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This chapter first examines the history and role of the Bulgarian flag in the constitution of Bulgarian national identity, a process which began in the second half of the nineteenth century. It then proposes a semiotic model of the identity, one that centers its constructed character and flexibility while performing social interactions. A basic divide between the communicative resources of the self places a person’s individual characteristics in opposition to collective ones. The national flag and colors are interpreted among the expressive forms of the collective identity, in the subcategory of constitutive features for which an individual has no choice. An interpretation of the value flows for identity in social intercourse follows, modeled as an “ego economy” where the reception and production of recognition from and for others is seen as an “ego currency”. This model demonstrates that the particular efficacy of national symbols is amplified by the efficacy of the “nationalist libido”. The use of the nationalist flags, colors, symbols, and narrative in new media thus prepare a fertile ground for the emerging digital populism, one that is masterfully employed by right-wing figures with significant political results and disquieting prospects for the future.

This chapter explores philosophical and semiotic considerations pertaining to the relation between word and color and some of its social effects in four steps. 1. Flag. A first step concerns the flag as a social symbol made by fixed varieties of colors. Its colors refer to social patterns, in Occidental culture formatted along the classical theory of social contract and its individualistic, mechanistic and rationalistic features. Displacement and togetherness seem deeply engraved in the mind of the flagging individual(s), a mind often at far distance from any specific flag-event. 2. Colors. The second step is on colors and the slogan ‘colors like words’. The central question regards the words, which should serve as a parallel to colors. If a color depends on a linguistic expression, then the basis of that expression is important for color and color-experience. 3. Speech. The third paragraph emphasizes the study of the word by means of considering ‘speech’. Basic is the difference between langue and parole. ‘Word’ understood as langue functions in the slogan ‘colors like words’ whereas ‘word’ understood as parole is neglected. ‘Speech’ as the context for ‘word’ is therefore researched as a source of word–color semantics. 4. Digit. ‘From langue to parole’ is not a single static path amidst differing contexts. Recent mutations concern digital language as a future global context: (a) names play a new and different role in digital language structures, as the Internet and its multiple use of names and passwords daily demonstrates; (b) codes, in particular color codes, function like words and texts, as the website ‘electronic color code’ suggests; (c) communication unfolds beyond the limits of human will and attention; (d) the concept of O/other, the most vital component of human life and communication, does not remain unchanged in a life based on digits.

Flag use by far-right demonstrators at the 2017 Unite the Right rally is similar to historical flag use in public demonstration by antidemocratic groups seeking to deprive others of equal democratic rights, such as the Nazi Party between 1920 and 1945 and American segregationists during the Civil Rights Movement in the mid-twentieth century. This sort of flag use brings democratic values such as free speech and equal protections into conflict. Since World War II, international democratic norms have shifted to emphasize human dignity and equality, even if it requires limitations on free speech. Germany’s constitutional order is designed to protect democracy from antidemocratic groups in part by criminalizing display of flags representing them. Meanwhile, free speech absolutism in the United States makes it exceedingly difficult to impose legal sanctions for flag use, allowing flags that are in fact hate speech to masquerade as protected political speech.

After an outline of the history, design and uses of the Australian flag, this paper considers the media frenzy and public outcry surrounding the publication of research findings identifying a relationship between the flying of Australian flags on cars for Australia Day and racist attitudes. While the findings did not surprise many social scientists, given the semiotics of the flag and its increasing use as a symbol of exclusion, they were apparently highly contentious for portions of the Australian public. This paper describes and analyses the public reaction using three case studies from among the hundreds of examples. An email, a blog discussion, and a newspaper article, are analysed to demonstrate overlapping themes focussed on racism, patriotism, and nationalism. The chapter concludes that the publicity flagging the relationship between flag use and exclusionary nationalism actually may have worked against the goal of producing a considered debate about appropriate forms of nationalism and flag use, delivering the flag into the hands of exclusionary nationalist.

