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 Approaching the utopia of a global brand
The relevance of image schemas as multimodal
resources for the branding industry

Lorena Pérez Hernández

University of La Rioja

Increasingly global markets impose strains on the branding industry for the
design of trademarks with a worldwide appeal. This paper explores the potential
benefits of the exploitation of embodied schemata for this purpose. A corpus of
international automobile brands is analyzed in search of the image schemas at
work in the conceptualization of different car categories (i.e. minis, family cars,
sports cars, and off-road 4 × 4s). Our findings evince that, together with other
well-known strategies (i.e. sound symbolism), multimodal image schemas can
be added to the inventory of branding tools which help to imbue brands with a
globally comprehensible semantics. In the context of branding, it is also attested
that the structure of the general schemas is fleshed out through their interaction
with the most salient attributes of the target product/service named by a partic-
ular brand, rather than in relation to other contextual or cultural facts.

Keywords: branding, Cognitive Linguistics, image schemas, metaphor,

metonymy

1. Introduction

Creating a new brand for the already crowded present-day market is a complex
task, as shown by the increasing number of branding and naming companies
offering such services. New brands must not only comply with basic marketing
needs (i.e. ease of pronunciation/spelling, lack of negative unfortunate semantic
associations, displaying a catchy and distinctive character, etc.), but they are also
expected to be meaningful to consumers worldwide. This paper explores the role
of image schemas and related multimodal image schematic metaphors and me-
tonymies in the process of creating globally-valid trademarks.

doi 10.1075/bct.78.05per
© 2015 John Benjamins Publishing Company
62 Lorena Pérez Hernández

In order to connect with potential buyers brought up in different cultures,

and speaking different languages, branding professionals have gradually depart-
ed from purely descriptive brands. Simultaneously, they have turned their atten-
tion to certain resources that yield more evocative, cross-culturally significant
trademarks. One such strategy hinges on the ability of phonemes to invoke spe-
cific feelings and notions, thus causing similar emotional reactions in the audi-
ence regardless of their diverse linguistic or cultural backgrounds (Klink, 2001;
Lowrey & Shrum, 2007). As noted in Pereltsvaig’s (2011) interesting article on the
use of sound symbolism as a branding strategy, obstruent sounds like [t] and [k]
in names such as taketa are perceived as harder and sharper and hence suit better
angular shaped patterns and objects, while the sonorants [n], [l], [m] in naluma
are perceived as softer and smoother, more suited to name rounder shapes.
The semantic effects derived from the sound symbolism of brand names are,
however, somehow limited and the branding industry remains in need of alterna-
tive tools for the purpose of expediting the creation of universal brands.
In this regard, the multimodal texture of cognitive operations, such as concep-
tual metaphors and metonymies, has already been proved useful (Forceville, 2007,
2008; Koller, 2009; Hidalgo-Downing & Kraljevic-Mujic, 2011). The recent litera-
ture shows how such conceptual operations have made their way into trademark
logos and marketing campaigns, allowing the branding specialist to overcome the
limitations of a particular language and, in turn, to reach a more global market. A
significant number of such mappings, however, are closely tied to specific cultures
and, even when adopting a visual mode, their semantics may fail to be universally
understood.
More recently, cognitive approaches to advertising have also taken into con-
sideration the workings of image schemata: bodily-grounded recurring patterns
derived from our sensory-motor interaction with the surrounding environment.
Image schemas have an experiential basis and, as a consequence, they are largely
pervasive across cultures and languages. The literature on this topic is to date
fairly scarce, but includes related proposals such as Forceville’s (1998), Cortés de
los Ríos’ (2001), and Ortiz’s (2010) research on how primary metaphors (i.e. those
whose primary source concept is an image schema) might generate visual con-
structs often used in pictorial advertising. Shifting the focus from image schemas
as source domains of primary metaphors to image schemas as explanatory tools
in themselves, Núñez Perucha (2003) reinterprets the whole persuasion commu-
nicative domain in terms of the force image schema. In her account, image sche-
mas are used as persuasive strategies by means of which the advertiser tries “to
force” the receiver to buy. More specifically, Umiker-Sebeok (1996) and Velasco
Sacristán and Cortés de los Ríos (2009) explore how image schemas are used in

