Mc-: Meaning in the Marketplace

Abstract

r E LEXICON OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, or of any language for that matter, responds to constant cultural changes, both subtle and conspicuous. Forces such as technology can add lexical entries with each new advance. Marketing also influences the lexicon when brand names become generic expressions or normal, everyday names for things (Cruse 1986, 146); such generic terms then require a specifying modifier for clarity of reference. Expressions like Panasonic Walkmanand such questions as What brand of Xerox machine do you have? do not sound anomalous because the nouns in those expressions have become generic through popular usage (though these trademarks themselves remain vigilantly protected against commercial use). A strong market presence can, in this way, actually introduce new terms into the lexicon. Moreover, the process is not confined to semantic change. Witness, for example, the phonologically deviant (for English) yet common pronunciation of the brand name Nike as [nayki]. In no other word in English do the the letters ike signal the pronunciation that they do in this word, and yet most American English speakers pronounce the name as it is shown here. Through constant exposure, advertisers thus teach the speech community not only WHAT they want a morpheme or phrase to mean but HOW it should sound. Corporations do not necessarily mind when their mark becomes a household word-no doubt some cheer! However, when another corporation moves in on their lexical territory by using either the mark or something close to it, they allege TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT. This paper describes our contribution to a million-dollar trademark infringement suit involving Quality Inns International (QI) and the McDonald's Corporation. At the request of a Washington, DC, law firm,1 we performed an inductive analysis, based on newspaper and magazine citations, of the place of the Mcformative in the English language. We found that it acts much like a derivational affix, except that, unlike most affixes in this category, it has several senses. More importantly, we found that while large corporations can have great power in generating raw material for lexical change, and while they can prevent other corporations from using specific words in specific ways, they have little effect on stopping the machinery of semantic change once it has begun to operate within the language of everyday spoken and written discourse.