The Semiotics of Banknotes and Coins

This book studies currency from a semiotic perspective, with a focus on how it reproduces and produces social meanings in the public sphere of the countries, and political organizations in the case of the EU, where it is used.

The currencies studied are the Argentinean Peso, the Brazilian Real, the British Pound Sterling, the Canadian Dollar, and the Croatian Kuna, the Euro, the Mexican Peso, the Swiss Franc, the Uruguayan Peso and the U.S. Dollar.

The author studies the various possible semiotic strategies underlying the design of these banknotes and coins from our present time through a semiotic study of their iconography. He argues that the iconography selected by the nation-state to design currency is not innocent or random, but rather meaning- and value-loaded.

The semiotic examination of the currencies of multiple countries allows us to extract some general conclusions regarding how money and currency can be the object of specific semiotic strategies revolving around the collective identity of a nation and the aspects of its cultural memory the State wants to bring to the fore as distinctive traits of that collective identity.