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 Approaching the utopia of a global brand 63

the construction of gender spaces, as well as with the purpose of introducing sex-
ism, in advertising. In a similar vein, Felices Lago and Cortés de los Ríos (2009)
make use of image schemas in their account of the dominant values in print ad-
vertisements announcing different types of environmentally friendly products
and services from energy (oil, electricity, etc.) and heavy industry corporations.
In this paper, we further contend that image schemas, and image-schematic
mappings (Johnson, 1987; Lakoff, 1987; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999), by virtue of
their aforementioned pre-conceptual, experiential, and cross-cultural nature, also
qualify as an efficient, yet still largely overlooked, tool for the more specific pur-
pose of creating global brands (Pérez Hernández, 2011). In addition, this paper
argues that the universal nature of image schemas can be maximized through
their multimodal expression. In fact, the systematic exploitation of multimodal
image schemas in the process of brand design is expected (1) to ease the gen-
eration of global brands and (2) to increase their suggestiveness and conceptual
richness, both through the fixed implications of the internal logic of the sche-
mas, and also via metaphoric and metonymic extensions making use of those
embodied schemata as their source domains. With this aim in mind, a corpus of
international automobile brands/logos is analyzed in search of the image schemas
at work in their conceptualization; the extension of their use and its multimodal
nature is assessed; and a description of the semantic shades added by each image
schema is offered.
In so doing, our aim is to add one more strategy to the inventory of multimod-
al resources for the design of internationally appealing and meaningful brands.
Additionally, our research into the image-schematic foundations of brands al-
lows a parallel incursion into the current debate about the situatedness of image
schemas themselves (Gibbs, 1999; Johnson, 2005; Kimmel, 2005, 2008; Sinha &
Jensen de Lopez, 2000). In the context of branding, our findings suggest that the
structure of the general schemas is fleshed out through their interaction with the
most salient attributes of the target product/service named by a particular brand,
rather than in relation to other contextual or cultural facts.
The outline of this paper is as follows. Section 2 tackles the issue of the defini-
tion and scope of image schemas, and image-schematic mappings. Additionally,
the current debate about the universal versus contextually-situated nature of em-
bodied schemata is revisited from the perspective of the branding industry and
the specific needs of brand designers. Section 3 describes the corpus of analysis.
Section 4 offers a description of the main image schemas at work in four automo-
bile categories. Finally, Section 5 considers the implications of our findings for the
process of brand design and provides some suggestions for future research.

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64 Lorena Pérez Hernández

2. Image schemas: Definition, scope, and relevance

for the branding industry

In this paper we take sides with the original definition of image schemas as men-
tal patterns of bodily, perceptual, including kinetic, experience (Johnson, 1987;
Lakoff, 1987):1 a category of “recurring patterns of our sensory-motor experience
by means of which we can make sense of that experience and reason about it”
(Johnson, 2005, pp. 18–19). As pointed out by Lakoff and Johnson (1999), this
type of meaning structures constitutes a sort of “cognitive unconscious”, operating
beneath the level of our perceptive awareness. Furthermore, given that all human
bodies share several quite specific sensory-motor capacities constrained by their
own size and constitution, as well as by the common traits of the diverse environ-
ments they inhabit, image schemas are expected to be the same across different
cultures. Thus, through the relative bilateral symmetry of our bodies we experi-
ence the image schema of left-right; our constant interaction with containers
leads us to structure such experiences in terms of the container schema; etc.
It is precisely their directly meaningful, preconceptual, and universal nature,
which emerges as an interesting trait for the branding industry. If the essential
embodied semantics of image schemas could somehow be incorporated into the
content of brands, the latter would by default convey a basic, cross-culturally
shared meaning, which could be straightforwardly apprehended by consumers
worldwide.
This global semantics of trademarks would then be necessarily enriched and
completed through their embeddedness within specific cultural, emotional, and
interactional experiences. As Gibbs (1999), Johnson (2005), and Kimmel (2005,
2008), among others, have rightly argued, attending only to the structure of image
schemas as recurring patterns of organism-environment sensory motor interac-
tions and ignoring their nonstructural, more qualitative aspects stemming from
socio-cultural facts, prevents us from accounting for their variation both across
cultures and in situated cognition. Different instantiations of the container
schema, for example, illustrate the need to “put flesh on image-schematic skel-
etons” (Johnson, 2005, p. 27). More specifically, there is a varied range of feel-
ings associated with the actual experience of containment: from the coziness and
warmth caused by a tight hug to the constraint prompted by the confines of a
small room; and from the freedom or, in some cases, fear people may feel when
leaving a closed area to the phobia or the sense of autonomy which can derive
from entering an open territory.
The present account of the image-schematic foundation of brands does not
entertain as one of its goals the description of related “situated image schemas”.2
Since the branding industry focuses on the generation of globally understandable

