Linguistic Characteristics and Cultural Connotations of Engl(3)

It is said that some adjectives in English appear very frequently, among which the commonest are new, good/better/best, fine, big, great, free, fresh, special, sure, clean, safe and so on. They serve to describe any aspect of the products, like the size, shape, look, brilliance, color or the inner quality. Because such adjectives are capable of showing the best quality of products, and they are the most appealing to the consumers, so they are widely used in advertisement.

The adjectives in English shop names are very similar to those in advertisement in that the words used by the merchants aim to attract the consumers or to cater to their psychological needs, and examples are Good Year, Good Will, Pretty Good Café, Best Buy, Big Lots, Hot Lips, Payless Drugs and so on. Sometimes compounds composed of adjectives and nouns are used, like Supervalu, Safeway, Thrift Way and so on.

4 Cultural Elements with Originality
 

Various as English and Chinese shop names are, they all hold one goal—to grasp the consumers’ attention. From the psychological and linguistic perspective, original or fore grounded things will easily catch people’s eye, stimulate their curiosity, and then comes the behavior to meet the curiosity. [4]

4.1 The Originality in Chinese Shop Names
 

Usually, original things cause psychological reaction by stimulating sensory organs (especially the sight and the hearing). Take the Chinese shop name “Hao Lai Wu” for an example, its pronunciation could bring association of the American film and industry center Hollywood. Similar examples are Si Wei Te (a cake shop), Dao Kou (a stationary store) and Bu Ke Shu Wu (a book store) whose pronunciations are similar with sweet, document with docu. as its shortened form and book. Besides, such shop names as Lao Yu Tou (a restaurant, old fish head), Gou Bu Li (a baozi shop, with the meaning “the dogs take no interest”), Guang Gun Ji (the unmarried chicken), Yu Ren Shu Wu (the Fool’s book store), and Hu Tu Cha Guan (a tea house, Hu Tu means confusing) create novelty and originality by vivid and fantastic words.

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4.2 The Preference to Originality in English Shop Names
 

English shop names can display no less color of novelty than Chinese ones. Fish in Mr. Fish (a sea food store) acts as a pun with two possible meanings: one is a “surname”, and the other refers to an animal’s name. Mr. Submarine (a hot-dog shop) stimulates abundant associations by the idea that a submarine has a similar shape with a hot dog. The Gap (young persons’ clothing store) refers to the generation gap implying that the clothing style suits only the young. Similar instances are Gepettois (a pan cake shop, the puppet maker in the story of Pinnochio), Creature’s Family (pets’ clinic), From Head to Toes (a beauty shop), Hit or Miss (lady’s clothing store, hit or miss originally means “adventure”, here it reminds never to miss a good opportunity.)

Some shop names demonstrate the feature of phonetic similarities, like Bi-lo (a grocery with the association of “buy low”), Toys’ R Us aims to let people know “Toys are (for) us with the word “us” to bring the businessmen and consumers closer, and “for” in “Food-4-less” is similarly pronounced with “four”, so it could be understood as Food-4-less by which people can judge how cheap the food can be allowed to be. [5]

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