ENGLISH LANGUAGE E-PROCEEDING

ILTC 2019 PROCEEDING

RD INTERNATIONAL
LANGUAGE AND
TOURISM
CONFERENCE

THEME: Sustaining Global Development Goals
Through Languages, Education, and

Tourism

18th –19th October Kulliyyah of Languages and
2019 Management, IIUM Pagoh

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ORGANIZED BY:

KULIYYAH OF LANGUAGES AND MANAGEMENT
INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY MALAYSIA PAGOH CAMPUS



International Language and Tourism Conference (ILTC 2019)

3rdINTERNATIONAL
LANGUAGE AND
TOURISM
CONFERENCE
2019

SUSTAINING GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT GOALS
THROUGH

LANGUAGES, EDUCATION, AND TOURISM



International Language and Tourism Conference (ILTC 2019)

PROCEEDING OF ILTC 2019
(ENGLISH LANGUAGE)

INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE AND TOURISM CONFERENCE
2019

Sustaining Global Development Goals Through Languages,
Education, and Tourism

FIRST PUBLISHED 2019
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mistake and opinion presented in this proceeding and will not alter the content

of the research paper. It will be published in its original form.

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International Islamic University Malaysia,

Pagoh Campus

Copyright © 2019 International Language and Tourism Conference 2019 (ILTC 2019) KLM,
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International Language and Tourism Conference (ILTC 2019)

CONTENT

SUB-THEME 1: LANGUAGE 1-12
13-21
1 A CRITICAL REVIEW ON ORAL ENGLISH COMMUNICATION SKILLS
(OECS) 22-48
Prodhan Mahbub Ibna Seraj | Hadina Bt. Habil 49-62
63-87
2 A PRELIMINARY STUDY ON THE EFFECTS OF LANGUAGE ANXIETY 88-98
ON TWO LEVELS OF KOREAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE AT 99-110
UNIVERSITY KUALA LUMPUR 111-120
Mohd Hafizul Bin Ismail | Nurashikin Saaludin | Siti Nur Dina Hj Mohd Ali
121-126
3 A SOCIOLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF GENERICIZED BRAND NAMES IN 127-138
AMERICAN ENGLISH 139-154
Amy Zulaikha Mohd Ali 155-167

4 AN ANALYSIS OF THE USE OF GERUNDS IN ACADEMIC ESSAYS OF
UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
Norazah Md Idrus | Faridah Abdul Malik

5 “CAN WE DO A TURTLE?” – A STUDY ON SEMI-TECHNICAL
VOCABULARY IN MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE (MMO) GAMING
Hasnyzar Hussin | Afiza Mohamad Ali

6 CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE NIGERIAN PRESIDENT’S
SPEECH AT THE 73RD SESSION OF THE UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY
Ibrahim Sani Dauda | Haryati Bakrin

7 EXPLORING MULTI-PARTY INTERACTION IN TV TALK SHOW: NON-
VERBAL AS RESOURCES FOR COOPERATIVE INTERRUPTION
Aida Sahira Mohd Azalan | Nur Nabilah Abdullah

8 HIGHLIGHTS ON CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE AMONG MALAYSIAN
ARMED FORCES AND FUTURE RESEARCH TERRAIN
Dinie Asyraf Salehan | Muhammad Shafiq Azid | Muhammad Salim Muhammad
Tufail | Mejar Hilmi Azani Husain

9 IMPLEMENTATION OF INQUIRY APPROACH ON ENGLISH AS A
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FOR INDONESIA STUDENTS
Sitti Hamsina S

10 LANGUAGE, GESTURES AND MOVEMENT AS EVASION STRATEGIES
USED BY DATO’ SERI NAJIB IN NEWS INTERVIEW
Wan Muslihah Wan Mustaffa | Nur Nabilah Abdullah

11 PRONUNCIATION...THE ORPHANISED SKILL
Surinder Kaur

12 SECOND LANGUAGE SPEAKING-ANXIETY AMONG MALAYSIAN
POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS AT A FACULTY OF EDUCATION
Kamal Badrasawi | Abdulateef Solihu

International Language and Tourism Conference (ILTC 2019)

13 THE IMPORTANCE OF ETP IN MALANG'S THEMATIC VILLAGES, 168-177
INDONESIA

Putu Dian Danayanti Degeng | Irene Nany Kusumawardani | Moh. Hasbullah Isnaini

14 THE USE OF PERSUASIVE LANGUAGE IN EXTREMIST GROUPS: A CASE 178-199
STUDY OF ISIS ONLINE COMMUNICATION

Tengku Azriana Zainab Tengku Anuar Mussaddad

SUB-THEME 2: EDUCATION 200-210
211-223
15 ALGORITHM AS A PROBLEM SOLVING TECHNIQUE FOR TEACHING 224-234
AND LEARNING OF THE MALAY LANGUAGE 235-241
Faridah Nazir | Zanariah Jano | Norliza Omar
242-254
16 ANXIETY IN ARABIC SPEAKING SKILL AMONG LOWER SECONDARY 255-268
STUDENTS 269-282
Mohd Ieruwan Mohamed Mokhtar | Dr Sueraya Che Haron 283-298

17 BLIND STUDENTS ENGAGEMENT IN LANGUAGE LEARNING:
CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
Alies Poetri Lintangsari | Ive Emaliana | Fatmawati

18 DO EPISTEMIC BELIEFS PREDICT MEANINGFUL READING
COMPREHENSION? FINDINGS FROM A CORRELATIONAL STUDY OF
EFL STUDENTS
Ive Emaliana | Alies Poetri Lintangsari | Widya Caterine Perdhani

19 INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCY AND STUDENT TRAVEL
Nur Sabirah Binti Sazli | Rafidah Binti Sahar

20 INTERPERSONAL SKILLS AND MANAGEMENT ABILITY OF SELECTED
MALAYSIAN NEW PRIMARY SCHOOL HEAD TEACHERS
Candima Chin Choon Tow

