Ekspresivnost u nazivima hrane i pića: analiza slivenica

Abstract

Linguistic expressivity is inherent in various word-formation processes, including (lexical) blending, whose products are (lexical) blends. The present paper is thus concerned with a qualitative and quantitative analysis of both structural and semantic properties of lexical blends in the names of foods and beverages produced mostly in Serbia, but also in Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia. The corpus comprises target blends extracted from the relevant works on blending in Serbian (Bugarski 2013; 2014; 2016; Tomić 2019), those listed in the Croatian Dictionary of Blends (Marković et al. 2016), and those collected by the authors themselves. The overall aim of our research was to draw attention to the expressive potential of nominal blends in the names of foods and beverages. More specifically, it aimed at: (1) determining (the most frequent) blending mechanisms, including the extent of graphic and/or phonological overlap and the means of graphic emphasis, (2) comparing the syllable structure of the source words with that of the resulting blend, and (3) establishing associative meanings of the blends, as well as the syntactic and semantic relations between their source words. Data analysis showed that the idiosyncratic audiovisual identity of blends is especially suitable for use in brand names, since their creation is heavily dependent on language creativity; but also because manufacturers strive to make their products distinguishable in a myriad of similar ones, thereby attracting prospective buyers’ attention and possibly becoming competitive on the local, regional, and/or global market. This conclusion is supported by a significant number of cross-linguistic blends in the corpus; they contain loanwords from foreign languages, most notably English.