Cultural Appropriation

Culture is a vital aspect to understand when it comes to communication for culture provides all of us with our background for the meaning-making process. We use signs to assign meaning to all objects, with the most unanimously shared meanings being dominant meanings, that prevail over all within a culture. (55) However it's important to realize there is no true inherit meaning in any given signifier; Entities such as shared meaning, history, and agreed upon values provide meaning, but even within the same culture slightly different interpretations of the signified will occur. Because of this ever-changing nature of culture, cultural appropriation is able to exist by modifying meanings of products that previously/alternatively/additionally mean something else. As explained by Cartwright and Sturken, “Cultural appropriation is the process of borrowing and changing the meaning of cultural products, slogans, images or elements of fashion” (83.) This change in meaning allows us to mix and match different text with different products to form a whole new meaning altogether. 
For my example we can look at the popular Burger King slogan, "Have It Your Way". This slogan is meant to say that you are most important as the customer and you may have anything you'd like, how ever you'd like it. It has a positive connotation and is meant genuinely.  Taken out of context and paired with another photo we can see how the meaning changes.     Here when we apply the same phrase, a different meaning emerges. Because of my clearly disgruntled look, "have it your way" doesn't feel genuine here, and to say that would probably hold a sarcastic tone, implying actual frustration and not satisfaction. Here, our meaning does a complete 180 turn, but also through the culturally understood form of sarcasm. Again, it's impossible to get outside of cultural meaning making, even when applying cultural appropriation and seeking out alternative functions of the signifier. Here however, we are still able to escape the dominant meaning of "have it your way" by adding a sarcastic twist.