Un hybride sémiotique

A lexical approach of the trademark names integrates to the scope of lexicology a type of sequence which usually is disregarded. The formal structure of the items is bound to restraints which are imposed to the signifier by the juridical statute of the name (capital letter, absence of plural mark, question of graphic variant...). It results, on semiotic plan, an ambiguous functionning coming under terminology and proper noun. A lot of graphemics transgressions effect, for the items, a categorial transfer towards common vocabulary. This instability presents an original feature because it doesn’t cancel the efficience of the juridical rule whiche defines the use of the word, and because it sets the (illegal) conditions to a stabilization and normalization of the linguistical statute of the items (the inclining to lexeme releases them from the ambiguity term vs proper noun).

On semantic plan, the interpretation of this type of names infers the presence of a notion or of an individual concept. However, the transfer of category which comes with the spreading of the items inside of the common vocabulary produces the emergence of a signified. Then is set the question of an possible polysemization of the name, and particularly the question of the definitions criterions which make the nomination possible. The lexicographic definitions have, for a large part of them, the structure of a metalinguistical text refering at the statute of trademark name of the définite item. Under such circumstances, far from appearing as a proper noun, a lexeme or a term, the trademark name reveals its partially sui-referential, intrinsically deictic and quasi-unamenable to a categorial definition nature.