Presentation Type

Oral Presentation

Start Date

5-8-2024 9:00 AM

End Date

5-8-2024 11:00 AM

Subjects

Semiotics, Flower language, Victorian arts

Advisor

Anand Vaidya

Student Level

Undergraduate

Abstract

The Victorian flower language Is mythologized as a widely known communicatory practice Involving flowers with symbolic meanings and creative bouquet-making In order to convey personal and emotional messages. This Is not entirely accurate: floriography was a theoretical floral code based on the Turkish practice of selam, which the British and French upper class reinterpreted and edited to create their own version. This thesis examines how floriography functions semiotically, both as a mythologized language and as It was actually used, and traces the lineage of floral semiotics and greeting cards from Victorian Britain to contemporary America. I analyze floral semiotics, both as illustrations in greeting cards and as physical bouquets, utilizing semantico-referentialism, Piercian notions of Indexicality, Austinian performative uttterances, Jakobsonian poetics, notions of interiority, and affect theory as analytic frameworks.

Creative Commons License or Rights Statement

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/41953

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May 8th, 9:00 AM May 8th, 11:00 AM

Say It With Flowers: The Semiotics Of A Not-So Secret Language

The Victorian flower language Is mythologized as a widely known communicatory practice Involving flowers with symbolic meanings and creative bouquet-making In order to convey personal and emotional messages. This Is not entirely accurate: floriography was a theoretical floral code based on the Turkish practice of selam, which the British and French upper class reinterpreted and edited to create their own version. This thesis examines how floriography functions semiotically, both as a mythologized language and as It was actually used, and traces the lineage of floral semiotics and greeting cards from Victorian Britain to contemporary America. I analyze floral semiotics, both as illustrations in greeting cards and as physical bouquets, utilizing semantico-referentialism, Piercian notions of Indexicality, Austinian performative uttterances, Jakobsonian poetics, notions of interiority, and affect theory as analytic frameworks.