Aproximación al significado del nombre de marca desde un enfoque cognitivo

Abstract

Traditional immanent linguistic analyses do not allow us to successfully account for the nature of the meaning brought by brand names when they behave as predicates from the point of view of their Combinatorial Semantics. Following Lamb (1999), we account for such phenomena by adopting an interdisciplinary approach and assuming three methodological requirements: 1) operational plausibility, 2) developmental plausibility, and 3) neurological plausibility. In order to fulfill these requirements, we take as a starting point the Cognitive Linguistics model, which blurs the dichotomy between lexical and encyclopedic knowledge. From this point of view, the meaning conveyed by brand names in this kind of utterances emerges from inferential processes built upon conceptual knowledge. We provide neurological evidence of the cortical representation of this type of knowledge, as well as psychological evidence of how brand image is generated by each individual. Lastly, we propose that the Cognitive Principle of Relevance can account for the interpretation of these utterances in terms of weak implicatures, without implying that all conceptual knowledge is represented in a propositional format.