MEFT2103 Final Essay
How Does the Apple Store Persuade You to Buy? A Semiotic Account of the Interpersonal Metafunction in Apple’s Sydney Store
Apple Inc. is an international computer headquartered in the US, which designs, manufactures, and markets personal computers, portable digital music players, and mobile communication devices and sells a variety of related software, services, peripherals, and networking solutions (Apple Annual Report 2008: P.1). The company opened its first retail store in the US in 2001. It now has over 200 retail stores around the world, which attract over 170.3 million visitors annually (Ifo Apple Store 21/10/2009). In 2008, Apple opened its first retail store in Sydney. Unlike traditional retail stores, the store is a multi-functional service centre, featuring the largest Apple product retail store in the south hemisphere and the largest genius bar in the world for free advice and personal training (Apple Store 21/10/2009).
The greatness of the Apple store lies in its effective application of social semiotics. Its exceptional use of material, effective product placement and uplifting ambience perfectly embody the company’s unique culture and ideology. Raveli and Stenglin suggest, “buildings make us feel” (2008: 355). Good buildings should invoke appropriate meanings that support the ideology of their institutions. Social semiosis studies how meanings in texts are produced socially. Every form of communication, visual, verbal or spatial, is a text, possessing three metafunctions, ideational (what is the text about?), interpersonal (what evaluative associations are evoked by the text?) and textual (How do compositional arrangements in the text influence the activation of meanings?) (Ravelli and Stenglin 2008: 356). In the light of Halliday, Kress, Van Leeuwen, Ravelli and Stenglin’s work on social semiotics, this paper analyses the interpersonal metafunction of Apple’s Sydney store. The retail store idolises its products and...
