When the Signs Point to Coffee | 25, Issue 15
Walking along Tyrwhitt Road in Singapore, just outside the city center and off busy Lavender Street, you’ll find a nondescript shophouse—not unlike others along the same street, many home to hardware shops, car repair businesses, and suppliers of industrial machinery parts. The sign of the shophouse in question reads “Chye Seng Huat Hardware” both in English and in Chinese script (again, not so dissimilar in form from the other businesses along the street).
Sociolinguist ANDRE JOSEPH THENG explores what the application of semiotic theory—the study of signs and symbols—to specialty coffee spaces can tell us about how we construct and identify them (and at what cost). Photos by NIKKO PASCUA.
Chye Seng Huat Hardware is located in an art-deco shophouse previously occupied by a construction supplies company. Shophouses are a unique feature of the Singapore landscape, where various kinds of family-run enterprises are typically located on the ground floor with living quarters located upstairs.
There is no hardware to be found at Chye Seng Huat; it is, in fact, one of Singapore’s earliest and most preeminent specialty coffee outlets. The shophouse retains its original window grill and folding doors but none of these actually lead to the coffee shop. Instead, an oversized, slightly ajar vehicular gate which reads “No Parking” is the shop’s main entry. Chye Seng Huat’s speakeasy-nature is certainly not unique, with other (coffee) places around the world utilizing similar strategies of hiddenness, opaqueness, and being intentionally hard-to-find. So the question is: How do we know? How do we know that Chye Seng Huat is in fact a coffee shop and not a hardware shop, even though its sign might say otherwise?
These are some questions that arise out of applying semiotic theory in the business of interpreting signs in urban spaces. These are not just signs in the sense of “signage,” but a broader understanding of objects as signs which communicate information through their form, color, layout, and language, whether text or speech. When we try to make sense of what other people say or mean, or when we pick up two products in a shop aisle and decide which one is best for us, we engage in the act of interpretation. Even crossing the road—when we check the color of the light!—requires interpretation. A theory of semiotics helps us make sense of these different kinds of signs by breaking down the process of interpretation into different categories.
Semiotics is often studied by linguists and communication theorists—not surprising given that the two are often related—and its origins lie with two primary founders: Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss linguist and philosopher, and Charles Peirce, an American philosopher, logician, and mathematician. In the Saussurean model, the form of a word, the combinations of letters that make it up, or the way it is pronounced make up the “signifier” or the sign, whereas the object or concept that the word refers to is the “signified.” Peirce’s triadic model of “icon,” “index,” and “symbol” provided an alternative system to allow for additional layers of interpretation. An icon is something that has resemblance to the object represented: think of the signs at an airport pointing to the toilets, or to food outlets; a photograph might be an iconic way of representing an object. An index, on the other hand, is a sign that is connected to the object in some factual way, where the presence of the index implies the existence of the object: the presence of smoke indexes a fire. (A design feature I have spotted in coffee shops is the use of a coffee portafilter as a door handle: perhaps this is an index for a specialty coffee outlet?) Symbols are signs which have no likeness to the concept or object they represent, but where the relationship between the two arises out of a shared cultural knowledge. The handwritten blackboard of a certain size and shape, with some reference to coffee written on it, found at the door of a coffee shop might be such an example of a symbol.
Signs of Specialty (and Gentrification)
We begin to see how semiotic theory might be relevant to the study of coffee. Existing work in the field has considered specialty coffee from different perspectives, including specialty coffee terminology, tasting, or cupping lexicons; types of service (interactions in coffee shops between baristas and customers); and how coffee spaces exist both in the physical world (signage, layouts, business names, and typefaces) as well as the internet (social media, websites). Other existing work is closely tied to studies on the language of gentrification; the appearance of specialty coffee outlets has often been associated with gentrification, and studies in this area inevitably cover aspects of features associated with the new kinds of shops which replace older, traditional businesses (not unlike the example of Chye Seng Huat Hardware in Singapore).
The sheltered walkway outside the café is known as a "five-foot way," named after the typical width of an early-Singapore design feature meant to create a continuous covered passage along streets.
Specialty coffee shop Main Street Commissary has created a little nook with the café's name and a bench where customers can often be seen snapping a shot for social media.
