A Walk in the WoRds : apostrophe error

Take a close look at the bottom billboard and think about what each symbol might represent and what the sum of these symbols is intended to communicate.

Now, picture driving at 80 miles an hour and trying to figure out not only what each symbol might represent but also what the sum of these symbols is meant to communicate.

As mentioned in a previous post about a billboard pragmatics fail, the context in which a communication occurs plays an important role in a reader's ability to interpret a writer's intended meaning. The context here is the side of an expressway. Any reader in a car going 80 miles an hour or more is going to have an awfully hard time interpreting the writer's intended meaning because at that speed the reader will have a very short time to view the symbols. Not to mention that this doesn't even take into account the possibility of a semi truck obstructing a reader's view.

As for the semiotics fail, the symbols were so poorly executed that my first guess was:

beak + carrot ('s) + rake + "in" + rolling pin

Oh...how wrong I was and and oh...what bad advertising.

Upon seeing the billboard a third time I realized - the bird is a duck and the arrow is pointing to its bill, the carrot is supposed to be a surfboard and the last arrow is pointing to a blob of dough, not the rolling pin.

bill + board ('s) + rake + "in" + dough

So the writer's intended meaning was, "billboards rake in dough."

Okay, maybe I should have realized that was a duck the first time but I was driving and reprimanding kids at the same time. Plus I still think the second symbol looks like a carrot everytime I pass it.

Did I mention the apostrophe error? Does the billboard own the rake? The writer should have used a "+ s" not a "'s"

semiotics definition

additional semiotics posts

additional billboard posts

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