Linguistic Iconicity in Brand Names: Derivational Morphology Based Analysis

Abstract

This paper analyzes linguistic iconicity in brand names broadcasted on Pakistani electronic advertisements from the perspective of derivational morphological processes. The rationale behind this is to find out what kinds of experiments with linguistic choices are being made in the language of advertisement and are these choices arbitrary or Iconic in nature being conscious and functional. A corpus from 150 advertisements is collected and analyzed empirically. The quantitative analysis of data, through quantifying and measuring the percentage and frequency of each derivational morphological process, reveals the most frequent and the most least method exercised for the construction of names of brands with others given on the quantum. The focus on the purposefulness of each derivational process reveals, not only the iconic nature of brand names but also the psychological impact of these, exercised through the more striking linguistic choices made on the morphological level.