Symbolic Capitals: Visual Discourse and Intercultural Exchan

Symbolic Capitals: Visual Discourse and Intercultural Exchange in the European Capital of Culture Scheme
Giorgia Aiello and Crispin Thurlow
Department of Communication, University of Washington, Seattle,WA, USA
In multilingual Europe, visual discourse may function as a cross-culturally strategicform of communication, thanks in part to its perceptual and iconic availability. In thisregard, we offer a social semiotic 美国留学生dissertationcritique of a range of visual resources deployed inthe official promotional texts of 30 of the 43 cities either nominated or competing forthe title of European Capital of Culture between 2005 and 2011. In considering thepolitical/cultural/economic ideologies that underpin the production of a supposedlypan-European identity, we also show how these branding exercises manage local/global tensions by exploiting the intercultural meaning potentials of visual discourse.Nel contesto multilingue dell’Europa, il discorso visivo puo` funzionare come unaforma strategica di comunicazione crossculturale, grazie alla sua relativa immediatezzaa livello percettivo e iconico. In questo articolo, offriamo un’analisi di tiposemiotico sociale in relazione a una gamma di risorse visive ricorrenti nei materiali
promozionali ufficiali di trenta citta` nominate o in gara per il titolo di CapitaleEuropea della Cultura fra il 2005 e il 2011. Nel considerare le ideologie politiche,
economiche e culturali che sottendono la produzione di una presunta identita` paneuropea,mostriamo anche come queste pratiche di ‘branding’ gestiscono la tensionefra identita` locali e globali per mezzo dei potenziali di significato interculturaliofferti dal discorso visivo.
doi: 10.2167/laic234.0
Keywords: visual discourse, social semiotics, intercultural exchange,European identity
You are not necessarily a European just because you happen to be bornor to live in a city marked on the political map of Europe. But youmay be European even if you’ve never been to any of those cities.
(Bauman, 2004: 5)1
Although it might seem out of place in a journal otherwise devoted tolanguage/s, we see two good reasons why the study of visual discourse is animportant consideration for linguists. First of all, no semiotic mode exists inisolation of other meaning-making practices. Language is only ever made trulymeaningful and/or understandable in the context of paralinguistic and othernonverbal codes; in fact, in many instances written and spoken language arethemselves the contextual ‘background’. Certainly, as Kress and van Leeuwen(2001: 26) comment, ‘In the era of multimodality semiotic modes other thanlanguage are treated as fully capable of serving for representation and forcommunication.’ In addition, so much in the way of intercultural exchangesimply occurs outside of language. By this we mean in no way to diminish thepower and politics of language/s in intercultural communication
we toorecognise how intercultural scholarship has for too long problematicallyassumed English to be the de facto medium of intercultural encounter.Nonetheless, many of the means by which intercultural communication takesplace are often material, affective and, of course, visual. Therefore, we are herelooking to contribute a different but complementary perspective for scholarscommitted to an interdisciplinary understanding of the interplay betweenlanguage and intercultural communication.Visual Discourse and the ‘Economies’ of Europe[I]n so far as identities depend on what they are not, they implicitlyaffirm the importance of what is outside them
which often thenreturns to trouble and unsettle them from the inside. Nothing could bemore true of Europe, which has constantly, at different times, in differentways, and in relation to different ‘others’, tried to establish what it was
its identity
by symbolically marking its difference from ‘them’. Eachtime, far from producing a stable and settled identity, Europe has had tore-imagine or re-present itself differently. We are at another suchmoment again, now. (Hall, 2003: 38)#p#分页标题#e#
As Bauman (2004) and Hall (2003) both note, the geopolitical realities (or, atleast, materialities) of Europe are seldom adequate to explain its organisationand meaning; cultural and symbolic processes are as central to the experienceof Europe as any monetary or economic resource. Indeed, the fact thatvirtually any country is eligible for admission into the EU is a cause of greatcontroversy in current debates about ‘Europeanness’ (Rifkin, 2004). As Europecontinues to redefine itself in relation to its geographical and culturalboundaries, therefore, the governing bodies of the EU and member states
are having to work harder than ever to specify and promote criteria for thestatus of ‘European’. In doing so, they must manage the tension betweenkeeping ‘Europeanness’ sufficiently inclusive to serve the flexibility demandedby global capital, while sustaining the sense of exclusivity necessary formaking a collective European identity meaningful to its citizens (cf. Tajfel &Turner, 1979). This core tension is inevitably realised discursively and requiresconstant ‘textual mediation’ (Fairclough, 1999).With the shift from manufacture-based to service-driven economics,postindustrial (often Western) economies have in fact become more andmore semioticised (Lash & Urry, 1994); that is to say, dependent on symbolism,imagery and design. There is nowadays often little apparent materiality to the‘products’ bought and sold; instead, the exchange of capital hinges on thepromotion of ideals, images and lifestyles in discourse