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 Approaching the utopia of a global brand 65

messages, our analysis is geared towards those universal aspects of image schemas
serving this purpose. Nevertheless, it would be unwise to overlook the mounting
evidence in favor of the situated and context-sensitive dimension of embodied
schemata. As far as the branding industry is concerned, our findings evince that
it is possible to strike a balance between the use of too general schemas devoid of
anything context-bound, on the one hand, and the positing of isolated, culturally-
tied, situated schemas devoid of a universally shared semantic core, on the other.
This can be achieved by limiting the situated enrichment of the initial general
schemas to those facts deriving from the key attributes of the product/service un-
der consideration. In other words, the flesh needed to complete the image-sche-
matic skeleton upon which a particular brand is built stems from the interaction
between the structure of the image schema at work and the concrete ‘affordances’
offered by the target product which the brand names. By way of illustration, the
force image schema, in the context of automobile brands, may be instantiated
differently in relation to a sports car, in which case those aspects of the schema
related to ‘speed’ are activated; or in relation to a jeep, whose affordances bring to
the forefront those features of the force schema related to the notion of ‘power’.3

3. Data selection

Which image schemas underlie the semantic configuration of different car

brands? Do these schemas relate to and help to communicate the key attributes
(i.e. affordances) offered by different car categories? The data collected to answer
these questions include automobile brands (and related logos) corresponding to
vehicles manufactured in different countries, but marketed with a global audience
in mind.4 More specifically, this study is based on a corpus of 200 brand names
and logos corresponding to four different categories of cars. We have made use of
a simplified typology borrowed from The European New Car Assessment Program
(Europe NCAP),5 thus distinguishing between minis, family cars, sports cars, and
off-road 4 × 4s. Executive/luxury cars have not been included in the analysis as an
independent category due to their cross-sectional nature. Rough descriptions of
each subgroup and their associated key attributes are offered below:
(1) Minis are those vehicles whose physical dimensions and engine capacities are
lower than those of family cars. Their key attribute is that of “small dimen-
sions”, from which other positive traits derive (i. e. “nimbleness in traffic” and
“ease to park”, among others). E.g. Smart.
(2) Family cars are normally-sized cars suitable to carry a whole family. Their
essential key attributes are “space”, “comfort”, and “safety”. E.g. Ford Focus.

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66 Lorena Pérez Hernández

Plate 1. Suzuki and Suzuky Jimny logos. Reproduced with permission.

(3) Sports cars are medium-size, usually two-seat, two-door vehicles designed for
high speed driving. Their focal affordances include those of “speed”, “smooth
driving”, and “high performance”. E.g. Audi TT.
(4) Off-road 4 × 4s: Basic key attributes characterizing off-road 4 × 4s are “power”,
“solidness”, and “robustness”. E.g. Land Rover.

