Semioticizing Capitalism in Corporate Brand Enactment: The Case of Singapore's Corporatized Universities

Corporate organizations, in their corporate branding efforts, often associate or imbue themselves with values and attributes like dynamism, competitiveness and empowerment, which are reflective of post-Fordist, neoliberal capitalist ideology. This article examines how such values are semioticized by a particular group of organizations - Singapore's corporatized universities - as they enact their corporate brands both verbally and visually, specifically through metaphor and modality. In doing so, these organizations and their corporate brands are conceived of as nodes of neoliberal governmentality, where they are subject to the regulatory influence of both the state and capital, while at the same time potentially exercising influence over brand recipients. The organizations' governmentalizing potential is actualized when stakeholders and brand supporters appropriate these corporate brands as symbolic and cultural resources in fashioning their individual subjectivities, making themselves amenable to the workings of capital, which in turn helps to sustain the prevailing neoliberal order.