By means of the study of brand names, it is possible to sketch an outline which depicts the extent of the presence of multiculturalism and its relevance in Italian society from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present. Our database contains ca. 6000 registered product trademarks, displaying classes which are representative of particular aspects of real life. We chose the following product classes, which are named according to the Nice classification: Class 3: detergents, cosmetics and hygiene products; Class 5: pharmaceutical and veterinary products; Class 29: foods such as meat, fish, poultry, game, eggs, oils and fats, jams, pickled fruit and vegetables; Class 30: coffee, cocoa, sugar, rice and bread; Class 31: fruit, vegetables and cereals; Class 32: beverages such as beer, mineral water, juices and lemonade; Class 33: alcoholic beverages, such as wine and spirits. For contemporary products in society (for the years 2014–2017) as representative of multicultural aspects, we added Class 25 (clothing, footwear and headgear) and Class 28 (games, toys and playthings, video game apparatus, gymnastic and sporting articles). The time span under consideration is 1904 to 2018. The final introductory consideration concerns the well-known questione della lingua and its sociocultural influence on the interaction between that purism, prohibition and partial limitation of the use of foreign elements, as well as the creation of structural and translation calques, are maintained alternately in advertising language until the seventies. The situation changed markedly after the 1970–1980s, and the country now has a high literacy rate and industrialisation while losing a certain degree of its dialectal vitality as English words penetrate the language of advertising. In this new panorama, the new topics for discussion are national language, standard varieties and the role of foreign languages.

The Italian brand names as a mirror of Multicultural Aspect

Paola Cotticelli Kurras
2021-01-01

Abstract

By means of the study of brand names, it is possible to sketch an outline which depicts the extent of the presence of multiculturalism and its relevance in Italian society from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present. Our database contains ca. 6000 registered product trademarks, displaying classes which are representative of particular aspects of real life. We chose the following product classes, which are named according to the Nice classification: Class 3: detergents, cosmetics and hygiene products; Class 5: pharmaceutical and veterinary products; Class 29: foods such as meat, fish, poultry, game, eggs, oils and fats, jams, pickled fruit and vegetables; Class 30: coffee, cocoa, sugar, rice and bread; Class 31: fruit, vegetables and cereals; Class 32: beverages such as beer, mineral water, juices and lemonade; Class 33: alcoholic beverages, such as wine and spirits. For contemporary products in society (for the years 2014–2017) as representative of multicultural aspects, we added Class 25 (clothing, footwear and headgear) and Class 28 (games, toys and playthings, video game apparatus, gymnastic and sporting articles). The time span under consideration is 1904 to 2018. The final introductory consideration concerns the well-known questione della lingua and its sociocultural influence on the interaction between that purism, prohibition and partial limitation of the use of foreign elements, as well as the creation of structural and translation calques, are maintained alternately in advertising language until the seventies. The situation changed markedly after the 1970–1980s, and the country now has a high literacy rate and industrialisation while losing a certain degree of its dialectal vitality as English words penetrate the language of advertising. In this new panorama, the new topics for discussion are national language, standard varieties and the role of foreign languages.
2021
978-3-030-73185-4
Italian brabd names, extra grammatical morphology, foreign words in Italian brand names, blends, language as mirror of culture
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11562/1050039
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