A particular car brand is always a conglomerate of elements with varying degrees

of complexity. In most cases it includes the general brand/logo representing the
manufacturer plus the more specific brand/logo for the specific car (E.g. Suzuki
Jimny).
The general brand usually serves a referential function, helping customers to
identify and remember the manufacturer and the central characteristics of their
range of cars (economical vs. luxury cars; urban vs. off road, etc.). The specific
brand highlights the particular traits of each model. Some companies, though,
have traditionally specialized in the production of a precise type of vehicle, as is
the case with Jaguar, which is readily associated with sports cars. As shown in the
ensuing discussion, the general or umbrella brand of these manufacturers is gen-
erally richer in detail, reflecting most of the key attributes of the specific models
by itself.
The image schemas at work in the brands under study have been analyzed in
order to gather evidence supporting (1) the relation between the product category
and the image schema used in their logo/text characterization; (2) how well the
image schema relates to the affordances or key attributes of each product catego-
ry; (3) the existence of cognitive dissonance between the basic meaning provided
by the schema and the nature of the product category.

4. Image schemas at work in automobiles brands and logos

4.1 Case study 1: Minis

Minis display characteristically small dimensions, and therefore, “size” and the
related attribute schema (small-big) become essential to their marketing. In
spite of the fact that some cultures may share primary metaphors which assign an

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 Approaching the utopia of a global brand 67

axiological value to this notion (i.e. important is big/unimportant is small),

the fact is that smallness, in itself, cannot be considered negative. As shown in
Pérez Hernández (2011), the Propositional Idealized Cognitive Model (ICM) of Size
captures a shared feeling, among western cultures, that small entities are harm-
less, charming, and therefore, desirable. In the context of automobiles, smallness
is associated with nimbleness in traffic and ease to park, both positive traits. Al-
ternatively, small dimensions can also correlate in this context with lack of space
and discomfort. The logos of minis show an interesting exploitation of the image
schema of attribute (big-small), leading the audience to focus precisely on their
most salient attribute (smallness), and at the same time minimizing somehow its
potential negative implications. Our data reveal that this may be achieved in three
different ways:

a. Through the use of a proportionally bigger typeface size. Big logos/letters do

not equal big cars, but in the context under consideration they may lead the
audience to reconsider the size of the car under a more positive light. Sig-
nificant examples are those of Mini ONE, Ford KA, Mitsubishi COLT, and
Citroën C1 and C2 series, where the brand name typeface visually stands out
as bigger than that of the manufacturers’ brand itself.
b. Through the exclusive use of lowercase letters which, by iconically resembling
the actual smallness of the car, may also function as potential cues pointing to
the ICM of Size. According to this cultural model small entities can either be
perceived as harmless, charming and desirable, or alternatively as worthless
and unimportant. In the context of a marketing campaign, the audience is by
pure logic led to entertain the positive interpretation. Brands which exploit
the image schema of attribute (big-small) in this way are, among others,
those of Kia picanto and smart.
c. Through the alternation of capital and lowercase letters, or different typeface
sizes for each of the letters of the brand name. This is the case with Mitsubishi
i-MiEV, Hyundai i1O, Peugeot iON, and Alfa Romeo MiTo. In the context of
minis, such alternation of big-small typeface sizes may set off a parallel inter-
pretation of the actual size of the car (i.e. small, but big: small, but probably
more spacious than it seems).

In all cases, the positive affordances of small cars are still preserved, but the nega-
tive ones (i.e. lack of space/comfort) may somehow be challenged by the interac-
tion of the image schema of attribute (hinted at by the diverse visual features
of the brand name) and the ICM of Size, on the one hand, and the positive in-
terpretation which is, by default, expected in a marketing/branding context, on
the other.

