Semiotics of Cigarettes

Hi welcome to my blog, this is my first one so forgive me if it looks terrible.

You can now only smoke out of your nose or ears, law!

Any how down to business, just been watching the news and saw a great thing on cigarettes and how the whole idea of them needs to change to in-turn change peoples idea of this ridiculious (to me anyway) action. Now don't get me wrong, I hate all this control stuff at the moment, 'you can do this, you can't do that' if someone really wants to fork out a fiver a day (or whatever it is) on something they burn and inhale the crap that comes out, good on em, more power. Also I'm not one of these people who would ever tell someone the rights and wrongs of something I'd never tried. I have tried smoking in my younger years, to look cool, it had no chance of fixing that, but I just never understood burning your money away and then coughing it up in the morning in the form of thick brown shit. The interesting thing that came up in the debate was that there is a very semiotic thing going on with cigarettes, they do make them look appealing to both young and old. As I've already mentioned, people think they look cool smoking them. They're neat to hold and look good, with their brown speckled filter, little gold band and neat white roll with it's burning red end. Also the packet has many semiotic connections, the bright colours, we all know a packet of Malborough Lights from a mile away with it's gold K's and of course the Marborough Cowboy. And there is a whole raft of semiotics in the communication of smoking, it has it's own language almost, more so now with the fact that all smokers have to go outside like a little club who don't even have to talk to each other as the pure fact they're all there to smoke negates the need for small talk. Just like when most people start smoking at school behind the gym or bike shed, 'Alright mate give us a fag' say no more son, you're one of the gang! So make it ugly, a crap packet, like a crisp bag that you pull open and the stuff goes everywhere and the cigarette is square so you have to hold it with two hands and you look a twat smoking it. That'll stop em

Research

Of Cigarettes, High Heels, and Other Interesting Things

An Introduction to Semiotics

2nd Edition

Marcel Danesi

http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=303456

GREG ROWLAND SEMIOTICS
http://www.semiotics.co.uk/?gclid=CMHav6GLwqcCFUFC4QodommE-w