Both the flags of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China’s (ROC) have the colour red; however, red represents different meanings on both flags. The colour red on the ROC flag represents “fraternité” originated from the French Revolution. The colour red on the PRC flag is from the flag of The Soviet Union, which the colour red is originally the colour of the flag of La Commune de Paris. There have been many incidents involving the desecration, burning or damaging of the national flag of the Republic of China (ROC, 中華民國) over the years. In Taiwan, some people think that the ROC has ceased to exist since 1949, and that the ROC can no longer represent Taiwan and the KMT (the Nationalist Party, Kuomintang) is controlled by the PRC. They use flag desecration as a means to attack one China policy and the PRC. In this paper, I will explore the reason why the ROC national flag has been targeted in Taiwan, and question whether or not damaging the flag is really a meaningful and successful way to attack both the ROC and the PRC. Furthermore, I will explain how protesters attack the PRC by attacking the ROC flag by way of a discussion of the colour code of both national flags. In addition, I will discuss the meaning of the red on both flags, and I will also explain why an attack on the ROC flag, based on the colour of the ROC and PRC flags, is not a successful way to attack the PRC.

In the passage of the Course in General Linguistics where Ferdinand de Saussure first foresaw the necessity to develop a new discipline called “semiology”, “nautical flags” are prominently listed among its objects of inquiry. Flags, indeed, are naturally interesting objects for semiotics, not only because they signify through a systematic display of forms and colors, but also because of the specific pragmatics of such display. A flag can be thought of abstractedly, as an array of symbols, but it features also a specific materiality, wherein two elements particularly stand out: (1) the flag is generally a textile; (2) this textile is meant to interact with a natural element, the wind. Flags are so symbolically important also because they seem to acquire an individual agency when they wave in the wind, and therefore to confer this autonomous agency to the cultural ideas which they stand for. The paper investigates this particular semiotics in relation to opposite ideological usages of the Italian national flag, meant to signify an either inclusive or exclusive identity.

The symbolic functioning of flags is related to many large topics in philosophy and in social sciences. My interest here is in the dialectics of how flags mean. Flags are polysemic and ambiguous, a kind of symbolic nodes grouping several layers of signification. Flags are not images, though, but objects made to be used not contemplated. Once raised, flags may talk. But what they say when talking depends upon the modes of use in communal practices. When used, flags contribute to the staging of an event. They are performative utterances in a specific situation. The paper begins with a short review of modern discourses on the nexus between light, colour, and emotion as unreflective forms of perceiving the world. Drawing upon studies on the contemporary production and reproduction of ways of seeing the chapter then explores in greater detail specific aspects of the dialectics of sense-making through flags. Aside from symbolising as well as iconic and spectacular modes of use banal forms of performance are taken into account. Once there, flags are signs of their own context. What they promote, the paper suggests, is not unity but configurations of common differences. Finally, the article addresses the role of flags for the assemblage of cultural identities of populations connected by digital media and the formation of society in the age of globalisation.

As we advance into the twenty-first century, more and more of what has once been crucial to the functioning of a society, slides into oblivion. However, certain agents of the past, carriers of social memory, prevail. One such an agent is the flag. More than just a mere symbol, the flag bears an opulent amount of meaning, sometimes accumulated over the centuries, at other times acquired overnight, evoking either love and pride, fear and contempt, or just indifference. The purpose of this paper is to analyse flags as carriers of collective memories and of local and national identity, and to compare various legal provisions controlling and protecting them. In the first part of the paper, the author introduces the concept of collective memory, showing how flags—carriers of memory—are connected to it. The second part of the paper is devoted to the questions of identity and national identity, and the ways they intersect with collective memories and, ultimately, flags. In the third, main part of the paper, the author ventures to examine the role of flags in the contemporary society. Applying the findings of the previous two chapters to a number of mini-case studies (Poland, Brazil, Australia, Greece, USA, various former USSR territories, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Hungary, Cyprus and Canada), the author shows how different societies hold different attitudes towards flags and how, even in a digital society we currently live in, such a material thing as a flag is vital for the creation of a group’s identity, and can still evoke deep and often completely conflicting feelings, even leading to conflict.