{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.043403769274700174, 'fraction_numerical': 0.022844089091947458, 'mean_word_length': 5.26654740608229, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Airports as an encoding/decoding device: a semiotic analysis of a designed spaceAirports as an encoding/decoding device: a semiotic analysis of a designed space

Airports are spaces designed to embed descriptive, prescriptive and predictive views (or “codes”) that reflect the behaviour of passengers. They are used to study and influence conducts not only in the airport space but also on a larger social scale.To a semiotic analysis this can be observed at the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic level (Morris 1946). At the syntactic level airport architecture is made of strong distinctions (eg. airside/lanside) separated by barriers, areas of passenger flow and stagnation, and spaces of sight organization (Adey 2008); at the semantic level it's a place densely populated with meanings: freedom, but also security and border passing, overlapping sovereignties and globalized surveillance (Lyon 2003); at the pragmatic level, we can observe that some airport-specific conduct is being induced, ready to be reused in non airport-contexts: the very bodily discipling required by security checks subverting customary conducts in public, the acceptance of privacy-invasive biometric surveillance technologies, the one-direction flow of passengers and the “captive customer” / “impulse purchasing” behaviour for shops area (Crawford and Melewar 2003).In such an analysis of airport design, passengers are simplified but still well articulated subjects: customers, but also bodies carrying potential security threats requiring discipline and specific affective spacial conditions, and consumers wandering in a shopping environment. Along this view, airports are a an experimental socializing context testing societies of normalization at the intersection of a norm of discipline and norm of regulation taking in charge both the regulation of population and the discipline of bodies (Foucault 1997; Foucault 1975). Wherever the same spatial syntax is put in place – whether at security checks for mega-events or the forced crowd flow at Ikea shops– the coded behaviour socialized by airports is ready to be enacted. Airports can be seen as prototypical devices decoding and encoding of social behaviours of huge travelling crowds. On the one hand arrangements to study interactions and customary habits (Barry 2001), on the other hand an enabling environment training passengers to keep a predictable conduct. Simultaneously a «structure structuree», a principle of vision and division but also also a «structure structurante» (Bourdieu 1972) that organizes practices, building the habitus of the citizen of a dystopian society of normalization. References Adey, Peter. 2008. “Airports, Mobility and the CalculativeArchitecture of Affective Control.” Geoforum 39 (1): 438–51. Barry, Andrew. 2001. Political Machines: Governing a Technological Society. London, New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1972. Esquisse D’une Theorie de La Pratique. Paris, FR: Edition du Seuil. Crawford, Gerry, and T. C Melewar. 2003. “The Importance of Impulse Purchasing Behaviour in the International Airport Environment.” Journal of Consumer Behaviour 3 (1): 85–98. Foucault, Michel. 1975. Surveiller et Punir : Naissance de La Prison. Paris: Gallimard. ———. 1997. Il Faut Defendre La Societe. Paris, FR: Gallimard/Seuil. Lyon, David. 2003. Surveillance after September 11. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Morris, Charles William. 1946. Signs, Language, and Behavior. New York, NY, USA: G. Braziller.