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68 Lorena Pérez Hernández

As shall become apparent in Sections 4.2 and 4.3, the attribute schema will
be found at work in different, sometimes diametrically opposed, car categories
such as minis, family cars, and 4 × 4s. The image schema of attribute describes
basic properties of objects related to their size, strength, weight, and tempera-
ture, among others. Most of these properties involve a scale between two extreme
points (i.e. big-small). Which of these gets to be activated, or to what degree,
will be determined by the intrinsic properties of the target product in interaction
with the cue provided by the visual inputs included in its brand and/or marketing
campaign. This cognitive process, known as parametrization (Ruiz de Mendoza,
2011), consists in adapting the basic conceptual layout provided by the expression
to other textual and contextual clues (i.e. in the case of branding, the relevant con-
text is provided by the nature of the target product itself). If we consider a wine
brand such as Imperial, for instance, it is our knowledge that emperors lived in a
world of luxury that allows us to interpret this wine as a high quality product in
terms of taste and aroma. If the same brand were to be used to name a horse or a
car instead, its parametrization would trigger different interpretations, probably
along the lines of a pure breed, competitive horse, and of a luxurious and expen-
sive car, respectively. The same brand (i.e. linguistic cue) is parametrized differ-
ently depending on the product that it names. Likewise, the use of the attribute
image schema as a branding strategy may be parametrized as required depending
on the nature of the target product (i.e. car category). Different visual inputs will
serve as cues for the achievement of a felicitous parametrization.

4.2 Case study 2: Family cars

Specific brands and logos of family cars stand out as the most neutral in our cor-
pus. They make a standard use of capitalization and typeface size. Alternations
of capital/lowercase letters or the exclusive use of small letters observed in Sec-
tion 4.1 are not recurrent features of those brands in this segment.6 34 out of a
total of 55 family car brands are rendered in full capital letters, a feature which
is largely compatible with the key attribute “space”, typical of this car category,
and which points to a potential exploitation of the image schema of attribute
(big-small). The rest are presented with an initial capital letter as is mandatory
for proper names, thus making no relevant contribution to the semantics of the
brand as far as the key attribute of “space” is concerned.
In most cases, branding specialists rely on the manufacturers’ general brand
for the commercialization of family cars. When considering the embodied foun-
dations of general automobile trademarks, our analysis reveals that the most
recurrent image schema is that of container, one of the most ubiquitous and

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 Approaching the utopia of a global brand 69

Plate 2. BMW, Honda, and Lexus logos. Logos reproduced with permission.
All Lexus logos, trademarks, service marks and copyrights are solely and exclusively
owned by Toyota Motor Corporation.

central cognitive templates. It comes as no surprise that this schema is so per-

vasive in this context, being vehicles containers in themselves and exhibiting the
same structural elements: an interior, an exterior and a boundary. With the only
exceptions of Mitsubishi and Citroën, all the brands in the subcorpus of family
cars display schematic container forms, inherited from their corresponding gen-
eral manufacturers’ brand logos. Most of them display one-dimensional forms of
enclosures, such as a circle or an oval figure. A few make use of other, more elab-
orated kinds of closed areas. By way of illustration, consider the logos for BMW,
Honda, and Lexus (Plate 2).
The semantics of these brands automatically partake of the internal logic of
the container image schema, especially of its first entailment, which is fully
compatible with one of the key affordances of family cars (i.e. safety/protection):
(i) The experience of containment typically involves protection from, or resistance to,
external forces (Johnson, 1987, p. 22).
In the context under scrutiny, this entailment straightforwardly maps onto the
sense of safety and protection against forceful impacts or crashes, which the auto-
mobile industry aims to convey through its brands and marketing campaigns.
In addition, the closed areas found in most logos can also be interpreted in
terms of the cycle image schema, which is subsidiary to the more general path
schema. According to Peña Cervel (2000, p. 377), a cycle is a circular path con-
sisting of a source, a terminal point, and a directionality. Its internal logic includes
the general idea of motion along the path, which is compatible with the nature of
the product under scrutiny. It also captures a more specific consequence of mo-
tion along circular paths to the effect that once the end point of the path has been
reached, the latter becomes the source again. In the context of driving, the idea
of returning to the departing point goes hand in hand with the aforementioned
expectations of safety, thus highlighting and reinforcing this essential attribute of
family cars.

