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A cognitive-pragmatic approach to metaphor and metonymy in brand names: A case study of film titles
Author(s)
Date Issued
2019
Journal
ISSN
1729-4649
1994-2559
Citation
Taiwan Journal of Linguistics, 2019, Vol. 17(1), pp. 1-47.
Type
Peer Reviewed Journal Article
Abstract
This paper analyzes the cognitive and pragmatic roles of conceptual metaphors
and metonymies in brand names. By investigating a corpus of 535 Oscar film
titles, it argues that metaphor and metonymy are two powerful naming strategies
for film branding. Abundant evidence reveals that film titles are rich in metaphor
and metonymy and relevant cognitive operations are activated to generate the
drawing of inferences from the semantic cues provided by metaphorical and
metonymic film titles. Specifically, in metaphorical titles, the correlation
operation can limit the risk of negative inference generations and the comparison
operation can enhance the degree of lexical richness that helps film plot
conceptualization; in metonymic titles, the domain expansion operation can
highlight film plot information, and the domain reduction operation can present
abundant film contents which makes film title more economical. In this way,
metaphor and metonym are taken as safe and effective film branding and
marketing strategies. The cognitive analysis of film title contributes to studies in
brand names, verifies and supplements cognitive-pragmatic theories and also
sheds light on cognitive research in advertising discourse.
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