Abstract: | Considering that linguistic identity is one of the essential components of individual and collective identity, enhanced or subverted by specific cultural practices, our paper brings to attention the urban promotional fashion of pushing Romanian linguistic items to the periphery, under the influence of globalization. Once emblematic for the verbal identity of local firms and stored for generations in the collective memory, most Romanian-based advertising names suffer nowadays from this marginal positioning.
The survey of advertising names from the centre of Bacău county town confirms that most local trademarks have predominantly foreign names as a guarantee of quality and a sign of modernity. Not only do such linguistic fashions of advertising names (Kryukova, 2008: 409) remind of Titu Maiorescu’s theory (1868), but they also foreground a deep cultural crisis created by the new global realities which lead to ‘empty forms’ of local cultural patterns. |
