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A B S T R A C T
In this article we examine 561 different airline tailfin designs as a visual genre, https://www.51lunwen.org/liuxuelunwendx/revealing how the global–local binary may be managed and realized semiotically. Our analysis is organized into three strands: (a) a descriptive analysis identifies the strikingly restricted visual lexicon and dominant corporate aesthetic established by tailfin design; (b) an interpretive analysis considers the communicative strategies at play and the meaning potentials which underpin different visual resources; (c) a critical analysis links these decisions of design and branding to the political and cultural economies of globalism and the airline industry. Specifically, we show how airlines are
able to service national identity concerns through the use of highly localized visual meanings while also appealing to the meaning systems of the international market in their pursuit of symbolic and economic capital.
One key semiotic resource is the balancing of cultural symbolism and perceptual iconicity in the form of abstracted stylizations of kinetic effects. Although positioned unfairly in the global semioscape, airlines may resist straightforward cultural homogenization by strategically reworking existing design structures and exploiting possibly universal semiotic meaning potentials.

K E Y W O R D S
corporate branding ，globalization ， perception ， kinetic stylization semioscape ， social semiotics ，universal iconicity

In 1997, at a reported cost of some ￡60 million (US$120 million), British Airways (BA) famously decided to break from its long-established aeroplane livery based on the red, white and blue of the British national flag by launching what was described in the press as ‘a bold global image based not on a single logo but a series of related designs from around the world’.

According to留学生论文代写its own publicity, this new World Images branding was intended to reiterate the airline’s desire to be perceived as ‘global and caring’, and to manifest its long-standing claim to be the ‘world’s favourite airline’. As part of this rebranding strategy, new tailfin designs featured colorful, ‘ethnic’ patterns taken from world-wide arts and crafts, such as Native American wood carvings, Japanese calligraphy, German pottery, Scottish tartans and Egyptian wall hangings (see Figure 1b). John Sorrell, one of the two designers who worked on the World Images concept, stated: ‘Our task was to position BA as a world brand, the equivalent of Coke or Microsoft, but one which is based and has its roots in Britain.’

What no-one at BA, or the design company commissioned to comeup with the new branding strategy, had predicted was the public criticismand media outcry that would follow this decision by the national ‘flag-carrier’. Along with many high-profile figures, then Prime Minister MargaretThatcher openly expressed her own disapproval of BA’s new identity,characterizing it as unpatriotic and foolish.1By 1999, BA had startedsuffering major financial losses, explained in part by adverse public opiniontowards its ‘multicultural’ branding strategy. I
R E F E R E N C E S
Anderson, B. (1983) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and
Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dim本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。