Chris Cox Honours thesis.

Abstract :


This paper argues that peoples’ lives and experiences are socially constructed, and that social constructs are linguistic-social constructs; as such brands are cultural-linguistic constructs (memes) whose goal is to dominate the discourses within which they are involved. The importance of that is that they cannot act as objects communicating outwards, but as evolving self-designed mental entities designed to prosper in a specific environment (just as their physical counterparts would). The world of human social interaction and social hierarchy are ones embedded in language; humans (and now brands) make use of sophisticated ‘technologies of the self’ in order to control the ways in which they interact and are perceived to be interacting in this milieu; brands