linguistic, visual orotherwise. In this sense, therefore, symbolic economies are as, if not more,Visual Discourse in the European Capital of Culture Scheme 149important than monetary economies, and the pursuit of symbolic profit is allthe more furious (cf. Bourdieu, 1991). And the symbolic is unavoidablyideological, as it both represents and reproduces systems of belief and power,and because it establishes and maintains structures of inequality and privilege(Fairclough, 1999; van Leeuwen, 2002).In examining the ‘making’ of Europe through the visual practices underpinningthe European Capital of Culture scheme, we open up a space for
discussion about the production of cultural narratives that characterise today’sEurope as an identity project (Castells, 1998; Giddens, 1991), rather than anactualised configuration (cf. Anderson, 1983). What makes public communicationmaterials produced for the European Capital of Culture schemeparticularly available to critical analysis is that they are so explicitly designed
to generate symbolic capital through the exploitation and creation of theseEuropean mythologies. On this basis, we report our social semiotic analysis(Jewitt & Oyama, 2001; van Leeuwen, 2005) of a range of visual texts collectedfrom the public communication of a number of past and present cities eithernominated or competing for the title of European Capital of Culture. Within
this framework, we view visual discourse as the deployment of resources(rather than codes) for social action, and whose meaning potentials (rather thanmeanings) may be exploited for political, economic and ideological ends.Envisioning Europe: The European Capital of Culture SchemeIn 1999, the European City of Culture scheme, originally founded in 1985,was renamed the European Capital of Culture and is currently financedthrough the European Commission’s Culture 2000 programme. From 2007onwards, two cities each year will share this status in a move to include those#p#分页标题#e#
countries admitted into the EU in 2004:
A Community action entitled ‘European Capital of Culture’ shall beestablished. Its objective shall be to highlight the richness and diversityof European cultures and the features they share, as well as to promotegreater mutual acquaintance between European citizens. (EuropeanParliament and Council of the European Union, 1999: 2)
Where previously European Cities of Culture had been selected by memberstates on an intergovernmental basis, the selection process changed in 2005 to
incorporate central EU institutions (in the form of a panel of experts) into theselection process. In its most recent framing of the European Capital of Culture
留学生dissertation网scheme, the European Parliament stresses the need to promote what it calls the‘European dimension’, explained as follows:a. fostering cooperation between cultural operators, artists and citiesfrom other Member States in any cultural sector;
b. highlighting the richness of cultural diversity in Europe; and,
c. bringing the common aspects of European cultures to the fore.(Commission of the European Communities, 2005: 5
8)
150 Language and Intercultural Communication
With the help of a research assistant, we identified the cities currently holding,
and in the process of competing for, the European Capital of Culture title
between 2005 and 2011.We wrote to each of these cities and asked for copies of
any promotional materials related to their bid. With print publicity materials
received from Cork, Stavanger, Kassel, Potsdam and Halle, our dataset was
completed with an archived collection of all available official websites of the
following cities: Cork, Patras, Sibiu, Luxembourg, Liverpool, Bristol, Birmingham,
Cardiff, Stavanger, Potsdam, Kassel, Karlsruhe, Go¨ rlitz, Essen, Braunschweig,
Halle, Lu¨ beck, Regensburg, Bremen, Pe´cs, Miskolc, Budapest, Gyo˝r,
Eger, Lahti, Ma¨ntta¨, Rovaniemi, Tampere, Turku and Tartu. Altogether, our
analysis covered 30 different cities out of the 43 running for, or holding, the
title of European Capital of Culture during this period.2
In working through these materials, we chose to isolate and focus on the
one key, very noticeable feature
visual images and designs. Of course,
meaning is never to be simply ‘found’ in any image or visual text itself, but
rather in its situated design, production and distribution; it is also to be located
in the discourses that contextualise and constitute the image or text (Kress &
van Leeuwen, 2001). So, although we do not therefore engage fully with the
complete multimodality of these texts, our discussion focuses on the more
significant (in both senses of the word) meaning potentials and mythologies
that appear to underpin the visual discourse of European Capital of Culture#p#分页标题#e#
publicity. On this basis, and in briefly presenting our analysis here, we mean to
consider these questions:
(1) What are the dominant visual resources used in the branding of European
Capital of Culture cities?