Researchers are finding convergences in the semiotics of gentrification in different parts of the world, suggesting the emergence of a globalizing set of semiotic features. Kate Lyons, in her research on San Francisco’s Mission District,[1] gives the example of Lung Shan Restaurant and Mission Chinese Food. Lung Shan, a typical American Chinese restaurant, was replaced by the uber-hip Mission Chinese Food—but Mission Chinese retained the signage and awning of the original tenants. The new restaurant “hides” behind the sign of the original restaurant, with only those “in the know” aware of the change. Shonna Trinch and Edward Snajdr, who write on gentrification in Brooklyn,[2] distinguish between “old school vernacular” and “distinction-making” signs, pointing out features that are common to either kind of business. The former are associated with large typefaces, store names which are descriptive of the products and services on offer, and “sincere references” to religion, ethnicity, race, and class. These might be found in various ethnic shops targeted at particular groups of immigrants or minority groups. In contrast, “distinction-making signs” typically only contain a single word or a short phrase in small typeface, and its name might be more polysemic[3] or cryptic, containing obscure historical or literary references. The increasing confluence of these features across different places allows people to begin associating them with a kind of “brand” or type of place, resulting in our ability to recognize Chye Seng Huat as a specialty coffee place, despite—but also because of—its appearance.
Investigating Global Features in Local Spaces
Across dozens of visits to specialty coffee shops in Singapore and Hong Kong from 2017 to 2019, I found many of these discursive strategies prevalent and true in my own fieldwork. This is all the more so in the contexts of these two cities: both are cosmopolitan, wealthy city centers where coffee (and, in extension, specialty coffee) is an imported, foreign taste. Lately, well-traveled residents, fluent in the coffee cultures of other places, have brought these back home, resulting in the proliferation of specialty coffee outlets in the last decade. Many continue to spring up by the day. It’s not just the product being imported, but an entire culture of consumption—including the importation of the semiotics of coffee, evident in how coffee shops look and feel, and how coffee is discussed.
The places I visited were sometimes in hidden corners or down off-streets, with signage in very small typeface that can only be read close-up. The cafés often sported a monochromatic color scheme, not unlike the styles noted by Fabio Parasecoli and Mateusz Halawa in Global Brooklyn, a book that explores the similarities in the design of food experiences across world cities.[4] Appeals to nostalgia were another common feature—signage resembling old-school art deco movie houses, and references to now-extinct neighborhood provision shops in Hong Kong. A particularly interesting facet of this appeal was the use of Chinese characters in the café names or décor; English is typically thought of as the language of mobility and cosmopolitan globality in these cities, while Chinese typically the language of the streets—especially so in Hong Kong. In both cities, Chinese signs are typically found in traditional businesses and neighborhoods. The use of Chinese characters is a clear example of disavowal through an appeal to authenticity, by borrowing a style associated with the vernacular and reversing its conventional associations. Distinction is thus achieved by creating contrast, be it contrast from the “loud” and busy signage of neighborhood shops, from the language varieties found in the cafés, or through ironic and obscure references. In the process, cultural assumptions are formed as to who might be able to patronize these outlets. Who can tell coffee shops and hardware stores apart? What kind of cultural assumptions would you need to make these associations?
Doing Eliteness
Other areas of sociological research can help us understand how these cultural associations come to be. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of distinction, based on a study of twentieth century French society, found correlations between judgements of taste and social position. Those with higher social capital, in the form of education, social class, and family background, were able to determine for society what constituted “high culture.” Bourdieu called these accrued, socially ingrained views of what might be considered good taste the “habitus,” speaking to the relationship between an individual’s and society’s views of taste. These lifestyle choices are legitimized when the upper class display their sophistication as they enact class markers. Eating and drinking carry symbolic value in many different ways, as markers of not just class, but also of ethnic, national, religious, and cultural identity.
Black Fairy Coffee "stands out" from its neighbors, with relatively understated signage compared to those belonging to a Chinese food stall, a spa, and a salon.
More recently, Bourdieusian ideas of class formations have become of interest to academics seeking to connect recurring linguistic features with social critique. This area of Critical Discourse Studies is motivated by revealing various “common-sense” or “taken-for-grated” viewpoints surreptitiously built into and found in everyday language. The semiotics of gentrification and, in extension, specialty coffee is being studied as examples of “elite discourse,” ways in which language mediates and legitimizes class privilege through claims to eliteness. “Eliteness” here doesn’t just pertain to the top one percent but to middle-class, aspirational eliteness that manifests in all kinds of places. Unlike the more explicit markers of distinction Bourdieu found in Paris in the 1960s, there is an increasing recognition that symbols of eliteness are no longer as they used to be. Where these markers were all about ostentatious showiness, they are now understated covertness and disavowal.
