Multimodality of company names Paula SJÖBLOM 1. Introduction One of the special characteristics of commercial names is their multi- modal nature. Multimodality in communication means that the inter- pretations are provided not only by linguistic elements (writing and speaking) but also by other semiotic modes, e.g. image, sound and movement, which all are linked together in a socio-cultural context (Kress & van Leeuwen 2001: 20). Even though multimodality has always been present when people communicate with each other, only recently companies have taken more consciously advantage of such potentials in their communication – not least because of the develop- ment of the computer-mediated communication (see Garzone 2009: 155). Names, company names as well as brands and product names, are a part of a company’s image-building communication. The key term in the multimodal analysis is semiotic resource, which originates in the work of M.A.K. Halliday. Resources are observable actions and objects that are used in social communication and that have meaning potential which is built by their previous use in social contexts. Language and other semiotic systems always fulfil some functions; they exist because people need them for some purposes (Halliday 1978; Halliday 1985: xiii; van Leeuwen 2005: 3–4, 76–77). Semiotic modes are realizations of discourses. They are semiotic resources that are combined and selected from the available options according to the interests of the communication situation. Modes can be realized in many production media (Kress & van Leeuwen 2001: 21–22). By studying different semiotic modes we can reach a better understanding of the purposed meanings and maybe also of the community’s attitudes and values. A company name is a name that identifies a trader’s business. The referent of a company name is an abstract entity which holds many different angles: the business idea, the products, ways of action, the 352 PAULA S JÖBLOM business culture, and traditions. The image of a company is built by all the activities that the company takes. The name of a company triggers off the image, and companies lead up to have a name that supports the profiled image in the best possible way – taken into consideration the whole society’s values. Because of the multitude of images that a name must convey, it is natural that different modes are brought into play. The multimodality of company names covers at least linguistic and visual elements, but in some cases also other modes are present. The name can involve auditory elements, and even kinaesthetic or tactile modes can be presented in modern company names, thanks to new information techniques. Of course, it depends on the context, how many modes can be brought into play: on a letterhead the company name can be quite different compared to the moving, flashing, and sounding name on the company’s home page in the Internet. 2. Data This article clarifies and presents the multimodality of company names through a data that has been collected by photographing business names in Turku in south-western Finland. Turku is the oldest town in Finland with approximately 175 000 inhabitants. It is one of the most important business and industrial centres and seaports in Finland, and it is also a remarkable centre of higher education with its universities and polytechnics. It is important to note the difference between officially registered company names and the names that can be seen on company signs at the urban landscape. Company name is here understood as the name that the business uses in practice – in other words, the officially registered company names are not under my consideration. The referent of a company name is the abstract business, but also to some extent the concrete premises where the business locates. In these terms it reminds one of a place name as well, although it cannot be cate- gorized as a toponym. The names in the data can be, but necessarily are not, officially registered in the Finnish Trade Register. They can also be so called auxiliary company names that are made for running a certain part of the company’s operations and that are registered in the Trade Register. Some of the names in the data are not registered as MULTIMODALITY OF COMPANY NAMES 353 company names at all, but they just name the shop or restaurant where products or services are sold, and officially the business is run with a quite different company name. For instance, Pikkupubi (‘little pub’) is a restaurant name which cannot be found in the Trade Register; instead, the restaurant is owned by a company called Turun Jokiravintola Oy (‘Turku river restaurant ltd’). The material has been collected in June 2009 by photographing all visible company names in Humalistonkatu-street in the centre of Turku and in Itäharju industrial estate. Humalistonkatu is about 650 meters long and it locates quite next to the most important shopping street. There are many businesses that serve food and drinks on this street. In the other end of the street there is the main railway station of Turku. The names from the Itäharju industrial estate are photographed in Tierankatu-street, which is about 510 meters long, and in a small part of Voimakatu-street, altogether about 670 meters. The most observable landmark is the big hypermarket Prisma with also many smaller businesses inside the building. There are no heavy industrial factories in this area. Such visible brand names that are closely connected to the busi- nesses are also taken into consideration. Sometimes brand names like Kodak or Pepsi dominate over the actual company names in the urban landscape. It is interesting to study how these brand names can for their part provide meanings that affect the general view of the com- pany. The total amount of names is 192, of which 33 are brand names. There are 131 company names and 20 brand names collected from Humalistonkatu, and 28 company names and 13 brand names are from Itäharju. The difference in the amount of names is easy to explain: the companies downtown are mainly shops and restaurants which do not need big storage spaces, whereas the companies in the industrial area locate in big sheds and have a lot of loading and storage space also in their yards. The large number of brand names in Itäharju is because of one big car shop and one electric shop both with several brand dealerships. The company names in an urban landscape are to be seen on windows (at street level or upper floors), on doors, on the building walls (usually above the shop window), and on sun blinds. They can also be printed on signs, which stick out from the building so that 354 PAULA SJÖBLOM pedestrians can easily see them when passing by. This is of course a traditional way of raising the consumers’ attention: earlier these sings only were symbols of certain services or products – like a bagel for baker and a plate for barber. Company names can be seen also on movable, standing signs outside the shop, on flags, and on different kinds of advertising pillars, which either can stay still or spin around. There can be big advertising screens on building walls or by bigger roads, which gives a possibility to connect more movement and maybe some music or other sounds to the company name. In my data, there are all these except the last-mentioned. There is one technical note that has to be mentioned. The name data as a whole is listed as an appendix to the end of this article. In the list the names are written the same way as they are on the signs: small and capital letters, small caps, and orthographic anomalies. In the text the names have been slightly revised because of easier readability. The central revisions are on capitalized words and on initial letters. If there is a capital letter in the middle of a word, it has been retained. Some anomalies in the orthography of combined words have also been revised (e.g. JAZZ KLU BI MONK > Jazzklubi Monk). 3. Semiotic modes and company names Different semiotic modes have their own “grammars”. They follow their own organizing principles and make different functions available. According to Hartmut Stöckl (2004: 25) there still can be some trans-modal operating principles that guide all modes simultaneously; an important one being Halliday’s three meta- functions: ideational, interpersonal and textual. There are also seman- tic ties and analogies between different modes of communication. Language is a boundlessly flexible semiotic resource because of its double articulation: with a limited amount of meaningless phonemes we can produce an infinite amount of meaningful utterances. Language is based on symbolic units with form and meaning, and speakers use these symbolic units to make novel complex symbolic structures. Behind this is their understanding of linguistic convention, their communicative objectives and all matters that they suppose to be relevant (Langacker 1990: 16–17). MULTIMODALITY OF COMPANY NAMES 355 In contrast to language, images have no specific units of which the meaning of an image is constructed. We can understand pictures, however, because of their iconic nature, i.e. the similarity to the real- world objects. In a cognitive point of view, image is a quick mode relative to language, because the recipient does not have to recode it the same way as linguistic expressions have to be recoded (Stöckl 2004: 16–17). Language itself is an abstraction. In relation to multimodality, we have to pay attention to the fact that language in use covers both spoken and written language. They are different registers that use different resources of the linguistic system.