21 LEARNING STRATEGIES: PERCEPTIONS ON USING SONGS AND
MOVIES IN LEARNING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
Adlina Amani Abdul Razak | Shahrul Nizam Mohd Basari

22 THE PILLARS OF SCHOOL: A CASE STUDY OF MIDDLE LEADERS IN
FOUR PRIVATE SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN
Saira Riaz

23 THE ROLE OF EPISTEMIC BELIEFS IN PROMOTING CRITICAL THINKING 299-307
FOR LIFE-LONG LEARNING

Ive Emaliana

Proceedings of the 3rd International Language & Tourism Conference 2019
Sustaining Global Development Goals through
Language, Education and Tourism

Kulliyyah of Languages and Management, International Islamic University Malaysia,
Pagoh Edu Hub, Malaysia 18th-19th October 2019

A CRITICAL REVIEW ON ORAL ENGLISH COMMUNICATION SKILLS (OECS)

Prodhan Mahbub Ibna Seraj*1 and Hadina Habil2

1*Faculty of Education, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Baru, Johor 81310
(*E-mail: [email protected])

2Language Academy, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Baru, Johor -81310.
(E-mail: [email protected])

ABSTRACT

In this digital era, English is such a lingua franca which is important to fill up our daily offline
and online communication activities in all spheres of our life. Thus, EFL tertiary level learners
need to be skilled in oral English communication in functioning professional operation
effectively in their future career. It is observed that a graduate with good oral English
communication skills (OECS) has a better chance in career advancement and promotion rather
than one who does not. Thus, this critical review on 28 research papers from 2010 to 2019
chosen from the database of Springer and Scopus using selecting criteria of PRISMA model
(2009) and analyzing through NVIVO (12 version) aims to explore and identify causes for poor
OECS, teaching techniques for OECS and assessment procedure of OECS. The prime findings
of this study are shown that there are several causes e.g. anxiety, teaching techniques e.g.
using technology or features of mobile phone and assessment procedures e.g. School-based
assessment for OECS ignoring other causes like large size class, learners’ inactiveness, lack of
oral practice and lack of authentic materials, and how mobile technology effective for teaching
and assessing OECSs techniques. The analysis of this study is conducted for a detailed
description of the concepts and ideas for teachers and academic administrators for teaching
and learning OECS effectively and functionally. However, this study would provide in-depth
understanding and insights on causes and assessment of OECS for teachers who are teaching
at University level, administrators who are involved to design courses and above all graduate-
level learners in EFL contexts and suggest to investigate a paradigm shift of traditional
pedagogy into mobile-based pedagogy in future.

Keywords: Oral English Communication Skills; English as a Foreign Language; and L2

1

1. INTRODUCTION

The etymology of the term ‘communication’ comes from the Latin word ‘communicare’
(meaning to share) and the French word ‘communis’ (common) means one’s experience
sharing with others (Okoro, 2007). Thus, oral English communication skills are such a skill for
EFL graduates for creating better opportunity in a future career than the others who do not
have such. Learners’ oral presentation technique helps to improve oral communication skills
or ability (Herrera & Vielma, 2018). It is the skill or capability to use sound and grammar system
to communicate meaning (Idrus, Salleh, Wan Hassan, & Ali, 2013). Hence, it is very crucial for
EFL university students to have good exposure in oral English communication skills (Idrus,
2016; Kernec, Levrai , and Bolster, 2017). Moreover, OECS needs special attention for learning
and teaching in education programs for all disciplines so that students could be effective in
their academic as well as professional life (Kunioshi, Noguchi, Hayashi, & and Tojo, 2012;
Mitchell & Eng, 2010; Nikolic, Stirling, & Ros, 2018; Malthus & Lu, 2012;Tuomaitė &
Zajankauskaitė, 2017). Again, there is a positive correlation between an oral and written skill
that makes EFL learners more efficient in language skill (Spencer & Petersen, 2018). But in
EFL contexts, English oral communication skill is sought to be neglected in the curriculum at
the tertiary level. That’s why learners in EFL contexts do not get proper oral exposure to be
skilled in oral communication skills. This critical investigation illustrates the concepts that
might help EFL teachers and students identifying the causes behind poor performance in oral
English communication skills. Again, this paper would clarify EFL teachers’ perception about
types and functions of OECS and how could different teaching techniques be applied for
teaching and assessing OECS in EFL contexts. Therefore, the objective of this review paper is
to investigate causes for poor OECS, types of assessment of OECS and teaching techniques of
OECS studied from 2010-2019 in different contexts. The findings show that technology might
be integrated into teaching and assessment techniques to improve EFL learners’ oral
proficiency.

2. METHODOLOGY

For this critical review research papers as close to the topic as possible have been collected
from the Springer link and Scopus database by following the criteria described in the table-2.1
and figure 2.1. The collected papers have been sorted by following PRISMA (Preferred
Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) model (Moher et.al, 2015) which
mainly comprises four steps of literature research, quality assessment, eligibility and inclusion
criteria, and studies included in qualitative, quantitative and mixed-method synthesis of
relevant papers are employed (figure 2.2). The purpose of using of PRISMA model is to select
more appropriate research papers on the topic and sorting for scrutiny with NVIVO for
systematic critical review. Sorted research papers have been imported and exported as ris.
files from research management software Mendeley preparing to use with NVIVO -12 for
grouping, categorizing and finding patterns in literature by developing nodes and sub-nodes
and exploring more graphical presentations.

