Last modified: 2004-09-18 by phil nelson
Keywords: flag: defining |
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Editor's Note: Vexillology is a study of flags. However, the meaning of a flag may differ according to the person who is seeing the flag. The discussion below is about defining flags for study.
It is astonishing that after some 40 years of organised vexillology, we still cannot agree on a definition for a flag. In Flags Through the Ages and Across the World, Whitney Smith originally defined a flag as:
A graphic and plastic medium of social communication, usually but not necessarily political in nature.
He must have felt this to be unsatisfactory, because in Flag Bulletin #185 (1999), he proposed the following definition for debate:
A flag is the intentional combination of colors and shapes in a symbol, usually manifested on a piece of cloth or other flexible material, created to serve as a political or social communication between the user or users and one or more other individuals.
To my knowledge no debate ensued - not in the Bulletin at any rate.
The second definition seemed a bit too academic for a practical sailor type and for my own use, I have devised the following definition with a deep bow in Whitneys direction:
"The word flag refers to any identifying symbol made of a plastic material such as bunting or any other similar cloth, of any formal geometric shape and of which the field consists of a colour or combination of colours in a fixed pattern, with or without additional designs on the field."
For me, if I may use an Americanism, it covers all the bases.
A flag, however it is defined, can be hoisted, hung over a balcony, framed, used as an altar cloth, or a coffin shroud, or draped over a podium, or displayed hanging from a cross bar or against a wall, etc, etc. The method of display has no relevance to its intrinsic existence as a flag. While the design of the flag is a permanent feature, the method of display is adapted to circumstance.
A flag is primarily a method or symbol of identification. All other uses are additional to this basic purpose. Flags, particularly national flags, are prone to becoming the objects of veneration, love, hate, pride and every other relevant human emotion. Meanings can also be arbitrarily assigned to flags, which have nothing to do with its design, or however it is defined. These emotions and meanings are the baggage flags tend to pick up during their active existence and is once again irrelevant to the basic definition of what a flag actually is. We have seen the same kind of pride, veneration and meaning attached to the Eagles of the Roman legions and they can at best be defined as vexilloids.
Whitney Smith laid stress on a flag as a means of social communication and so it is, but this is subordinate to its function as a symbol of identification, whether that be for a country, a province, a state, a municipality, a civil or commercial organisation, or a private individual.
Exceptions prove the rule. Advertising banners fall outside my definition of a flag as there is no element of identification in them. They simply tell you where you can get a coke or a Big Mac. Signal flags on the other hand, meet most of the criteria for a flag, but they are functional in nature in that they are used singly or in combination to convey information and have no identification or social communi