Page - 42 - in >mcs_lab> - Mobile Culture Studies, Volume 2/2020

42 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 6 2o20 (Travel) Rhian Waller | Postcolonial Pictures Introduction According to Ferdinand de Saussure’s dyadic model of semiology, gestures and spoken or writ- ten words are signifiers. These become meaningful when linked to a signified concept, creating a sign. The social elements of this linguistic work were incorporated into the related branch of semiotic theory, which was further developed to encompass images and other signs by theorists such as Barthes (1964). However, the seeds of visual semiotics are present in de Saussure’s earlier work; in his explanation of the relationship between the sign (the word “tree”), the signifier (the sound of the word “tree”) and the signified (the tree-as-object), de Saussure uses a diagram; a referent to the concept of a tree (see de Saussure, 2006: 105). This is somewhat fitting: arboreal images frequently feature on travel book covers, and not necessarily to neutral effect. The relationship between sign, signifier and signified is seldom as simple or arbitrary as in the example given by de Saussure. Meaning may be actively created or passively acquired. It evolves, it elides, it osmoses by association, and it is sometimes assigned to an unwilling subject. With this in mind, this article will use a postcolonial lens in an attempt to peel back the layers of what is signified by the front covers of Paul Theroux’s travel non-fiction. US-born writer Paul Theroux is a prolific author, but despite his popularity, his work has received relatively little academic attention, and there is virtually no discussion of how his non- fiction is packaged in a visual form. He has been an active travel writer for well over 45 years, and his travels have spanned every populated continent. Theroux’s bibliography includes twenty-one non-fiction books and twenty-eight novels, as well as collections of short stories and articles. He won the 1978 Whitbread Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1981, his literature has been translated into multiple languages, and his novel Mosquito Coast (1982) was adapted into a film of the same name (Wier, Schrader, Theroux and Hellman, 1986). Pickering (2015) describes him as the eminent travel writer of his generation, and he is still active at the time of writing. Pragmatism dictates this analysis will be restricted to selected factual works published between The Great Railway Bazaar (first published in 1975) to On the Plain of Snakes (2019). The focus is on the novel-length Penguin editions, widely sold over the last four decades. Penguin, founded in 1935, is a major publisher in the UK. Its founding principal was to provide mass-market paperbacks that would be affordable to the general population. It has been noted as a key player in the cultural and literary history of the UK (Joicey, 1993). Following its trans- atlantic merger with Random House in 2013, Penguin Random House has become the biggest publisher in the world. This article includes a contextual section which sets out the overall aims of the study, inclu- ding a discussion of how semiotic analysis relates to book covers, and the purpose and practice of book cover design. A second section briefly outlines debates around travel literature, followed by an explanation of methodology. The main body of the article is given over to an analysis of post-1980s Penguin editions of Paul Theroux’s work, followed by a brief discussion of how the texts concur with or diverge from the cover matter and finally a conclusion. Book Covers and Semiotics The idiom ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ is hopelessly out-dated; designers spend a great deal