The Semiotics of Flags

In the passage of the Course in General Linguistics where Ferdinand de Saussure first foresaw the necessity to develop a new discipline called “semiology”, “nautical flags” are prominently listed among its objects of inquiry. Flags, indeed, are naturally interesting objects for semiotics, not only because they signify through a systematic display of forms and colors, but also because of the specific pragmatics of such display. A flag can be thought of abstractedly, as an array of symbols, but it features also a specific materiality, wherein two elements particularly stand out: (1) the flag is generally a textile; (2) this textile is meant to interact with a natural element, the wind. Flags are so symbolically important also because they seem to acquire an individual agency when they wave in the wind, and therefore to confer this autonomous agency to the cultural ideas which they stand for. The paper investigates this particular semiotics in relation to opposite ideological usages of the Italian national flag, meant to signify an either inclusive or exclusive identity.