2

Table-2.1: Searching criteria for articles

Database Scopus No of Research Papers
Search criteria 316
Searching phrase Oral English Communication Skills 1861
Subject Area Social Science & Arts and Humanities
Document types Article, Conference paper, Book Chapter & Review
Publication Stage Final & Article in press
Keywords Communication, Teaching, education, students, oral
communication
Source types Journals, Conference proceedings, Books & Book series
Language English
Year 2010-2019

Database Springer
Searching phrase Oral English Communication Skills
Content types Article, Chapter & conference paper
Disciplines Education & linguistics
Language English
Year 2010-2019

Studies From 2010-019

6; 18% 1; 3%3; 9%1; 3% 2010
3; 9% 2011
2012
1; 3% 2013
1; 3% 2014
2015
10; 31% 3; 9% 2016
4; 12% 2017
2018
2019

Figure 2.1: Distribution of Studies from 2010-2019

3

PRISMA 2009 Flow Diagram

Identification Springer Link Scopus (n = 316)
(n =1861)

Screening Exclusión of duplícate and unrelated
articles
Eligibility
(n = 231+244=475)

Records screened with titles
(n = 33+29=62)

Full-text articles assessed for eligibility and
final collection (n = 33)

Included Research papers Research papers Research papers
included in qualitative included in quantitative included in Mixed
Method synthesis
synthesis synthesis
(n = 16) (n = 12) (n = 05)

Figure 2.2: PRISMA flow chart for selecting process of articles

4

3. Discussion

3.1 Causes for Poor OECS:

In EFL contexts, learners’ OECSs often fail to reach the standard mark, even sometimes is
incomprehensible. This critical review has picked up several causes (Figure-3.1) which are
responsible for learners’ poor OECS. Anxiety is the prime cause which depends on learners’
emotions, interests, intellectual factors, linguistic factors, affective factors, and classroom
environment (Kasbi & Shirvan, 2017). According to MacWhinnie & Mitchell (2017), anxiety
makes learners uneasy and anxious when they need to interact L2 with others.

Figure 3.1 Causes for Poor OECS

They found learners’ self-interest into L2 and L2 learning experience are interwoven to provide
lower the anxiety that brings positive result in learning. On the other hand, learners who have
a high level of anxiety, have low performance in oral production (Szyszka, 2017). The other
cause behind EFL learners’ poor OECS is the severity of aphasia; aphasia refers to impairment
of producing speech due to lack of linguistic knowledge. According to Kong, Law, Wat, & Lai,
(2015), the co-verbal gesture is associated with oral communication in which severity of
aphasia has a significant impact on EFL speakers. Stressfulness is another negative washback
for EFL learners which is resulted out of lack of experience in oral activities, a sudden vacuum
of linguistic expression in brain and insecurity about self-intelligibility for interaction (Schaller-
Schwaner, 2015). However, stressfulness is intertwined with EFL students’ reticent behaviour
regarding oral communication practice. Most of the EFL learners are reticent towards oral
practice due to lack of opportunity (Soo & Goh, 2017). For this reticent behaviour, learners fall
into verbal-semantic impairment when they are interacting. Thus, verbal–semantic
impairment has a negative impact on EFL learners’ OECS (Kong et al., 2015). Thus, these causes
are responsible for learners’ poor performance into OECS.

Here, most of the papers highlighted psychological factors of learners such as anxiety,
stressfulness, aphasia, reticence and verbal impairment rather than the environmental factors
for oral practice. These environmental factors such as large size class, lack of oral exposure,
learners’ passiveness and lack of materials are not addressed. In the traditional teaching
method, these make challenges to teaching and learning oral communication skills. This

5

review suggests that these factors need to be addressed to mitigate and prompt learners’
OECS due to practicality of learners’ future career in this study. Therefore, teachers and
academic administrators need to understand the problems faced by EFL learners and designed
syllabus, assessment and teaching technique herewith to solve these problems.

3.2 Types of Assessment
It is sometimes difficult for EFL teachers assessing learners’ performance in oral
communication skills in the traditional teaching method. Moreover, in some extents, oral
communication skill assessment spreads panic among EFL learners that hamper learners’ OECS
performance. Thus, selecting an assessment system is required much effort and carefulness
regarding contexts. Different types of assessments have been used by EFL teachers in different
contexts (Figure 3.2). According to Eng & Mitchell (2011), continued assessment brought
consistent and positive result and made learners enthusiastic into oral communication skill
course. Mobile-based peer feedback enabled learners monitoring their oral production and
provide corrective feedback which improves their overall oral communication skill (Fang,
Cassim, Hsu, & Chen, 2018). Similarly, teacher feedback that provides praise and constructive
criticism on learners’ oral skill make good rapport and help learners a lot (Wang, Yu, & Teo,
2018). On the other hand, Gan, Oon & Davison, (2017) advocated that school-based
assessment (SBA) which is innovative could be used for assessing English oral language skills.
Another innovative assessment system namely mixed panel assessment examined by Kernec,
Levrai and Bolster (2017) among undergraduate students at the University of Nottingham
Ningbo China focusing on the use of a mixed specialist and non-specialist audience for
students’ oral presentations assessment at the end of the semester. In the similar context Liu
& Jia, (2017) examined the validity of university-based assessment which indicated that there
would be a major change in the teaching and learning and the provision of university supports.

According to Heiman et al. (2012), oral case presentation is another important technique for
assessing learners’ OECS. The negative side of this type of assessment is very time consuming
but technology in this regards help by recording learners’ performance. Last but not the least
assessment technique is teacher feedback which is traditional, process-oriented, descriptive
and formative in nature (Wang, Teo, & Yu, 2017). Above all, for validity, reliability and fairness
of assessment six dimensions such as content type, interaction, authenticity, structure,
examiners and orality should be followed otherwise test result should give the real picture
(Memon, Joughin, & Memon, 2010). Another, indexed rating for an oral assessment is CLIP
(Coherence, Lexical, Grammatical and Pronunciation) indexing is very crucial in the sense of
identifying learners’ progress (Salamonson et al., 2019). This indexing rater can be used in any
EFL contexts for assessing learners’ oral performance. But, still, there is a lack of recent study
on how mobile phone used as an assessment tool for learners’ OECS. Thus, attention should
be drawn in this regard for further study.

