Interformative meaning of signs: brand naming and globalization in China

Abstract

This article looks at how global and local values are interformed in the linguistic signs of global brands transposed in China. The data under study here consist of a variety of American global brand transpositions collected from Chinese websites, newspapers, magazines, and television. A close examination of these Chinese transpositions reveals that American brands are transposed in three different methods: phonetic, semantic, and phonosemantic. Drawing on the social semiotic approach, this study attempts to explicate the specific ways in which the Confucian views of the interconnection between sign and reality are signified in the globally stylish signifiers of the US brands. It is argued that global brand transposition is a process of semiotic construction in which global and local cultures converge into a unique system of signification in China.