THE FIELDThe Field

Symbol

A folded flag

Sign · A people, a schoolroom · A table

A folded blue, white, and red cloth on a wooden table beside a stamp and envelope.
Generated interpretation. Not an archival document.Cloth and dye. The nation is not in the fibers.

Who taught this cloth to mean a country?

A cultural semiotician asks who taught this sign to mean this. The answer is never ‘the universe.’

Concordance

The thing
A tricolor of cloth.
Seen
Blue, white, red, a fold, a stamp, wood grain.
Sourced
Flags mean by convention. Meanings change by culture, time, class, medium, religion, subculture, technology.
Miss
The plate is not a specific nation’s flag used as evidence. It is a study of convention.
One question remains
How does meaning change when the teacher changes?

Provenance

THE FIELD. Convention has a history. Someone taught this.

  • Convention. A flag is a symbol. Treat it as taught, not discovered in nature.
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