6

Figure 3.2 Types of Assessment

3.3 Teaching Techniques

Different teaching techniques (Figure-3.3) have been used for developing EFL learners into
different contexts to get maximum effective result. The study held in the University of Toronto
by Tallman, Weiss & Wilkinson, (2018) on teaching oral presentation skill by borrowing
techniques from drama and theatre during the three-year tenure of the course. In the first-
year course, students were introduced to create awareness of performance skills such as
“taking space”, “grounding body” and articulation exercises which are known as “the method”
or “acting method”. In the next two years, the instructors would apply the method from drama
and theatre in which students would take part in turn-taking or roleplay which would be
recorded for further analysis of their performance.in this way, the researchers provided a
model of teaching oral presentation. Another teaching technique is automation which led
fluency in oral production (Onoda, 2014). Automation is held through traditional presentation-
practice-production consists of language-focused tasks, meaning-focused tasks and language
learning focused tasks. For developing EFL learners’ oral communication skill, microteaching
has a favourable impact (Herrera & Vielma, 2018). Microteaching technique is the process of
teaching in which a specific topic within the area of a subject exposed to teach without prior
preparation or well-defined references. Kunioshi et al. (2012) proposed an online support site
in which the Japanese–English Corpus of Presentations in Science and Engineering (JECPRESE)
contained transcriptions of 74 presentations were designed for Japanese students. Here,
utterances were categorized according to the units of the speech that express the speaker’s
specific intents in the presentation and frequent used words/expressions in the oral
presentation.

7

In the case of ESL teachers’ training, Soo & Goh, (2017) found that pre-service teachers opined
that learners’ engagement into the open class discussion would be highly expected due to
increasing their high-level fluency in oral presentation skills. Westerveld & Gillon, (2010) found
a positive effect of oral narratives as teaching techniques among young EFL learners. Oral
narratives teaching technique was held through the activities story retelling, story generations
and personal narratives. Hence, technology is now no longer outside of the classroom, the
mobile phone is being used as a teaching tool. Darmi & Albion, (2017) in their study found a
positive impact of using the mobile phone to improve EFL learners’ oral communication skill.
They used built-in features on mobile phones (audio/video recording) to record and review
the assigned tasks as roleplay in pair or trio or mock interview for oral interaction practice.
Similarly, m-learning apps provide exciting opportunities to engage learners to be skilled in
communication skills (Smith et al., 2016). Wiemeyer & Zeaiter, (2015) proposed that social
media could be a platform for synchronous and asynchronous oral communicative tasks in
which learners could be exposed to real-life discourses and acquainted with linguistic
challenges. Again, Hart,(2016) examined web-based virtual language community connecting
English-language learners in China with trainers in the United States, used to deliver short,
one-on-one lessons designed to improve students’ oral English communication skills and
found positive impact among participants. Besides these,

Figure 3.3 Different teaching techniques

The mobile phone has multifunctional opportunities which are not studied from teachers’
perspectives. Thus, how a mobile phone can be used as a teaching technique for
developing learners’ OECS needs to be explored further.

4. CONCLUSION

Oral communication skills are a bit neglected into the curriculum of different EFL contexts.
Moreover, EFL teachers sometimes become puzzled to teach and assess oral
communication skills and so do learners. This review paper investigated to focus the causes
of EFL learners’ poor performance, teaching techniques and types of assessment methods
of oral English communication skills for providing clear indications and insights for EFL
teachers, learners and researchers to deal with OECS according to different contexts. The
study suggests that features of mobile might be integrated into teaching technique to

8

provide a platform in and out of the classroom as well as technology-based assessment
techniques need to be studied to improve learners’ oral proficiency through providing
feedbacks in EFL contexts. However, further research is needed to deal with the problems
such as large size class, learners’ passiveness, lack of oral exposure and teaching materials
for OECS teaching with the help of technology.

5. RECOMMENDATION

This review paper has found the following recommendations to improve EFL learners’
OECS;

 For developing oral communication skills a course related to it should be designed
for all disciplines at tertiary level (Kernec, JL. Levrai , P. and Bolster, 2017)

 There is a need to make a paradigm shift of traditional language pedagogy (Schaller-
Schwaner, 2015)

 For developing OECS EFL learners should be engaged with tasks of outside the class
hours (Darmi & Albion, 2017).

 Teachers should create such an environment which reduce learners’ anxiety for oral
skill learning (MacWhinnie & Mitchell, 2017)

 Teachers’ role should be modified (Wang, Yu, & Teo, 2018)

 Language pedagogy for oral communication should be designed to use audio/video
features of mobile phones and provide such a convenient environment which
encourage learners to share recordings (Darmi & Albion, 2017)

Bibliography: Mr Prodhan Mahbub Ibna Seraj is currently doing his P.H.D as fulltime student
in the faculty of Education at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) Johor, will present this paper
title “A CRITICAL REVIEW ON ORAL ENGLISH COMMUNICATION SKILLS (OECS)”. He is an
assistant professor at the department of English at Sylhet International University, Sylhet,
Bangladesh. His contacting address is [email protected].

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12

Proceedings of the 3rd International Language & Tourism Conference 2019
Sustaining Global Development Goals through
Language, Education and Tourism

Kulliyyah of Languages and Management, International Islamic University Malaysia,
Pagoh Edu Hub, Malaysia 18th-19th October 2019

A PRELIMINARY STUDY ON THE EFFECTS OF LANGUAGE ANXIETY ON
TWO LEVELS OF KOREAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE AT UNIVERSITI

KUALA LUMPUR

Mohd Hafizul Ismail*1, Nurashikin Saaludin2 and Siti Nur Dina Hj Mohd Ali3

1, 2 Malaysian Institute of Information Technology (MIIT), Universiti Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
(E-mail: *[email protected], [email protected])

3 Akademi Pengajian Bahasa (APB), Universiti Teknologi MARA, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia.
(E-mail: [email protected])

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of language anxiety on two levels of
learning Korean as Foreign Language (KFL) classes at Universiti Kuala Lumpur (UniKL). This
study will examine the differences in foreign language anxiety in two different levels of
Korean classes participated by 66 students in the first and the second semester who
learned Korean as foreign language. Most studies previously investigated foreign language
anxiety levels with an emphasis on English as a Second Language (ESL) but there were only
a small number of studies concerning Korean language as foreign language especially in
Malaysia. Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FCLAS) developed by Horwitz et.al
(1986) will be used as the instrument for data collection tool. Although the result is at the
preliminary stage, it provides useful understanding to improve the current teaching and
learning practice on Korean language curriculum in UniKL.

