity as an integrative platform for accommodating these notions. To this end, a call f…Read more
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688Lady Gaga as (dis)simulacrum of monstrosityCelebrity Studies 6 (2): 231-246. 2015.Lady Gaga’s celebrity DNA revolves around the notion of monstrosity, an extensively researched concept in postmodern cultural studies. The analysis that is offered in this paper is largely informed by Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of monstrosity, as well as by their approach to the study of sign-systems that was deployed in A Thousand Plateaus. By drawing on biographical and archival visual data, with a focus on the relatively underexplored live show, an elucidation is afforded of what is really…Read more
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481Before the consummation what? On the role of the semiotic economy of seductionContinuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 30 (4): 451-465. 2016.The cultural practice of flirtation has been multifariously scrutinized in various disciplines including sociology, psychology, psychoanalysis and literary studies. This paper frames the field of flirtation in Bourdieuian terms, while focusing narrowly on the semiotic economy that is defining of this cultural field. Moreover, seduction, as a uniquely varied form of discourse that is responsible for producing the cultural field of flirtation, is posited as the missing link for understanding why f…Read more
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565On the spectral ideology of cultural globalization as social hauntologyInternational Journal of Marketing Semiotics 6 (1): 1-21. 2018.Globalization allegedly constitutes one of the most used and abused concepts in the contemporary academic and lay lexicons alike. This paper pursues a deconstructive avenue for canvassing the semiotic economy of cultural globalization. The variegated ways whereby ideology has been framed in different semiotic perspectives (Peircean, structuralist, post-structuralist, neo-Marxist) are laid out. By engaging with the post-structuralist semiotic terrain, cultural globalization is identified with a t…Read more
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282Holy shit! Consuming oneself through taboo speech-actsChinese Semiotic Studies 13 (2): 151-170. 2015.This paper addresses the scarcely scrutinized topic in the consumer culture literature regarding how a social actor consumes himself through speech acts. More specifically, by introducing a new type of speech act, viz. the taboo speech act, and by effectively differentiating it from expletives, slang, and swearing words and expressions, I outline how subjectivity appropriates and individuates its systemic underpinning as other or linguistic system (Saussure) and wall of language (Lacan) in lingu…Read more
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199A Dio: A sociosemiotic/phenomenological account of the formationof collective narrative identity in the context of a rock legend’s memorialSouthern Semiotic Review 5 (1): 81-125. 2015.God is dead, but, contrary to Nietzsche’s diagnosis, ‘we’ didn’t kill him; he died of cancer. This perhaps crudely cold and off-putting opening does not refer to a naively metaphorically constituted transcendental abstraction, but to a spatio-temporally situated rock legend, Ronnie James Dio. This study aims at contributing to the burgeoning research field of memory and collective identity by providing a sociosemiotic account of the formation of collective narrative identity. By drawing on the t…Read more
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156Double or nothing: Deconstructing cultural heritageChinese Semiotic Studies 11 (3): 297-315. 2015.This paper draws on the deconstruction(ist) toolbox and specifically on the textual unweaving tactics of supplementarity, exemplarity, and parergonality, with a view to critically assessing institutional (UNESCO’s) and ordinary tourists’ claims to authenticity as regards artifacts and sites of ‘cultural heritage’. Through the ‘destru[k]tion’ of claims to ‘originality’ and ‘myths of origin’, that function as preservatives for canning such artifacts and sites, the cultural arche-writing that force…Read more
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425The supplement at the… sau(r)ce: On Jamie Oliver’s global brand identityJournal of Place Branding and Public Diplomacy 1 1-17. 2019.Amidst the constantly augmenting gastronomic capital of celebrity chefs, this study scrutinizes from a critical discourse analytic angle how Jamie Oliver has managed to carve a global brand identity through a process that is termed (dis)placed branding. A roadmap is furnished as to how Italy as place brand and Italianness are discursively articulated, (dis)placed and appropriated in Jamie Oliver’s travelogues which are reflected in his global brand identity. By enriching the CDA methodological t…Read more
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505Post-place branding as nomadic experiencingJournal of Place Branding and Public Diplomacy 4 (14): 285-304. 2018.This paper introduces post-place branding in the context of the post-representationalist turn in marketing research by drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s (A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1987) theory of nomadology. By engaging critically with fundamental concepts in the place and destination branding literature, post-place branding offers an alternative perspective to entrenched definitions of subjectivity, place, and event experienci…Read more
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432Consumed by the real: A conceptual framework of abjective consumption and its freaky vicissitudesQualitative Market Research 1 (21): 39-62. 2018.Purpose – This paper furnishes an inaugural reading of abjective consumption by drawing on Kristeva’s psychoanalytic theory of abjection within the wider terrain of consumer cultural research. It offers a conceptual framework that rests on three pillars, viz. irrationality, meaninglessness, dissolution of selfhood. Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative research design that adopts a documentary ethnographic approach, by drawing on a corpus of 50 documentary episodes from the TV series “My Str…Read more
