Building BILLY: The Intersection of Cognitive Semiotics and Cultural Techniques in IKEA Furniture Assembly

Abstract

Because it is common for research topics to be approached from desperate frameworks, it is rare to find a topic that brings together differing frameworks well. However, this paper argues that in the case of building the BILLY-style IKEA bookcase via the instruction manual, two desperate frameworks – cognitive semiotics and cultural techniques – become connected, intertwined, and dependent on each other for the individual to build the bookcase properly. Because IKEA instructions rely heavily on images, symbols and numbers without the aid of words, cognitive semiotics is brought to the forefront for their interpretation and application to the physical product. At the same time, cultural techniques must be implemented to accomplish these tasks; most notably, how to read instruction manuals, how to implement tools, and the ability to apply prior technique knowledge to the task at hand. The arguments for this paper pull from the BILLY instruction manual itself, as well as scholarly works that touch on topics from both cognitive semiotics and cultural techniques. On the side of cognitive semiotics, topics such as multimedia learning, knowledge management, visual narrativity, information linking, and tools as mediating devices are used. On the cultural techniques side, topics addressed include; how the cultural techniques of grids and lists are used in the instruction manual, how cultural techniques enable work with things and symbols as skills that require cognition, how instructions are the ultimate example of cultural techniques, and how the ‘techniques of the body’, which are an integral part of cultural techniques, require social, psychological, and biological elements much like cognitive semiotics. By including these varying topics in the cultural techniques discipline it can be shown how cultural techniques are formed alongside cognitive and semiotic processes and that cultural techniques and cognitive semiotics cannot escape each other in many instances.