Keywords: Korean Language; Malaysia; Foreign Language Anxiety

1. INTRODUCTION

Foreign Language (FL) anxiety is considered as a crucial element in foreign language
learning process (Horwitz & Cope, 1986). For the past thirty years, many scholars have
supported the importance of affective factors like anxiety and motivation in language
learning. This demonstLanguage anxiety has been studied from different perspectives and
focused on different factors. Starting with Horwitz and Cope (1986), foreign language
anxiety became a significant issue in the field, and many researches have been conducted
in this area.

13

To understand the causes of anxiety, many researchers have conducted various studies
related to anxiety on different foreign language learner groups. Majority of the studies
pointed out that foreign language anxiety has negative effects on students’ achievement
(Jee, 2016; Kim, 2015; Aida,1994; Horwitz & Cope, 1986). In other words, students with
high anxiety levels obtained lower grades that less anxious students. However, Sparks and
Granschow (1997) suggested that poor L1 language learning rather than the anxiety itself
may cause students’ failure to learn foreign language as one of contributing factor.
Nevertheless, dispute exists with respect of interpreting the results (Jee, 2016) but
researchers have proved that anxiety is one of the important elements that contributes to
foreign language learning among learners. Thus, studies of foreign language anxiety have
established a framework to predict the achievement of foreign language learners.

Researchers have investigated specific types of anxiety such as writing anxiety (Cheng,
Horwitz & Schallert, 1999), listening anxiety (Shu-Yan & Cha, 2019) and reading anxiety
(Zhou, 2017). With regards to thesetypes of anxitey, researchers have identified which
factors contribute to anxiety and proposed the suitable teaching methods to reduce it.
Nevertheless, based on past studies, most investigated anxiety levels and performances
conducted specifically with English as Second Language (ESL) and English as Foreign
Language (EFL) students, some studies conducted with other language learning groups such
as Japanese Leaners ( Kitano, 2001), Spanish Learners ( Torres & Turner, 2016), and French
Learners (Danies, Yashima & Jenssen, 2016). With regards of Korean learners, there were
only a few studies reported (Song, 2017; Jee, 2016; Kim, 2015). However, there is no studies
yet conducted in Malaysia pertaining to this area of study.

Considering the growing number of Korean leaners in Malaysia, this study offers insights
on better approaches of teaching and learning Korean language to teachers and students.
This study intends to provide more empirical study results in the literature of foreign
language learning, especially across language levels and its effect on their final grades. The
main objective of the study is to identify the differences of foreign language anxiety levels
among students enrolled in two different levels of Korean language. The research question
is as follows: are there differences in foreign language anxiety levels among students
enrolled in two different levels of Korean language?

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter will be limited to the recent theories and studies which are related to the
objective of the study. This chapter will discuss more on the concept of anxiety, effects
of anxiety in learning language, the relationship between anxiety and the achievement
of Korean as a foreign language.

2.1 Definition of Language Anxiety

Foreign language (FL) anxiety is defined as “a distinct complex of self-perceptions, beliefs,
feelings, and behaviors related to classroom language learning arising from the uniqueness

14

of the language learning process” (Horwitz & Cope, 1986). Language anxiety also is anxious
feeling or worry over specific language learning process “associated with an arousal of the
autonomic nervous system” (Spielberger,2015). As a result, this leads to poor language
achievement and is regarded as a factor that contribute to poor language achievement
later on(Spielberger,2015).

In general, anxiety is divided into trait anxiety and state anxiety (Spielberger, 2015). Trait
anxiety reflects an individual’s personality and it differs between learners in terms of their
tendency to experience an anxiety in response to some perceived threat. Anxiety is
continuous if one feels nervous in various situations. However, state anxiety refers to a
temporary condition in response to some perceived threat. State anxiety is a moment to a
moment phenomenon, and one experiences anxiety depending on specific situations.

Horwitz et. al (1986) classified language anxiety as state anxiety and it plays a significant
role in foreign language classroom (cited in Jee, 2012, pg 4). They developed Foreign
Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) to investigate the anxiety levels in foreign
language classroom. FLCAS examines communication apprehension, test anxiety and fear
of negative evaluation and it is proved to be a suitable tool with high validity and reliability
for research purposes (Horwitz et. al, 1986).

2.2 Effects of Language Anxiety

Anxiety can be facilitative or debilitative to foreign language learning (Alpert & Harber,
1960). Facilitative anxiety encourages students to learn more about the language, but
debilitative anxiety causes poor performance and withdrawal from the foreign language
class (Horwitz et. al, 1986). Many studies focused in investigating whether foreign language
had a positive or negative effect on students’ performance and a considerable number of
studies concluded that foreign language anxiety had a negative effect on foreign language
learning (Jee, 2016; Kim, 2010; Aida, 1994, Horwitz et.al, 1986).

Nevertheless, several studies confirmed that some degree of language anxiety can be
facilitative and helpful for foreign language learning. Ehrman and Oxford (1995) found that
a medium level of language anxiety did not affect students’ achievement and supported by
Marcos and Garau (2009) suggested that certain level of foreign language anxiety had
positive effects on students’ foreign language learning. Thus, even though many studies
confirmed that anxiety had a negative effect on language learning, the answer to the
question of whether anxiety is facilitative or debilitative in foreign language learning is still
controversial among scholars.

2.3 Relationship between Language Anxiety and Performance.

Several studies highlighted on the connection between anxiety levels and students’
performance in the foreign language contexts other than English. For example, a
research conducted by Zhang and Kim (2014), which intended to investigate reading

15

anxiety of Chinese Learners of Korean found out that reading anxiety were positively
correlated with learners’ performances. Zhou (2017) concluded that the Chinese L2
learners in United States experienced a medium level of anxiety and positively
correlated with students’ performances.

