A brand new English language: ili (zlo)upotreba brendova u savremenom engleskom jeziku

Abstract

The paper investigates the behavior of some of the lexicalized brand names in con- temporary English through a dictionary-based qualitative and quantitative analysis of their meanings and usage as well as their potential to create new lexemes. The corpus consists of 84 instances of brand names retrieved by the process of total excerption from the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English (2000). The analysis has indicated that brand names are predominantly used as convenient metonymies, which may in turn serve as a basis for generic and/or metaphoric uses. In addition, once lexicalized, brand names lend them- selves to word-formation processes such as conversion and suffixation to create new lexemes, namely verbs and adjectives, thus enriching the English lexicon. As verbal shorthands, brand names also help to facilitate communication.