A Cognitive Study On English And Chinese Brand Names

Brand name as a special linguistic phenomenon has become the research object in psychological, marketing, advertising, cultural, aesthetic and linguistic fields after the boost of economic development. Describing this linguistic phenomenon rather than explaining its underlying cognitive mechanisms is the common study means of brand name in linguistics, and one thorough, in-depth and systematic exploration from cognitive perspective is rarely seen. This thesis attempts to find the inner cognitive mechanisms of English and Chinese brand names and to probe into the mapping mechanisms from cognitive metaphor and metonymy perspectives.To elucidate the cognitive mechanisms of English and Chinese brand names, qualitative research coherent with cognitive metaphor and metonymy theories is applied in the present study. During the analytical process, mapping process, source domain and target domain which are the three essential components of cognitive metaphor and metonymy perform the main theoretical bases of case study in the form of tables. Through the listing and exhibition of tables, this thesis answers the question of"How the metaphor and metonymy are mapped in English and Chinese brand names?"and offers some guidelines for the brand naming from cognitive perspective. Culture as one indispensable factor in mapping process analysis from source domain to target domain occupies large space in the present study, as it's the basis of cognitive metaphor and metonymy expressions. The strong explanatory power of culture matches exactly with the Embodied Philosophy held by cognitive linguistics, which emphasizes the reaction relationship between man and outside world and the importance of man's experiences. In real life, culture is embedded in man's ordinary experiences which build the demonstration basis for this thesis and can determine which and how many attributes in the brand names are fore-grounded and mapped onto the target domain. In addition, cultural analysis is also used in contrastive discussions on some English and Chinese brand names.This thesis reveals that English and Chinese brand names can get cognitive interpretation by cognitive metaphor theory and cognitive metonymy theory. The inner cognitive mechanisms of brand names are cognitive metaphor under two domains and cognitive metonymy under one domain. The mapping mechanisms of cognitive metaphor and cognitive metonymy in English and Chinese brand names are usually the same, but sometimes may be restrained by man's ordinary experiences with different cultural features.The innovation and significance of this thesis are: (1) the cognitive implications embedded in English and Chinese brand names are exposed by cognitive metaphor theory and cognitive metonymy theory; (2) cognitive metaphor theory and cognitive metonymy theory are testified as effective cognitive tools for brand names interpretation and open new approaches for brand names research; (3) some guidelines on brand naming are also generalized from cognitive perspectives.