36.3803, Books: The Semiotics of Banknotes and Coins: Barreneche (2025)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-36-3803. Wed Dec 10 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.3803, Books: The Semiotics of Banknotes and Coins: Barreneche (2025)

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Date: 09-Dec-2025
From: Lucy Trotter [lucy.trotter at bloomsbury.com]
Subject: The Semiotics of Banknotes and Coins: Barreneche (2025)


Title: The Semiotics of Banknotes and Coins
Subtitle: Reading Contemporary Currency Design
Series Title: Bloomsbury Advances in Semiotics
Publication Year: 2025

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
           http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/
Book URL:
https://www.bloomsbury.com/semiotics-of-banknotes-and-coins-9781350451360/

Author(s): Sebastián Moreno Barreneche

Hardback, ISBN: 9781350451360, Price: £95.00

Abstract:

This book uses semiotics to study the design of a selection of
banknotes and coins currently circulating in the American and European
continents. Its purpose is to argue how the iconography used to
decorate them draws on pre-existing social discourses and meaning.
Moreover, it aims to show how currency design is an enunciative praxis
and hence, an activity shaped by cultural conventions that can be
approached as a specific discursive genre.
In a nutshell, the book demonstrates how, beyond their economic
function, banknotes and coins serve as the material support for a
visual type of cultural semiosis linked to the nation and the state.
The units of any currency system can be approached as visual texts
expressing contents linked with specific social discourses and ideas.
Since these texts are created and regulated by the state, they convey
meanings that relate to discourses about statehood and, with it, the
nation.
Informed by analyses of the United States dollar, the Canadian dollar,
the British pound sterling, the Swiss franc, the Brazilian real, the
Uruguayan peso, the Argentinean peso and the euro, the book highlights
the relevance of studying currency design in the scholarly efforts to
understand the discursive construction of states and nations.

Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics
                     General Linguistics
                     Sociolinguistics




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