(2) What ideologies of Europeanness are communicated by these resources?
(3) What opportunity does each visual resource offer for intercultural
exchange?
The Performance and Production of a European Identity
What is perhaps most striking about the visual discourse of the European
Capital of Culture scheme is its general uniformity, especially given that there
are no centralised rules about promotional materials and certainly no
regulated images or design requirements. As a competitive, marketing
exercise, however, candidate cities are clearly obliged to work with existing
formats (or genres) and visual/design repertoires.3 From the outset, for
example, each city produces a logo with which to brand itself simultaneously
distinctive yet recognisable in terms of the standard practices of European
Capital of Culture candidature.
It is in this way that the underlying, performative nature of the European
Capital of Culture scheme initially reveals itself (cf. Butler, 1980). Regardless of
any appeal to ‘cultural diversity’, cities ultimately adhere to generic processes
and semiotic practices to establish their suitability; in other words, it is by
reproducing the institutionalised look of a European Capital of Culture
candidate that cities are able to start positioning themselves as capitals of
culture. Part of the symbolic capital they must leverage lies in production
Visual Discourse in the European Capital of Culture Scheme 151
values of design and presentation, and the available intertextual cachet of
corporate discourse practices.
Throughout the visual discourse of the European Capital of Culture
scheme, various resources are deployed through two main modes of
production. On the one hand, texts are constituted through the selection of
basic visual content and literal/figurative images whose meaning potential,
while unavoidably symbolic, is primarily iconic (Peirce, 1931
1958) (e.g.
cityscapes, fireworks, children, maps, ‘high culture’). Additional meaning is,
however, also generated through the particular way images are presented or
stylised (cf. Thurlow & Aiello, 2006; van Leeuwen, 2005); in these cases, it is
the symbolic potential of various design effects or choices that are exploited
(e.g. diversity, genericity, metonymy). Where visual content pertains to what
semiotic material is included (or excluded), design effects relate more
specifically to how this material is presented. In each case, ideology and
inter/cross-culturality are realised slightly differently.
Resource 1
Cityscapes: City as Ideological Place#p#分页标题#e#
In considering the ‘literal’ or iconic visual resources, cityscapes are not
surprisingly one of the more recurrent visual themes
whether depicted
through a photographic image (Figure 2) or other stylised representation
(Figure 3).
Regardless of their iconic or denotative veracity (their ‘what you see is what
you get’ quality), the ideological dimension of these images lies in what is
excluded rather than what is included. With the focus on buildings rather than
people, and usually taken from a distance, these views are often disembodied
Figure 1 A selection of European Capital of Culture logos (Cork, Liverpool, Patras,
Turku, Budapest and Pe´cs)
152 Language and Intercultural Communication
and detached, with seldom any indication of the more gritty, idiosyncratic
aspects of city life that might otherwise be revealed upon closer inspection. It
is in this way also that the cultural life of cities is, superficially at least, framed
less in terms of its human geography and more in terms of its physical
geography. Indeed, the built environment was unquestionably the most
ubiquitous theme, and people typically depicted as scenery or architectural
‘backdrop’ (see below for more on both these points). In privileging material
over social culture, these images of the city reveal how, in the words of Soja
(1989: 6) ‘relations of power and discipline are inscribed into the apparently
innocent spatiality of social life’. These representations avoid the specificity of
human faces in favour of the genericity of (European) places. We return to this
point below.
Resource 2
Fireworks: Iconic and Symbolic Meanings
One of the most common visual motifs are firework images, depicted with
varying degrees of abstraction, from photographic images of actual firework
displays to the kind of stylised representation in Cork’s publicity (e.g.
Figure 2 Cityscapes (Kassel brochure)
Figure 3 Cityscapes (Patras website banner)
Visual Discourse in the European Capital of Culture Scheme 153
Figure 1). An already cross-culturally available visual resource, fireworks also
symbolically invoke a sense of celebration and perhaps persuasively hint at
anticipated victory in the competition for European Capital of Culture status.
What is more telling about this type of visual resource, however, is that it is
both uncontroversial and again highly generic. These features are typical of
visual design work undertaken within the institutional framework of
the EU
quintessentially exemplified in the design of the Euro banknotes
(Figure 4), which depict widely recognisable European architectural styles
without representing a specific or actual construction.4 It is precisely through
the use of figuratively iconic images which also have shared, symbolic#p#分页标题#e#
resonances that resources such as fireworks are also cross-culturally effective.