While most studies focused on ESL and EFL students, only a few studies on KFL learners,
and the studies indicated that KFL learners have high language anxiety (Jee, 2016; Joo
& Damron, 2015). Kim (2010) confirmed that anxiety had negative influences on
performance for Korean Heritage learners, and anxiety and functional goals were two
predictors for learner performance. A study by Kwon and Kim (2010) established a
negative relationship between language anxiety and achievement. Yet, there was a
positive correlation between risk-taking and achievement on the advanced level of
Korean classes. This is consistent with Kwon, Nam and Kim (2010) who also found a
negative relationship between language achievement and achievement, particularly in
speaking and writing. Nonetheless, there have no relationship between language
anxiety and classroom environment.

2.4 Korean Language in Malaysia.

Korean language was introduced as a foreign language to Malaysia universities when at
a time the Malaysian government initiated the Look-East Policy in mid-eighties (Rou,
2010). At present, seven Malaysian universities offer Korean language as an elective
course and plenty of private institutions offer Korean language class to their students
(Rou, 2010). A center for TOPIK (Test of Proficiency of Korean Language) in Malaysia is
located at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). The TOPIK is a language test for non-
Korean speakers planning to study at any Korean universities or working with the
Korean companies.

In the recent years, Korean language becomes popular in Malaysia. As a result, there is
a growth of number of learners learning Korean language with the number of
enrolments in Korean Language classes have increased dramatically. This is mostly
influenced by the Korean Wave, or Hallyu, along with the economic growth of South
Korea (Soo & Rahim, 2017). Korean language elective courses started at Universiti Kuala
Lumpur (UniKL) in 2013 with the introduction of Foundation for Korean Universities
Program. Currently, there are around 120 students learning Korean language in full-
time and part-time mode at UniKL.

Although a significant body of literature affirmed that anxiety plays an important role
in students learning Korean language, there have been limited studies focusing on KFL
students especially in Malaysia. As a matter of fact, more empirical studies are needed
considering a growing number of Korean leaners in Malaysia enrolled the course. So,
this study seeks to take a step further to provide better insights to students learning
Korean in Malaysia.

16

3. METHODOLOGY

The respondents of this study were 80 students from first semester Korean 1 and
second semester Korean 2 classes at UniKL. The ages ranged from 19 to 25 years old.
All students were enrolled in Korean language courses at the time of survey. Of all the
participant taking part in this survey, only 66 (i.e. 31 semester one students and 35
semester two students) completed the questionnaire on time. Among all the
respondents, 30 students were female and 36 are male students. To summarize, the
response rate is 82. 5%.

The first semester Korean 1 class is the first and the lowest level of the Korean language
program at UniKL. This class is conducted two hours per week and total 17 week per
semester. After students completed the first semester Korean 1, they will be enrolled
for the second semester Korean 2 class.

3.1 Instruments

The Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) is used and adapted as the
instrument in this study. The FLCAS was designed by Horwitz et.al (1986) to measure
the students’ anxiety levels in the foreign language classroom. The instrument consists
of 33 statements assessing communication apprehension, test anxiety, and fear of
negative evaluation in the foreign language classroom. Each item is rated on 5-Likert
scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). 5 corresponds to the least
anxiety and 1 to the highest level of anxiety. Because the foreign language is Korean in
this study, wording changes were made whenever is necessary.

The internal consistency of the FLCAS by Cronbach’s Alpha was reported as .93(n= 108)
with its reliability of r= .83 (Horwitz & Cope, 1986). The Cronbach’s Alpha of this study
is .802 (n=66). For data collecting purpose, an informed-consent form was administered
in the first week of a semester. Upon completing the data collection, a background
survey was administered during the first week of the class as well. The FLCAS survey
was administered during the semester.

4. RESULTS

The survey consists of 33 items, thus the possible range of scores is 33 to 165, which is
high score indicate high anxiety. The respondents were divided into three levels of
anxiety: low, medium and high anxiety. The mean score of the anxiety scales of 66
students were 110.88 with the standard deviation of 23.50, so the researchers classified
students with z-score of .5 : students with z-score of above .5 as high anxiety, students
with z-score range from -.5 to .5 as medium anxiety and students with below -.5 as low
anxiety.

The total range of 66 students’ anxiety scores is 55 to 152, and the mean score is 110.88
(SD=23.50). For the first semester Korean 1 class, the range of the scores is 57-126, and

17

the mean score is 97.65 (SD=20.23). The second semester Korean 2 class had the range
of 54-152 of the anxiety scores with the mean of 117.00 (SD=26.90). Consequently, the
first semester Korean 1 class students had lower anxiety levels than the students of the
second semester Korean 2 class (Table 1)

Table 1: Foreign Language Anxiety Levels of the Classes

Class N Range (Min-Max) Mean SD
20.23
First semester 31 57-126 97.65 26.90

Second Semester 35 54-152 117.00

The students were classified into three levels of language anxiety namely; low, medium and
high level. 19 students considered to be at low anxiety level scored between 54 to 98, with
the mean scores of 83.55 (SD=14.50). 27 students at medium level scored from 101 to 122,
with the mean score of 110.13 (SD=6.88). 20 students at high anxiety level scored from 124
to 152 with the mean score of 138.25 (SD= 9.22). Hence, the students in medium anxiety
level is higher compared to low and high anxiety level. (Table 2).

Table 2: Foreign Language Anxiety Levels

Anxiety Level N Range (Min-Max) Mean SD
Low anxiety 14.50
Medium anxiety 19 54-98 83.55 6.88
High anxiety 9.22
27 101-122 110.13

20 124-152 138.25

By referring to the purpose of this study: Are there differences in foreign language anxiety
among students enrolled in two different levels of Korean? The t-test results showed
significant differences between two Korean classes; t=3.47, p<.05 (Table 3)

Table 3: Foreign Language Anxiety Between Classes

N Mean SD T P
3.47 .00*
First Semester 31 97.65 20.23
Second Semester
35 117.00 26.90

The mean score of the first semester Korean 1 was 97.23 (SD=20.23) and the second
semester Korean 2 was 117.00 (SD 26.90). It is indicated that second semester students’
language anxiety is higher than first semester students. There were significant differences
between the means scores of the two classes. As a t-test indicated, there were significant
differences between both classes (t=3.47, p<.05).

