Hey all. I'm back after a lengthy absence...desublimation anyone?
Anyhow, I am trying to find a word that would best fit this statement: 'to imbue with meaning'.
The context would be the meaning we give to commercial objects or material items rather than in a religious or mythological sense, although by giving them this meaning we do, to an extent, seek them as we might some kind of religious or mythological symbol.
In a sense, advertisers do it when they wish to attribute meaning to some object they are seeking to sell but which has no inherent meaning other than that it is a pair of shoes or a car or something. They seek to sell us on its meaning, we frequently buy into it and have thus imbued an object with meaning.
I thought of this when reading a book today. We have ceased explaining objects in a narrative sense but now find brand names used in books to describe objects and this often in an explanatory sense, i.e. that the mere brand name suggests what is meant by its use.
> advertisers do it
This is known as perceptual positioning, but I guess you are looking for the reciprocal of this action. Hmmm...
<<I thought of this when reading a book today.>>
"Product Placement." Hate to say it, but this has spread from the movie studio to the publishing house.
I was tickled Owens-Corning to see you back again, aorto, but I was also IBM because I couldn't think of a word to help you out. I hate to hemi on this; perhaps it's something in my Levis.
TEd
It's good to be back.
'Product Placement' is not quite the direction of this one as the essence of the meaning I seek is not the actual commercial process.
Last time I was here I sought a term for the process by which meaning is stripped from something. I suppose I seek the opposite of this, the process by which meaning is given to objects.
I'm not sure if there is a specific term but 'to imbue with meaning' is as close as I can get at the moment. People have done it for thousands of years, creating mythologies and beliefs and meaning out of material objects (i.e. idolatry, nature worship, paganism and all those other condescending religious terms) and in our day we are merely doing it with commercial objects, seeking definition and meaning by the brand name we wear. We create, hold fast to and identify with the meaning we give to brand names.
What is the process by which individuals - as opposed to the marketing geniuses pushing to get individuals to buy into the meaning they seek to create - surrender themselves over to giving meaning to these objects?
Is there one term, an older term, one that succinctly nails it?
'Fetishize' is close. Funny enough, I encountered that word in the writings of Peter Lamborn Wilson on the topic of tourism. He referred to tourism as the essence of 'Commodity Fetishism'. It's about as close as I've been able to get; even he was struggling to find the right word.
Another word that came close, though in a different context, was mythopoeia.
The religious or commercial undertones are difficult to avoid because commerically they are products and are given almost religious meaning. James Twitchell has written on the subject in several books and he relates that many early advertisers were the children of ministers.
Well--secularize means to transfer from ecclesiastical to civil; but that would have meant that your object(s) would have to have had an inherent religious meaning, which I gather they/it didn't.
How about traditionalize? M-W gives:
Main Entry: tra·di·tion·al·ize
Pronunciation: tr&-'dish-n&-"lIz, -'di-sh&-n&l-"Iz
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -ized; -iz·ing
: to make traditional : imbue with traditions or traditionalism
Charge? Maybe...
Shoot, what about plain old popularize? I don't care much for traditionalize, prolly because I haven't heard it used; certainly not widely, anyway.
how about those non-comercials on PBS for antique road show.. that show a family at dinner, and the mother asks for the faux crystal circa 1950 butter dish that is in pristine condition? --ie the pressed glass one from woolworths!
Shades of shopping at Tar Jay's ...
"transfer"/"transferance"
"mystify"/"mystification"
and, for the material dialecticians among us, "reify"
The word that came to mind for me was "semiotics" - dunno if this has anything to do with what you mean.
semiotics
Like reify, (q.v.) a word consisting solely of affixes.
I live in cattle country and I was horrified to learn that the proper term you are looking for is "branding". In fact, there was a book out once upon a time called "Brand You". Ick.