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70 Lorena Pérez Hernández

4.3 Case study 3: Sports cars

“Speed”, “smooth driving”, and “high performance” are some of the focal features
of sports cars. Our corpus reveals that the first of them finds its way into the
brands/logos of this car category through a metonymic exploitation of the image
schema of force. As Johnson points out (1987, p. 43) “our experience of force
usually involves the movement of some object (mass) through space in some di-
rection. In other words, force has a vector quality, a directionality”. In addition,
“forces have degrees of power or intensity” (Johnson, 1987, p. 43). As a car moves,
it traces a path that can be described by a force vector. In turn, the speed of the
moving car is a reliable indicator of the intensity of the force it exerts. The vector
element of the force image schema is visually cued in many of the sports cars
brands in our corpus. In some cases this is done by means of a subtle transforma-
tion of the traditionally circular/oval frames of car logos (see Plate 2) into other
types of closed areas incorporating some kind of pointed element resembling a
vector (e.g. >).
Plate 3 is a schematic representation of the type of logo frame found in some
of the most representative manufacturers of sports cars, including Porsche, Lam-
borghini, Gumpert, and Ferrari. Other sports car companies, such as Maclaren,
Maseratti, Corvette, and Tesla, also display logos with some kind of vector image
built into them. Plate 4 offers a schematic representation of the different graphics
representing force vectors in the aforementioned trademarks.
Nevertheless, the most pervasive and subtle strategy for the metonymic acti-
vation of the force schemata in two-seaters brands is by far the use of italics. 18
out of 29 brands in this category display letters whose upper part is slightly tilted

Plate 3. Schematic representation of sports cars logo frames.

Plate 4. Schematic representations of force vectors in sports car logos.

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 Approaching the utopia of a global brand 71

Plate 5. Honda CR-Z and Hyundai Veloster logos. Reproduced with permission.

Plate 6. Chrysler Crossfire logo. Reproduced with permission.

towards the right, thus suggesting a forward movement. Honda CR-Z and Hyun-
dai Veloster are just two examples (Plate 5).
The Honda CR-Z logo displays another recurrent feature of sports cars trade-
marks, namely the use of elongated letters, especially in their horizontal strokes.7
Such visual lengthening of the horizontal lines in car brand names iconically
cues the path image schema, to which the force schema itself is subsidiary, and
which, in the context under consideration, may evoke the felicitous notion of
movement towards a destination. Several other brands achieve the same effect by
linking two or several characters of the brand name with an underlying line which
again visually suggests a path. Veloster above is a good example, together with
other well-know trademarks like Ferrari, Lotus Evora, and Lexus LF-A. Opel GT
combines both strategies, so that the elongated upper parts of the G and T charac-
ters are virtually fused into a long curved stroke resembling an open and smooth
curve. As a result, the brand logo is especially apt for suggesting the third of the
essential attributes of sports cars, that is, their high performance in curved paths.
Chrysler Crossfire deserves closer attention. This brand name and its associ-
ated logo point to the image schematic gestalt of force through a double met-
onymic mapping of the effect for cause and attribute for entity types,
respectively. This brand name exhibits horizontal strokes lingering after each of
its characters as a sort of tail or hair blowing in the wind. Thus, the visual effects
of speed (hair/clothes lingering backwards in the wind) stand for their cause (i.e.
speed). In turn, speed is but one of the intrinsic characteristics of the smooth
movement of an entity (a car in the case under consideration) along a path. As
a result, this logo succeeds in conveying the central key attributes of sports cars

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72 Lorena Pérez Hernández

(i.e. “speed” and “smooth movement”) in a novel and singular way, consequently
increasing the distinctiveness of its associated brand.

4.4 Case study 4: Off-road 4 × 4s

Off-road 4 × 4s are characterized by their “power”, “robustness”, and “solidness”.

Since they are big, heavy, tough vehicles, the image schema of attribute (big-
small) plays once more a relevant role in their conceptualization. In the case of
minis, the activation of this embodied schema has been shown to highlight the
benefits of small cars by making the audience reinterpret their apparent small-
ness under a more positive light. On the contrary, off-road brands incorporating
the attribute schema do so in order to underlie their sturdiness. Visually, this
effect is achieved through a generalized use of capital letters. Lowercase letters
have been partially found in only one example within this category (e.g. Hyundai
iX-35). In addition, italics, which have been shown to be a common trait of sports
cars brands, are present in only two 4 × 4s brand names (i.e. LAND ROVER and
Toyota RAV4). Still, the degree of inclination is much softer than that of the italics
found in the sports car segment. Two brands that deserve closer attention are
those of the Honda CR-V and CR-Z series. The limited use of italics in the former,
corresponding to the off-roads series, contrasts with its intensive use in the latter,
which names the sports cars category.
The absence of italics and the use of capital letters is often coupled with a
tendency towards the use of slightly broader vertical strokes and the squaring of
rounded characters, as has been observed in off-road brands like Audi Q7, BMW
X1, and Volvo S70, S80. See the Suzuki Jimny logo in Plate 1 and also Plate 8 for a
schematic representation of these features.