Resource 3
Children: Generic Semioscape
Another dominant visual resource that offers a similar degree of genericity
is imagery of children, as in Figure 5. A particularly familiar touristic trope, the
use of children reveals a little more of the commercial motivation (i.e.
monetary capital) in the European Capital of Culture scheme. Symbolically
speaking, representations of children, women and the elderly in tourism are
strategically safe and unthreatening for visitors (Thurlow et al ., 2005). Children
are, of course, also cross-culturally available icons with the added connotative
meaning potential of innocence and, in turn, ‘naturalness’ and ‘tradition’.
As with the fireworks, the important thing about these images of children is
that, with few exceptions, they could be just about anywhere in Europe;
and this is precisely where their intercultural potential lies. Machin (2004)
makes a similar case in his account of commercial image banks where, he
argues, the globally distributed imagery of organisations like Getty Images
evidences a shift towards a globalised visual language predicated on the
absence of specificity and descriptive detail. For us, this manifests a
‘semioscape’
the nonmediatised globalising circulation of deterritorialised
symbols (see Thurlow & Aiello, 2006). In this case, the global indexes a
pan-European perspective and the local a national one
or even a city
one. Given this premise, visual images can be means of intercultural
communication also and above all because they are capable of carrying both
‘specific’ and ‘generic’ meaning potentials, through the co-presence and
interplay of visual markers of ‘local’ and ‘global’ or even ‘deterritorialised’
identities (cf. Garcı´a-Canclini, 1998).
Figure 4 Generic specificity (Euro banknotes)
154 Language and Intercultural Communication
Resource 4
Maps: Political and Perceptual Salience
Another common visual motif used by many European Capital of Culture
cities is maps
an immediately recognisable, cross-culturally available text.
As visual approximations and distortions of physical realities, maps are
inherently and unavoidably ideological (Thurlow & Jaworski, 2003). Visually
speaking, however, the use of maps entails more than the deployment of an
iconic resource by which cities can put themselves on the map
in some cases,
Figure 5 Children (Stavanger, brochure)
Figure 6 Putting themselves on the map (Go¨ rlitz, website)
Visual Discourse in the European Capital of Culture Scheme 155
even, to show other Europeans where exactly the city is. The opportunities for
communication are greater and more subtle than this, however. In most cases,#p#分页标题#e#
for example, maps employ a series of visual strategies to draw attention to
themselves and, symbolically, to prioritise themselves
most notably through
contrastive colouring. One other key visual resource for not only increasing
salience but also expressing a point of view is the use of centring as in Figure 6.
In this case, centrality is additionally achieved though the use of concentric
circles radiating or emanating from the ‘source’ (cf. Kress & van Leeuwen,
1996: 206). The meaning potential of these maps is thereby activated through
the perceptual salience of a centred focus and through the cross-cultural
significance of importance in centrality. Just as airlines employ these resources
to communicate an image of themselves as ‘global players’ (Thurlow &
Jaworski, 2003: 586
590), the use of maps by European Capital of Culture
cities and especially the particular design choices by which the maps are
constituted, are naturalised projections of European Capital of Culture cities’
aspiration to be both European and centrally or, by implication, quintessentially
so
to be, as it were, at the mythological ‘heart of Europe’.
Resource 5
Detail: The Appearance of Diversity
Another example of a nonliteral visual resource deployed in the
European Capital of Culture campaigns is the use of ‘busy’ collaged images
(see Figure 7). In these instances, a particular design effect is arguably used to
connote and imply a more literal reality. In positioning themselves in relation
to the ‘European Dimension’, cities must persuade judges of the presence of a
‘richness of cultural diversity’
both in terms of a range of cultural activities
and social heterogeneity. As with Figure 7, however, the stylisation of diversity
potentially conceals specificity (e.g. the highly localised markers of cultural
identity such as particular works of art) and uniformity (e.g. the repetition of
visual content which in fact over-represents whiteness and masculinity). With
ethnic and other minorities noticeable by their absence, it is in this way that
images also shore up the ‘imaginative geography’ (Said, 1979) of insiders and
outsiders of the city as a European capital of culture.
Resource 6
Metonymy: Performing Culture
The depiction of specific cultural artefacts or high-cultural practices is
inherently metonymic as these are only visible, discrete manifestations (i.e.
parts) of an otherwise far wider, more complex experience of culturality
(e.g. Figure 8). The meaning of these images is inevitably realised through
selection and exclusion; as such, they too are unavoidably ideological.