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309Is the semiosphere post-modernist?Kodikas- Ars Semeiotica 2 (38): 95-113. 2015.This paper provides arguments for and against M.Lotman’s (2002) contention that Y.Lotman’s seminal concept of semiosphere is of post-modernist (post-structuralist; Posner 2011) orientation. A comparative reading of the definitional components of the semiosphere, their hierarchical relationship and their interactions is undertaken against the two principal axes of space and subjectivity in the light of Kantian transcendental idealism, as inaugural and authoritative figure of modernity, the Foucau…Read more
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24Semiotics of Popular CultureUniversity of Kassel Press. 2015.Cultural studies constitutes one of the most multi-perspectival research fields. Amidst a polyvocal theoretical landscape that spans different disciplines semiotics is of foundational value. In an attempt to effectively address the conceptual richness of the semiotic discipline, a wide roster of perspectives is evoked in this book against the background of a diverse set of cultural phenomena, including structuralist and post-structuralist semiotics, semiotically informed psychoanalysis, cultural…Read more
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443Toy stories: On the disciplinary regime of vibrationSemiotica 2017 (218): 145-164. 2017.Sex toys promote a new consumptive ethos whose significance may be adequately outlined by attending to the institutional implications of this product category’s consumption. By drawing on Foucault’s theory of sexuality and the technologies of the self that materialize with the aid of discursive formations about sexuality, as well as on relevant sociological and ethnographic insights, I undertake a qualitative content analysis on a corpus of 100 sex toys’ product reviews from popular magazines an…Read more
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611A methodological framework for projecting brand equity: Putting back the imaginary into brand knowledge structuresSign Systems Studies 42 (1): 98-136. 2014.The aim of this paper is to outline a methodological framework for brand equity planning with structuralist rhetorical semiotics. By drawing on the connectionistconceptual model of the brand generative trajectory of signification it will be displayed in a stepwise fashion how a set of nuclear semes and classemes or anintended semic structure that underlies manifest discursive structures may be projected by its internal stakeholders with view to attaining differential brand associations. The sugg…Read more
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10Interactive Advertising: Dynamic Communication in the Information EraLibris-Tech. 2002.Το βιβλίο ΑΜΦΙΔΡΟΜΗ ΔΙΑΦΗΜΙΣΗ: ΔΥΝΑΜΙΚΗ ΕΠΙΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΑ ΣΤΗΝ ΕΠΟΧΗ ΤΗΣ ΠΛΗΡΟΦΟΡΙΑΣ των Εκδόσεων LIBRIS-TECH αποτελεί ένα εγχειρίδιο για την επιτυχημένη πλοήγηση στα νέα διαφημιστικά μέσα: Διαδίκτυο, κινητή τηλεφωνία, διαδραστική τηλεόραση. Η συγγραφική ομάδα (Α. Αϊβαλής, Λ. Αρριανάς, Γ. Δημητρόπουλος, Δ. Μοσχοπούλου, Β. Μπακόπουλος, Γ. Ροσσολάτος, Ε. Σακκάς, Γ. Σαλιάρης-Φασσέας / επιμέλεια ύλης: Γ. Ροσσολάτος) αποτελείται από επαγγελματίες του χώρου, που στόχο τους έχουν να μεταφέρουν την τεχνογνωσί…Read more
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8Applying Structuralist Semiotics to Brand Image ResearchAmazon Press. 2012.The aim of this book is to display a conceptual and methodological framework for brand image research by drawing on the discipline of structuralist semiotics. Upon a critical review of existing research from key authors in the brand semiotics literature and through an engagement with the concept of brand image as formulated by key authors in the marketing literature, a semiotic model is furnished for the formation of brand image and brand identity.
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23This book was put together over the course of the past three years and is the outcome of the author’s publications in the multimodal advertising rhetoric research field and projects that were undertaken with the employment of the //rhetor.dixit//© model. It features four chapters that span different, yet interlocking aspects of ad texts’ multimodal rhetorical configuration and culminates in a practical guide for the analysis of the verbo-visual rhetorical structure of TV ad texts, based on the …Read more
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2700Handbook of Brand Semiotics (edited book)Kassel University Press. 2015.Semiotics has been making progressively inroads into marketing research over the past thirty years. Despite the amply demonstrated conceptual appeal and empirical pertinence of semiotic perspectives in various marketing research streams, spanning consumer research, brand communications, branding and consumer cultural studies, there has been a marked deficit in terms of consolidating semiotic brand-related research under a coherent disciplinary umbrella with identifiable…Read more
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400Brand Equity Planning with Structuralist Rhetorical SemioticsKassel University Press. 2014.Brand Equity Planning with Structuralist Rhetorical Semiotics furnishes an innovative conceptual model and methodology for brand equity planning, with view to addressing a crucial gap in the marketing and semiotic literatures concerning how advertising multimodal textual elements may be transformed into brand associations, with an emphasis on rhetorical relata as modes of connectivity between a brand’s surface and depth grammar. The scope of this project is inter-disciplinary, spanning research…Read more
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372Exploring the rhetorical semiotic brand image structure of ad films with multivariate mapping techniquesSemiotica 2014 (200): 335-358. 2014.The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the applicability of multivariate mapping techniques to the exploration of the rhetorical semiotic brand image structure of ad films. By drawing on correspondence analysis and multidimensional scaling, two techniques that are amply used in corpus linguistics and in marketing research, but also on the data reduction technique of factor analysis, it will be displayed how a set of nuclear semes and classemes or an intended semic structure that underlies ad fi…Read more
Universität Gesamthochschule Kassel
PhD, 2014
Kassel, Hessen, Germany
Areas of Specialization
6 more
Anthropology |
Journalism and Media |
Business |
Professional Areas |
Semiotics |
Other Academic Areas, Misc |
Social Sciences, Misc |
Sociology |
Cultural Studies |
Communication |
Marketing |