Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - "The world in one city"
T2 - semiotic and cognitive aspects of city branding
AU - Koller, Veronika
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - This paper compares the vision documents for a British borough and a German city to see how the city-as-brand is encoded in different semiotic modes, to draw inferences about the cognitive structure of the brand, to ascertain in how far any global brand values are adapted to local contexts, and discuss what this tells us about the relationship between councils and citizens. As such, the study represents a cognitive critical approach to discourse in which texts are seen as vehicles for their producers' mental representations, disseminated to align recipients' representations with those of producers. This approach leads to the investigation of linguistic and visual parameters such as attribution, actors and processes, modality and tense, and layout and logo elements. Despite local adaptations, both municipal entities are conceptualized as brands with largely generic and interchangeable attributes. Global competition among cities leads to the appropriation of corporate discourses, such as branding, which redefine and ultimately depoliticize the relationships between council and citizens.
AB - This paper compares the vision documents for a British borough and a German city to see how the city-as-brand is encoded in different semiotic modes, to draw inferences about the cognitive structure of the brand, to ascertain in how far any global brand values are adapted to local contexts, and discuss what this tells us about the relationship between councils and citizens. As such, the study represents a cognitive critical approach to discourse in which texts are seen as vehicles for their producers' mental representations, disseminated to align recipients' representations with those of producers. This approach leads to the investigation of linguistic and visual parameters such as attribution, actors and processes, modality and tense, and layout and logo elements. Despite local adaptations, both municipal entities are conceptualized as brands with largely generic and interchangeable attributes. Global competition among cities leads to the appropriation of corporate discourses, such as branding, which redefine and ultimately depoliticize the relationships between council and citizens.
KW - CITY BRANDING
KW - CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
KW - GLOCALIZATION
KW - MULTIMODAL ANALYSIS
KW - SOCIAL COGNITION
U2 - 10.1075/jlp.7.3.05kol
DO - 10.1075/jlp.7.3.05kol
M3 - Journal article
VL - 7
SP - 431
EP - 450
JO - Journal of Language and Politics
JF - Journal of Language and Politics
SN - 1569-9862
IS - 3
ER -