Meaning Generation Of Brand Names In Commercial Advertisements: A Language-philosophical Perspective

This study examines linguistic devices that have been used by the advertisers in the naming of a brand from the perspective of philosophy of language through analyzing Chinese advertising slogans containing brand names.As a central problem in the philosophy of language,meaning of proper names has aroused persistent interests among scholars from different fields.The descriptive view and the historical-causal naming view are both famous views of the meaning of proper names.Many scholars have tended to isolate these two views from each other,even those who have held an inter-supplementary stand of these two views still lack support from linguistic facts.Brand names as a sort of proper names have not gained enough concern from scholars,which is not good for both the problem solving of meaning of proper names in philosophy of language,and the development of brands as well.Therefore,it is of great significance to make a study of meaning generation of brand names from the language-philosophical perspective.The present study,based on the analysis of Chinese advertising slogans,is a qualitative study.The theoretical framework of the study is based on the historical-causal naming theory of Kripke,supplemented by the descriptive view of proper names.The interpretation of the data coherently derives from the argument that linguistic devices in advertising slogans can generate meanings for brand names in the naming of brands.Along this line,three key research questions are proposed:(1)What linguistic devices have been used by the advertisers in the naming of a brand in the advertising slogans? What meanings are expressed by these devices?(2)How have these linguistic devices been used in the naming of the brand to express these meanings in the slogans?(3)Why have these linguistic devices been used to express these meanings in the advertising slogans? And the findings are as follows:Firstly,phonetic devices,lexical devices,syntactic devices,and rhetorical devices have been used by the advertisers in the naming of a brand.In the process of naming,two aspects of meaning are expressed by these linguistic devices,namely reference and sense.Secondly,these linguistics devices have been used in the following ways.As for phonetic devices,sounds of words have been manipulated in the naming of brands to generate intended meaning.As for lexical devices,some favorable words have been frequently used and the semantic relation of words has been applied.As for syntactic devices,tones of sentences and structures of sentences have been used to organize elements of the advertising slogans to name brands.As for rhetorical devices,in the naming of brands,comparisons have been made between references of brand names and other objects.Meaning transfer from common names to brand names and interpreting brand names directly have also been used.Thirdly,these linguistic devices have been chosen for different reasons.Phonetic devices allow the advertising slogans to generate meaning for brand names with a high sense of rhythm.Lexical devices can highlight the theme of advertising,thus fixing the reference of brand names in a more accurate way.Syntactic devices allow the advertisers to arrange language element better to describe the references of brand names.Rhetorical devices can not only help the advertising slogans to name brands in many different ways,but strengthen the effects of the naming of brands.