The Semiotics of Economic Value

This book describes economic value as a representational phenomenon and considers what is involved when people represent value to themselves and to others. It provides an original and thorough account of value from a pragmatic and interactionist perspective. This book describes economic value as a representational phenomenon and considers what is involved when people represent value to themselves and to others. It provides an original and thorough account of value from a pragmatic and interactionist perspective. McGill uses Peircian semiosis and other theoretical tools from linguistic anthropology in order to study economic value. He argues that economic laws are realized in situated interaction as Peircian legisigns and the situated, indexical features of exchange are further described in relation to these laws as legisigns. Such an approach is shown to have implications for the formation of interests and ideology, the reification of labor and the instantiation of markets through habit. Offering some innovative tools for theorizing economic value in a new era, this volume will be of interest to anthropologists, linguists and other scholars concerned with language, semiotics, and political economy.