EPONYMY BASED ON NAMES OF COMPANIES
As is generally defined, eponymy, one of the word-formation processes refers to the derivation of a name of a city, country, era, institution, or other place or thing from that of a person such as sandwich, wellington, mackintosh or cardigan. Eponymy can be classified in several ways, some refer to...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | deu |
| Published: |
University of Oradea
2016-03-01
|
| Series: | Journal of Languages for Specific Purposes |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://jlsp.steconomiceuoradea.ro/archives/003/jlsp-i3-2.pdf |
| Summary: | As is generally defined, eponymy, one of the word-formation processes refers to the derivation of a name of a city, country, era, institution, or other place or thing from that of a person such as sandwich, wellington, mackintosh or cardigan. Eponymy can be classified in several ways, some refer to foods (Pizza Margaritha), diseases (Alzheimer disease), places (Washington), scientific laws (Archimedes’s principle) and sport terms (Axel jump), whereas others indicate trademarks, brand names (aspirin), prizes, awards (Nobel Prize), inventions (Rubic’s Cube), ideologies (Darwinism), colleges, universities (Stanford University) and companies (Ford). The present paper discusses eponyms which denote companies based on the name of their founder(s) (e.g. Porsche, Siemens, Gucci, Campari, Cadbury, McDonald’s and Walt Disney, etc.) by revealing what kind of a metonymic relationship is manifested in them. Cognitive linguists, such as Lakoff and Johnson (1980), Radden and Kövecses (1999) and Kövecses (2002) state that metonymy is essentially a conceptual phenomenon, in which one conceptual entity, the vehicle, provides mental access to another conceptual entity, the target, within the same idealized cognitive model. In fact, metonymy is part of our everyday way of thinking, and is grounded in experience. Common metonymies include PRODUCER FOR PRODUCT (Pass me the Shakespeare on the top shelf.), PLACE FOR EVENT (Iraq nearly cost Tony Blair the premiership), PLACE FOR INSTITUTION (Downing Street refused comment.), PART FOR THE WHOLE (She’s not just a pretty face.), WHOLE FOR THE PART (England beat Australia in the 2003 Rugby World Cup final.) and EFFECT FOR CAUSE (He has a long face.). Following the cognitive approach to metonyms, I tentatively suggest that the metonymy PRODUCER FOR THE PRODUCT can be observed in the case of car makes, products of famous fashion houses, cosmetics and drinks as is illustrated by examples like He’s bought a Ferrari. I ate a McDonald or We watched Walt Disney all day. I also point out that the producer and the product belong to the idealized cognitive model of PRODUCTION, in which the vehicle is the company producing the product and the target is the product produced by it. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 2359-9103 2359-8921 |