| Chain restaurants constitute a particularly pervasive vehicle for the production of ideology in American society. Examining chain restaurants allows one to look at how advertising, marketing, architectural design, labor practices and real estate combine to form a cultural artifact, a text, which can be decoded.; Four types of chain restaurants were chosen for the data base: (1) fast food, (2) coffeeshop, (3) theme restaurants, and (4) take-out places. Interviews were conducted with corporate personnel at Denny's Inc., owner of Denny's Restaurants and Winchell's Donut Houses, Specialty Restaurant Corporation, producer of the 94th Aero Squadron Restaurant, and Carl Karcher Enterprises, producer of Carl's Jr. Restaurants. Interviews were also conducted with major advertising firms. Interview data was combined with an examination of corporate annual reports, menus, architectural design, training manuals, real estate procedures, advertisements and observations of individual restaurants.; A semiotic method is used to examine the juxtapositions, dissociations, emptyings and condensations of sign relations within the restaurant text. This is preceded by a separation of the text into components of front and back regions, entrances, doors, windows, lighting, landscaping, menus, photographic technique and other elements. The combined sign relation configurations for the different components are related to broader social and political concerns.; The particular manner in which these artifacts are produced reveals an emphasis of one set of sign relations over another, a relation which is consistent with the commercial ideology of American society. This ideology is manifested by a systemization of cultural elements. In concluding it is shown how this commercial ideology of systemization fits into a developing postmodern culture. |
