Advertising name in the mass linguistic consciousness of native speakers of Russian language (based on Internet name contests)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the detection of the popular image of an advertising name among Russian native speakers. By the general term “advertising name”, we mean such proper names which are used for denoting the objects under advertising campaigns (the names of goods, services, commercial enterprises). All-Russian internet name contests can show the native speakers’ attitude to such names, as far as the large collectives of people united by a single nominative task are concerned. We purposefully took four internet contests of the last decade aimed at naming objects from various business spheres, such as the names of a car, a banking card, a chain store, and a housing complex. The analysis included the whole body of the competing names. This approach determines the usage of a complex methodology, which includes the onomasiologic analysis and the discourse analysis. The onomasiologic analysis presupposes the classification of all the competing names on the basis of common semantic characteristics. The discourse analysis enabled us to decompose complex naming processes on consequent stages. The analysis of the contesting names has proven that Russian speakers’ mass consciousness operates certain steady ideas on what an advertisement name should be concerning its form and content. These ideas contain the understanding of appropriate advertising naming techniques. They appear as the result of various allusions which have been established in mass linguistic consciousness and may link to existing naming trends, popular advertising techniques, post-modernistic aesthetics, or peculiar internet communication features. The results of the study may be regarded as the starting point for further researches of the subjects and addressees in the process of advertising naming as well as their linguistic portraits.