Linguistically speaking, materials from various European Capital of Culture
cities mirror this exclusionary depiction of culture
while also echoing the#p#分页标题#e#
semiotic resource of ‘multiplicity’ for ‘diversity’. See, for example, the
following example of several metacultural commentaries by which culture is
often ‘defined’ in European Capital of Culture publicity:
156 Language and Intercultural Communication
Figure 7 The appearance of diversity (Halle, postcard)
Figure 8 Performing ‘culture’ (Go¨ rlitz, webpage image)
Visual Discourse in the European Capital of Culture Scheme 157
Culture is history, is tradition, is architecture, is fine arts, is music, is
theatre, is literature, is science, is business and is passed on as a legacy
from generation to generation: in Halle for almost 1200 years.
Visually speaking, the metonymy is often taken even further, as in Figure 8. In
these cases, all that is needed is the metonymic suggestion of a theatre or of a
neoclassical building in order to index and invoke the same sense of ‘high
culture’ and specifically high European culture. Importantly, these images also
work performatively to reinscribe the notion that culture may be reduced to
these material artefacts, spaces and practices.
At the level of representation we see the privileging of certain mythologies
about not only culture but also about Europe. For example, the past here is
(re)presented as a strategic claim to a shared heritage in such a way that a
historical sense of the ‘proto-European’ comes to be equated with current
appeals to the ‘pan-European’. In other words, the shared contemporary
identity is generated through appeals to an ancient or classical past, which
itself is (re)presented by privileging certain themes and
quite literally

‘parts’ of Europe. The story of Europe that is told by these metonymic
resources is necessarily a particularistic and exclusive one. Insofar as it
selectively edits in and edits out given ‘parts’ of European ‘culture’, it also
depicts a distinctly ideological and political version/vision of Europeanness
(cf. Delanty & Rumford, 2005). Nonetheless, as a design choice, metonymy still
offers a strategic genericity to the architectural themes represented in these
images (see Figure 9, for example). By focusing on ‘snippets’ of buildings that
are distinctly, classically European but not recognisably specific to any local or
national context, these images can be used as a means of collective identity
construction and of intercultural exchange.
In Search of the ‘European Dimension’: Visual Discourse and
Intercultural Exchange
[I]s there from now on a place for a capital of European culture? Can one
project a center, at least a symbolic center, at the heart of this Europe that
has considered itself for so long to be the capital of humanity or of the#p#分页标题#e#
planet and that would renounce this role today, some believe, only at the
moment when the fable of planetarisation of the European model still
seems quite plausible? . . . But the ineluctable question of the capital does
not disappear for all that. It now signals toward struggles over cultural
hegemony. (Derrida, 1992: 36
37)
In this brief paper, we have considered how, in the multilingual context of
Europe, visual discourse functions as a cross-lingual, cross-cultural mode of
communication. This is not to say that the visual necessarily (or, indeed, ever)
exists extraculturally. Just as basic perceptual apprehension may be culturally
influenced (Panofsky, 1972/1991), it is also possible for visual imagery to be
used deliberately to avoid the practical challenges of multilingualism, and it
may also conceal political inequalities and opportunities. Nevertheless, the
158 Language and Intercultural Communication
perceptual, denotative and iconic availability/accessibility of much visual
discourse can render it a powerful mediating interface between linguaculture
and material culture. Like language, visual discourse is also a key site for the
negotiation, consolidation and naturalisation of major cultural narratives and
collective identities (Hall, 1997).
The cross-cultural communicative power of the visual renders images and
http://www.ukthesis.org/dissertation_writing/other nonlinguistic representations key sites of intercultural and ideological
exchange. In an attempt to position themselves as deserving of participation in
the ‘European dimension’, member states engage in an exchange of both
symbolic and economic capital within a supposedly common cultural marketplace.
In this context, visual discourse functions as a complex marker of ‘local’
(i.e. city and/or national) identity as well as a powerful form of currency in
asserting the ‘global’ Europeanness of a city/country’s identity. And the
nature of visual discourse seems to be such that it is ideally suited for
managing this dialectic (cf. Thurlow & Aiello, 2006).
Perhaps more so than language, visual discourse manages the coexistence
of difference and similarity, specificity and genericity, and the local and the
global. In part, this is because the iconicity and perceptual availability of visual
images make them potentially recognisable and meaningful across cultures.