Such are the findings of Gwynne Mapes, whose recently published study of “elite authenticity” reveals some of the tactics used to perform eliteness today. In a wide-ranging study of data including New York Times food reviews, Instagram posts, and ethnographic work conducted in Brooklyn restaurants, Mapes identifies disavowal as the underlying strategy of obscuring privilege. At hand is the paradox of the cultural omnivore: we partake in “omnivorous consumption” in order to achieve an elite identity, but we also find we need to “hide behind the mask of anti-snobbery, which in turn contributes to class privilege.”[5] Disavowal is orchestrated in different ways: in the romanticizing of the “local” and “natural,” claims to historical continuity, associations with the low-brow, and in the staging of sincerity, simplicity, and modesty.
Hidden in plain sight is The Wired Monkey café in Singapore’s "Little India." The neighboring Indian Muslim food stall is characteristic of the area, frequented by ethnically Indian Singaporeans and migrants alike.
In comparison to the large signage of its neighbors, the café is instead marked by a small hanging sign and a Lego monkey sculpture by its door.
The achievement of eliteness can thus be thought of as a discursive achievement: one resulting from how we talk about the material world, rather than through material differences. One manifestation of disavowal is through metaphorical “silencing”: the things we don’t say, or don’t show. Advertisements of high-end beach resorts often feature large expanses of sand and sea with nary a person in sight; ultra-hip restaurants lurk behind the former tenant’s signage; shop names are displayed in a minimalist setting. Language enables our disavowal. If we “don’t mean what we say,” it is not because we are being dishonest or insincere. Rather, the indirectness might be pointing to something else. In claiming to be one thing, we might actually suggest something entirely different—in claiming to be egalitarian, we might actually be doing eliteness.
Embodying Avowal
The conversation about justice in the specialty coffee world frequently surrounds ensuring coffee farmers receive a fair wage, but the conversation about how coffee shops can be more equitable spaces in the spirit of seventeenth century “penny universities” is just beginning. In an age of corporate social responsibility, how might a small, neighborhood café become once again a welcoming space to all? How can specialty coffee move away from its elite associations? What might such a place look like, and what sort of semiotics can point to a genuine egalitarianism? These are questions for the specialty coffee community to answer, hopefully, with the help of an understanding of the workings of language. The study of language helps us to become more reflexive about what are otherwise taken-for-granted, common-sense viewpoints. It is in the codification of semiotic styles and features that we can begin to see where exactly we stand in relation to the objects in question; it is in the noticing and the knowing that we understand the basic action we need to take to become catalysts for change.
So: How do we know that a coffee shop is a coffee shop? We know because we have been enculturated into a world and aesthetic of specialty coffee, and we understand the signs. But there is room to challenge these prevailing ideas, and to create spaces where cultural knowledge doesn’t dictate who is welcome and who isn’t—where all are welcome. ◇
ANDRE JOSEPH THENG is a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh School of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences working in sociolinguistics, especially at the intersection of online and offline spaces.
NIKKO PASCUA is a photographer based in Singapore focused on food, travel, and street photography. See more of his work on Instagram (@otherthanfood).
Notes & References
[1] Kate Lyons, From Street to Screen: Linguistic Productions of Place in San Francisco’s Mission District, http://hdl.handle.net/2142/100965
[2] Shonna Trinch and Edward Snajdr, What the Signs Say: Language, Gentrification, and Place-Making in Brooklyn (Vanderbilt University Press, 2020), https://www.vanderbilt.edu/university-press/book/9780826522771
[3] Capable of having several possible meanings.
[4] Fabio Parasecoli and Mateusz Halawa, Global Brooklyn: Designing Food Experiences in World Cities (Bloomsbury, 2021). https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/global-brooklyn-9781350144460/
[5] Gwynne Mapes, “(De)constructing distinction: Class inequality and elite authenticity in mediatized food discourse,” Journal of Sociolinguistics, 22 (2018): 265–287. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325460161_Deconstructing_distinction_Class_inequality_and_elite_authenticity_in_mediatized_food_discourse
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