From gold to futurity: a semiotic overview on trust, legal tender and fiat money

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the first part of the paper, I am summarizing the most relevant findings of the semiotic study of the money sign. It starts with a tripartition of the major types, namely commodity money, representative money, and fiat money. I then use this approach in order to position the most important contributions of other authors from semiotics and surrounding disciplines. In the second part, I develop a semiotic reading of the notion of legal tender where the latter is seen as a semiotic mechanism that provides particular conditions for the formation of the value of money. I combine a historical review with stress on important theoretic reflections during the development and implementation of pure legal tender money. The last part is dedicated to a proposal for a semiotic model of the fiat money sign. The model is developed and implemented as a reflection on some critical readings of the world financial crisis from 2008 to 2009, where the “semiotization of money” was used for explication. My model is based on one of the most insightful definitions of money, which sees them as “trust inscribed”.