Ultimately, the same images can be given extremely similar meanings by
people who do not share the same language
and without the need for them
to learn a new symbolic code (Barthes, 1964/1977). While the syntax of any
given text is always framed culturally, historically and ideologically (Panofsky,
1927/1991), images do not appear real to us merely through socialised#p#分页标题#e#
convention (Gombrich, 1982; Messaris, 2003).
In the case we examine here, the repetition and uniformity of visual
resources across visual texts contribute to the creation and consolidation of a
visual repertoire of ‘Europeanness’, which in turn is likely to be used as
currency for the exchange of intercultural meanings and thus also for a
mutual (not necessarily equal) understanding of what European culture is and
what it means to represent it through the European Capital of Culture in any
given year. If, as Bauman (2004: 5) states, ‘the ‘‘essence of Europe’’ tends to
run ahead of the ‘‘really existing Europe’’’, then the visual discourse of
Europeanness that underlies these texts is also fertile ground for the strategic
cross-cultural construction of European identity.
Nonetheless, in our examination of the semiotic resources employed by
different European Capital of Culture cities in their efforts to express the
Figure 9 Metonymic repertoires (Tartu, website banner)
Visual Discourse in the European Capital of Culture Scheme 159
‘European dimension’ of their candidacy, we also see how certain discursive
themes are privileged in the re-presentation of this cross-cultural narrative
about Europe. The content and design resources of these different images,
then, are telling not only of the ‘stories’ that are included and excluded in
this discourse, but, as Derrida (1992) notes, also of the forms of cultural
hegemony that these may embody and promote. As such, the ongoing visual
representation of European identity in the European Capital of Culture scheme
should be seen as a twofold process: in a Foucauldian sense, it is informed and
regulated by an authoritative, historically constituted ‘knowledge’ that also
limits the range of available visual resources (cf. Foucault, 1980); this process
then also works to ‘select’ and ‘fix’ given resources over others to form
legitimate symbolic capital for the visual construction of European identity. As
with the Euro banknotes, in the European Capital of Culture scheme
Europeanness is stylised and performatively reinscribed for a cross-cultural
audience through the repetition of generic cultural details or identity markers.
And, of course, those who control the economic means of production also
control the mechanisms of representation (Hall, 1997); by the same token,
those who are charged with managing and manipulating semiotic resources
can leverage tremendous political and economic power.
Acknowledgements
We are very grateful to our undergraduate research assistant Karishma
Pillay for her help with collecting many of the visual materials that make up
our dataset, and to our departmental colleague Paul Ford for helping to create#p#分页标题#e#
the online resource that accompanies this paper. We are also grateful to those
city officials and other representatives who kindly responded to our request
for their promotional materials, and especially to those who gave us
permission to reproduce their materials here. This paper was initially
prepared for presentation at the 6th Annual IALIC Conference ‘Europe Inside
Out’, Haute Ecole Francisco Ferrer, Brussels, 9
11 December 2005.
Correspondence
Any correspondence should be directed to Dr Crispin Thurlow,
Department of Communication, University ofWashington, Box 353740, Seattle,
WA 98195, USA ([email protected]).
Notes
1. A comprehensive display of the visual data we examine in this paper has been
published online at http://faculty.washington.edu/thurlow/europe/.
2. Thirteen of the cities did not have an official European Capital of Culture website.
Finland and Estonia will submit their nomination of one or more candidates by the
end of 2006.
3. In addition to its website, for example, Kassel’s promotional package included: a
branded folder, two different postcards, a bookmark, a car sticker, a lapel pin, a
neck cord, a door/window sticker, a compliment slip, T-shirts (six different
designs), street posters (two sizes), envelopes, letter headed paper, a sheet of small
stickers, a full catalogue, a general publicity brochure, as well as three other
brochures designed especially for sponsors, fund-raisers and donors. Because they
were too big to send, we did not receive the flags, banners, school bags and
information booths!
160 Language and Intercultural Communication
4. The Euro banknotes have images representing seven different European architectural
periods (e.g. Classical, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque) but
without representing any actual existing monument. The notes are ‘interpreted’ by
the European Central Bank’s website as follows: ‘On the front of the banknotes,
windows and gateways symbolise the European spirit of openness and cooperation.
The 12 stars of the European Union represent the dynamism and
harmony between European nations. To complement these designs, the reverse of
each banknote features a bridge. The bridges symbolise the close co-operation and
communication between Europe and the rest of the world.’ www.euro.ecb.int/en/
section/testnotes.html.
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