The coding and processing in brand names: Metaphors and metonymies in film titles

Abstract

This paper examines the coding strategies in brand names from a cognitivepragmatic perspective by analyzing conceptual metaphor and metonymy in a corpus of 535 film titles of Oscar Best Picture Nominees (1927-2017). Based on results from quantitative and qualitative analyses, I argue that film titles are rich in metaphor and metonymy and through the judicious use of their underlying cognitive operations, metaphor and metonymy are taken as two powerful naming strategies for film advertising. In metaphorical titles, cognitive correlation operation can limit negative inference generations and comparison operation can enhance lexical richness that helps to film plot conceptualization; in metonymic titles, domain expansion operation can highlight film plot information and domain reduction operation can present abundant film contents economically for film titles’ encoding. The study sheds light on brand names’ decoding and conceptualization process and also unveils how the verbal aspect of brand names achieves pragmatic functions in successful branding.