5. CONCLUSION

Preliminary analysis indicated that there were significant differences of foreign language
anxiety between the two levels of classses. A post-hoc test confirmed that there were
significant differences between the first semester Korean 1 and the second semester
Korean 2 classes. Thus, this study confirmed the results of other previous studies (Jee 2012;
Marcos & Garau, 2009), given that upper semester (i.e. second semester) students had

18

higher levels of anxiety.

Students in the second semester Korean 2 class scored higher on foreign language anxiety
scale than the first semester Korean 1 students. This is due to the fact that students in the
second semester had more exposures and experiences in learning Korean language with
intermediate level syllabus compared to the first semester students learning the basic level
syllabus. Furthermore, this may due to the differences of assignment and tasks assigned
two different levels of Korean classes. Learning Korean language in semester 2 is slightly
difficult in comparison to semester 1 as they move from beginner level to intermediate
level. This may affect the findings as higher level of difficulty assignments and tasks
contributing to another reason that increased the students’ anxiety levels in learning
foreign language which in line with Jae (2012) and Marcos and Garau (2009)’s study.

As for the teaching implications, it is learned that the foreign language instructors have
important role to play (Jee, 2012; Kim, 2010; Marcos & Garau, 2009). The instructors need
to minimize anxiety in learning foreign language at classroom level by creating a supportive
atmosphere. This can be established by conducting classroom activities that foster the
foreign language learning itself. For example, activities such as ice-breaking games, class
journal writing, discussion and providing positive feedback might be helpful to fulfill the
goal. Other collaborative activities such as role-play would also be beneficial and offer more
contact opportunities with the instructors.

Future research should seek to study the effects of anxiety on students’ performances.
Researchers must look at the effects on anxiety to the students’ performance throughout
the learning of foreign language. The limitation of this study is since the semester is still
on-going, the researchers are not able to compile the students’ final grades. Thus, future
research should consider aspects such as students’ performance and anxiety levels to be
researched. Additionally, research related to contributing factors that causes anxiety in
learning foreign language should also be considered.

Learning Korean language is challenging for Malaysian students as the language itself is
different in terms of the vocabulary, sentence structure and sounds. In order to master the
language, learners need to take into account not only the sentence structure but also the
meaning of Korean language alphabets. Therefore, it requires more time for learners to
learn compared to learning other language such as Malay and English. Thus, Korean
language instructors need to improve their teaching skills in providing supportive and
conducive learning environments in the classroom to ensure better proficiency among
students in Korean language learning in UniKL, in particular, and all univerisites in Malaysia,
at large.

Bibliography:

Mohd Hafizul Ismail is currently working at Universiti Kuala Lumpur Malaysian Institute of

19

Information Technology (UniKL MIIT), as the lecturer in the Pre-Korea Program. He
conducts research in the field of engineering management, information system
management and Korean Language.

Nurashikin Saaludin is currently a Senior Lecturer at Universiti Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian
Institute of Information Technology, Malaysia. Her research interest is in the Statistics and
Social Sciences areas.

Siti Nur Dina Mohd Ali received the M.A in Linguistics and English from Universiti Sains
Malaysia. She is currently a lecturer at Universiti Teknologi MARA. Her research
interests include language anxiety, ESL/EFL, and linguistics.

Acknowledgment: This paper has been supported by Universiti Kuala Lumpur (UniKL)
through Conference Grant (163-523005).

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Kim, Y. J. & D. J. (2015). Foreign Language Reading Anxiety: Korean as a Foreign Language
in the United States. Journal of the National Council of Less Commonly Taught
Languages, 17, 23–55

Kim, S. 2010. “Korean Heritage Learners’ Affect and Performance.” Studies in Foreign
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Marcos‐Llinás, M., & Garau, M. J. (2009). Effects of language anxiety on three proficiency‐
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21

Proceedings of the 3rd International Language & Tourism Conference 2019
Sustaining Global Development Goals through
Language, Education and Tourism

Kulliyyah of Languages and Management, International Islamic University Malaysia,
Pagoh Edu Hub, Malaysia 18th-19th October 2019

A SOCIOLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF GENERICIZED BRAND NAMES IN
AMERICAN ENGLISH

Amy Zulaikha Mohd Ali*1
1*Centre of Modern Languages, Universiti Malaysia Pahang, Pahang,

MALAYSIA. (*E-mail: [email protected])
ABSTRACT

In our modern society, a vast number of trademarks are being integrated into everyday
language and used as generic terms in the media. A trademark is any word, name, symbol,
or device that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those
of others. This study focuses on generic terms with regards to trademarks that cease to be
protected when they start to be more widely used for and understood as, a type rather than
a brand. The inclusion of such terms in dictionaries, even when marked ‘trademark’ as in ™
or ‘registered’ as in ®, indicates that the status of these terms has begun to shift. The study
aims to look at the differences in the status of a word with respect to its genericness, and
the morphosyntactic evidence that shows genericization. A total of 100 generic terms were
selected from multinational and established companies from the late nineteenth century,
which still exist today. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications of its
findings and proposes a number of directions for further research.
Keywords: brand names; trademark; genericization; morphosyntactic; American English

22

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Aims of the Research

Turning goods and services into a household name sounds like a corporate dream and some
may think that it is a significant recognition or a compliment to the company behind a
successful brand when consumers understand the brand name to be the name of the
product itself. However, this is actually a sign that a brand name is losing its distinctiveness
and is no longer identified by its exclusive source (Tulett, 2014). In other words, the brand
name no longer represents the product’s badge of origin but has become a generic term so
competitors are free to use the powerful name for their own products as the trademark is
‘dead and buried –the victim of genericide’ (Tulett, 2014). As stated by Poulter in Tulett
(2014), a partner in the intellectual property team at Bird and Bird, the brand name is the
most valuable asset of a company so if the brand loses its exclusivity, the brand is finished.
To illustrate this extreme claim, Duncan Toys Co was forced to give up its rights in 1965
after a judge ruled ‘yo-yo’ had become too ingrained in common speech to remain
trademarked and went bankrupt (Tulett, 2014).

