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
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/41953
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.