Plate 7. Honda CR-V and CR-Z brand logos. Reproduced with permission.

VS. VS.

Plate 8. Broader vertical strokes and squared circular characters in off-roads brand
names.

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 Approaching the utopia of a global brand 73

Plate 9. Hyundai Tucson and Chevrolet Captiva brand logos.

Reproduced with permission.

All and all, non-italicized, sturdy, capital letters turn up as pervasive features
of 4 × 4s brands. These visual cues help to parametrize the schema of attribute
(big-small) in a way compatible with the nature of 4 × 4s, and in turn, to highlight
their characteristic dimensions and robustness. Finally, an interesting exploitation
of the path and force image schemas at work in off-road brands involves the use
of broken letters.
Discontinuous paths or gaps along a path block the force exerted by the
moving vehicle and are considered impediments to travel. The broken letters in
Hyundai Tucson and the discontinuous, but still straight path running along the
Chevrolet Captiva logo visually activate these notions, which are also defining
characteristics of the type of bumpy, irregular roads on which 4 × 4s are expected
to perform. Such visual call on the difficulties of the path, together with the ro-
bustness of the chosen typeface, combine to convey a clear positive message as
to the good performance of these vehicles in the adverse driving circumstances
under consideration.

5. Conclusions

While it is not possible to make full generalizations on the basis of the analysis of
a limited number of brands, the four case studies presented in Section 4 license
the formulation of the following observations, which are subject to confirmation
through further research:

1. Incorporating image schemas into the design of brands grounds them in em-
bodied experience and, as a result, may make them more extensively mean-
ingful across cultures. By way of illustration, consider the incorporation of the
container schema in many of the car brands in our corpus. Humans with
different cultural backgrounds will all share a certain general understanding
of the semantics of those brands, since they all have a common experience
of what it means for something/someone to be inside or outside a container,
especially in relation to the affordances offered by the target product (i.e. ve-
hicle).

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74 Lorena Pérez Hernández

2. Image schemas have been shown to be incorporated into car brands mainly
through visual means. Due to its iconic, cross-cultural nature, the use of the
visual mode, either in isolation or in conjunction with others (linguistic, au-
ditory) is expected to result in the generation of brands with a wider global
scope. Special attention has, therefore, been paid to the visual aspects of the
brands analyzed in this study, including their associated logos and the font
type, size and shape of their brand names.
3. Just as generic image schemas operate within bodies which interact with en-
vironments offering specific affordances, the specific schemata found in the
semantic make-up of car brands have been proved to be largely compatible
with the “affordances” offered by each specific car category. The interaction
between the schema and the product-affordances gives way to enriched, con-
textually-situated, but still globally-meaningful brands.

Further research should look for empirical confirmation of the theoretical find-
ings of the present analysis on the image-schematic foundation of car brands. In
this respect, a survey is at present being conducted among a group of multi-cul-
tural consumers in order to assess to what extend car brands with specific image
schemas built into their semantics (1) are more straightforwardly associated with
those related key attributes identified by the present study, and (2) whether such
association is equally established by all consumers independently of their cultural
and linguistic backgrounds.
Another area of interest for future studies would be to examine how image
schemas in combination with primary metaphors may allow branding specialists
to boost their brands with additional shades of suggestive meaning tied to more
abstract domains of experience.8 Given their grounding in sensory-motor physi-
cal experience, such metaphorical extensions of the meaning of brands would still
retain a conveniently cross-cultural shared semantic core.

