The Semiotics of Wristwatches

Abstract

This article examines wristwatches as meaningbearing objects, essential to modern industrial societies. It discusses the everyday uses of wristwatches, including occasions on which they are given as gifts, gestures in which they are involved, and their role as cybernetic devices for modern workforces. It then looks at three advertisements which indicate how wristwatches are linked to the larger ideological assumptions of North American society. The paper concludes with an account, supported by evidence from these advertising texts, of changing attitudes to time in the postmodern period.