Foreign Branding and Linguistics

What do Häagen-Dazs, the Ginsu knife and the American metal band Mötley Crüe have in common?  All of them have engaged in a form of marketing that professionals call foreign branding.  Häagen-Dazs is not from Scandinavia (as a matter of fact, the name doesn't mean anything in any language) and Ginsu knives were manufactured in Ohio.  And the extraneous use of dotted vowels is practically cliche among metal bands looking to add a touch of Teutonic drama to their album covers.

Foreign branding is the use of foreign or foreign-sounding words to increase the appeal of a product. It exploits preconceived ideas in the minds of consumers about certain places.  European goods are frequently associated with luxury and craftsmanship.  A knife with a Japanese sounding name conjures up images of samurai swords.  And apparently all Germans are either high precision engineers or Satan worshiping rockers (although I think we can agree that they all love David Hasselhoff...).

Perhaps no brand has more successfully wrapped itself in the cachet of its faux origins as Grey Poupon, which is owned by the American Heublein Company. According to an article in Taste Technology by Malcolm Gladwell:

...Heublein put Grey Poupon in a bigger glass jar, with an enamelled label and enough of a whiff of Frenchness to make it seem as if it were still being made in Europe (it was made in Hartford, Connecticut, from Canadian mustard seed and white wine).

If that shattered any foundational beliefs you had about the world, then I have some bad news about the Elite Mustard Cabinet, Giovanni del Pietro, Philbert Longsley VII and Greta van Fubendorff.

A similar idea is found in studies of language contact, called prestige. According to theory, the prestige that a language carries can influence whether or not other languages borrow its words. English may not be ruled by a French-speaking aristocracy anymore, but plenty of French words have entered English since the Hundred Years War because somebody wanted to sound smarter or more sophisticated (or a like bigger douchebag).

Foreign branding expands this notion of prestige and gives it nuance.  I believe that linguists should be paying more attention to the wider world of language professionals.  Marketing is big business and, in the case of foreign branding, involves variables of stereotypes and the perception of a foreign language.

If they can explain why the Ginsu knife sold better than the Quikut knife, perhaps they can help us explain why we talk about "German cinema" and not "German Filmkunst," for example.