Acknowledgements

The research on which this paper is based has been funded by the Ministry of Sci-
ence and Innovation, Spain, Project No. FFI2010-17610. This research has been
carried out within the Center for Research in the Applications of Language (CRAL),
University of La Rioja (Spain).

© 2015. John Benjamins Publishing Company

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 Approaching the utopia of a global brand 75

Notes

1. This view has found support in simultaneous research carried out within psychology and
other related fields (Damasio, 1994; Finke, Pinker, & Farah, 1989). It differs, however, from
more recent characterizations of image schemas by authors such as Sweetser (1990), Turner
(1991), and Clausner and Croft (1999). Some of these accounts envisage image schemas as
structures which are too complex to count as basic dimensions of perceptual representation.
Thus, Turner (1991, pp. 176–177) has identified image schemas for notions such as a “cup” or
a particular “phoneme”. Other proposals include within the category of image schemas certain
nonperceptual representations (i.e. schemas which are not tied to any particular aspect of bodi-
ly experience). The schemas of “complexity”, “ceasing to exist” (Turner, 1991), or “sharpness”
(Clausner & Croft, 1999) fall within this class.

2. Schemas which capture commonalities of a limited set of (typically culture-specific) expe-

riential settings, as outlined in Kimmel (2005, p. 300).

3. Image schemas do not merely exist in our brains, but rather they operate within bodies of
a particular physiological make-up which interact with environments that offer very specific
“affordances” (Gibson, 1979). An “affordance”, according to Gibson, is a pattern of potential
engagement and interaction with parts of our environment. A chair, for instance, “affords” sit-
on-ability for human beings.
In the context of marketing, the affordances offered by those products/services named by
brands are closely linked to their key attributes. Thus, a car, for example, affords driving-abil-
ity. In turn, different cars will afford diverse types of driving-ability: fast driving, safe driving,
power driving etc. Such specific affordances help to flesh out the full semantic interpretation of
the initial image schemas at work in the semantic make-up of their related brand names.

4. The choice of automobile brands as data for this study was motivated by the extensive and
varied number of image schematic visual inputs they display, as well as by the straightforward
connection observed between the basic semantics of the image schemas of attribute, force,
and container, on the one hand, and the target attributes of the four car categories under
scrutiny, on the other.

5. The full classification of cars by Euro NCAP can be accessed through its web page at [http://
www.euroncap.com]. For the full list of manufacturers, whose brands have been included in
this research, see Appendix 1. Due to space constraints and copyright issues we cannot include
a visual image for every brand logo included in the analysis. The vast majority of them can be
found at the web page Brands of the World available at [http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/].

6. Only one exception (i.e. cee’d) has been found in a list of 55 brands of family cars. This low
frequency of occurrence contrasts sharply with the generalized use of this type of strategies
observed within the category of minis.

7. This trait is remarkably evident in brands like Porsche, Lotus Elise, Mitsubishi Eclipse, Jaguar
XJ and XK, which unfortunately cannot be reproduced here due to lack of permission.

8. Johnson (2005, pp. 24–27) has amply dealt with the pivotal role of image schemas in ab-
stract reasoning. Together with Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 1999), Lakoff (1987), and Lakoff and

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76 Lorena Pérez Hernández

Núñez (2000), among others, he argues in favor of an embodied logic, which recruits body-
based image-schematic structures for the understanding of abstract concepts and the drawing
of inferences. Such mappings, labeled as “primary metaphors”, provide perceptual anchors to
target notions which can be equally basic and central to human interaction and understanding
as their corresponding embodied source domains, but which are not directly apprehensible
through our perceptual systems (Grady, 1997, 2005).

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Appendix

Car manufacturers included in the analysis:

Alfa Romeo, Audi, BMW, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Citröen, Dacia, Daewoo, Daihatsu, Dodge,
Ferrari, Fiat, Ford, Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar, Jeep, Kia, Lancia, Land Rover, Lexus, Lotus,
Mazda, Mercedes Benz, MG, MINI, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Opel, Peugeot, Porsche, Renault,
Toyota, VOLVO, Volkswagen.

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