JAPANESE PRODUCT NAMES INVOLVING ‘CONTRADICTION’: AN INTEGRAL LINGUISTIC VIEW ON THEIR SENSE-CREATING MECHANISM
JAPANESE PRODUCT NAMES INVOLVING ‘CONTRADICTION’: AN INTEGRAL LINGUISTIC VIEW ON THEIR SENSE-CREATING MECHANISM

Summary/Abstract: Japanese Product Names Involving ‘Contradiction’: An Integral Linguistic View on Their Sense-Creating Mechanism. In Japanese, there is a certain group of product names that cause a feeling of ‘contradiction’. By analyzing them, this paper aims to uncover a type of expressive knowledge that can be referenced to create the sense <the product designated is an innovative and attractive offering for consumers>. For instance, nomu-purin (drink-pudding), a pudding product consumed by drinking, appears to contradict, or be incongruent with, the empirical elocutional knowledge of pudding being eaten with a spoon. However, the expression immediately turns out to be congruent through its designation; the pudding designated is in a tube-like, rather than a conventional plastic or glass, container, enabling it to be consumed by drinking, so that the incongruence is suspended. This suspension characterizes the product as having the innovative feature of drinking rather than eating. This eaten-without-a-spoon feature in turn suggests ease of consumption, which is attractive to consumers: the sense of the product name nomu-purin. Furthermore, some of these product names, e.g., taberu-rāyu (eat-chili oil), have become part of the Japanese idiomatic knowledge and can, via evocation, serve as a basis for interpreting similar product names, e.g., taberu-dashi jōyu (eat-broth soy sauce) and taberu, sukiyaki (eat, sukiyaki).

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