Therefore, the value of and the need for trademark protection for products are
undeniable. Trademarks in the form of brand names can be said to be the main currency
by which companies distinguish themselves from competitors in the marketplace
(Hargraves, 2009). According to the consultancy Interbrand, the value of a brand like Apple
is close to US $100 billion (Tulett, 2014) so trademarks help to assure that the company,
and not an imitative competitor, will reap the rewards associated with a desirable product
(INTA, 2012). The nominal strength of a trademark lies on a continuum where at the weak
end it is impossible to protect or even claim product names as a trademark as the name
already generically describes the product in question, e.g. aspirin, granola, and thermos. At
the other end of the continuum lie the ‘fanciful’ cases where a word so uniquely identifies
a company’s product that any use of it is overwhelmingly associated with that product, e.g.
Kodak, Marlboro, and Harley. In between ‘generic’ and ‘fanciful’ lie three other categories,
with gradations from weaker to stronger: ‘descriptive‘, ‘suggestive‘, and
‘arbitrary‘(Hargraves, 2009).

According to Clankie (2000, p. 1), ‘genericization theory developed as a response to claims
outside of linguistics that generic use in brand names was as a result of purely marketing
factors and/or misuse by consumers’. Despite the proliferation of brand names in
everyday life, there has been relatively little research on the genericization of brand
names. During the course of our preliminary research, we also discovered that most studies
have been mainly concerned with the legal side of the change in status of brand names so
my research aims to provide some explanation from a linguistic perspective. The study thus
aims to identify:

1) Differences in the status of a word with respect to its genericness

2) Morphosyntactic evidence for the genericization of brand names

23

It is hypothesized that brand names will fall into a number of categories, with fuzzy
boundaries between them, and that morphosyntactic evidence will show the genericization
of brand names. Before outlining the research, we will provide a historical overview of
genericization in the next section.

1.2 Historical Overview of Genericization

The term genericide surfaced as a description for the loss of a trademark’s protected status.
Genericide is an odd term, because when the Latin suffix -cide is attached to a root X, it
usually refers to the killing of X, e.g. homicide means ‘the killing of a human being by
another human being’ and suicide means ‘the act of killing yourself’. More recently, the -
cide suffix has been applied to chemical substances that serve as killing agents, e.g.
germicide kills germs, and pesticide kills pests. However, genericide breaks this established
pattern because the word does not refer to the killing of something generic. Instead, what
is being metaphorically killed here is the specific trademark, and the ‘killer’ is the process
of genericization (Zimmer, 2009).

Dorothy Fey, the executive director of the United States Trademark Association, first
introduced the word genericide to the readers of Business Week in 1972. Even though
most trademark litigations are an attempt to keep competitors from whittling away at a
market protected by a successful brand, the biggest worry of trademark owners is losing a
trademark entirely and having the court declare that the name has become generic, thus
no longer being anyone’s exclusive property. The legal precedent that haunts them is a
1936 decision against Du Pont, in which its Cellophane trademark was ruled to have
become generic. Dorothy Fey termed such a loss to be genericide. In 1983, Legal Times
carried an article entitled ‘Court Rules that Monopoly Has Suffered Genericide’ and it took
a later act of Congress to allow Parker Brothers to re-register their trademark (Zimmer,
2009).

Recently, the American Dialect Society selected tweet, the word meaning ‘to post a
message, item of information, etc. on the social networking service Twitter’ (OED, 2014),
as the Word of the Year for 2009. The Word of the Decade for 2000-2009 was google, the
generic verb meaning ‘to use the Google search engine or another search engine to find
information on the Internet (OED, 2014). We cannot deny that these selections somehow
indicate that we are living in a digital age (Zimmer, 2010b). However, what we are
interested in is his how the term google started to be used as a generic term. In 1998, when
Google was a still a search engine on the Stanford University website, the co-founder
himself, Larry Page, signed off by saying, “Have fun and keep googling!” Of course, Google
was later registered as a trademark when it was incorporated as a company and the proper
use of the trademark is clearly outlined on its permissions page (Appendix A); however,
some of the guidelines appear to be self-contradictory. Despite these efforts to protect
their trademark, Google quickly went generic such that by 2006, Merriam-Webster
Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary had published entries for it (Zimmer, 2010a).
Contrastingly, Microsoft executives were amenable to the verbing of Bing right from the
start but Chris Crum of WebProNews claimed that the verb still does not seem to have
broken through into common usage, while google reigns supreme (Zimmer, 2010a).

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2. LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 The Principles of Genericide

‘Genericide’ is insider slang from the world of intellectual property law in accordance
with the provisions of the Lanham Act, signed into law in 1946 by President Truman,
and amended by Congress in 1984 (in the Trademark Clarification Act) (Moore, 2003).
A finding by the Court that the term in question has lost its source-identifying
significance, and has in consequence become a generic term for the relevant type rather
than a brand can result in cancellation of the trademark. Such a finding transforms the
status of the product in its relation to other products in its market, and the status of
the product maker in its relation to its competitors. The name then disappears as it now
circulates within the community of consumers in a different way than a brand name,
and has acquired a new ‘primary significance’ (Moore, 2003, p. 344).

2.2 Traditional Names and Brand Names

Before reviewing the literature of brand names in greater detail, let us first consider the
differences between brand names and other names such as personal names (e.g.
anthroponyms and toponyms). There are four key areas that differentiate brand names
from other names and each will be briefly described in this section (Clankie, 2000, p. 2).

Firstly, brand names carry a visible actuation date. When a governmental trademark
office grants a formal recognition of rights in a trademark for a particular product, a
brand name is registered (INTA, 2012). This registration process allows us to see when
the brand first came onto the market. Unlike other names, we can track the actuation
date of brand names and observe any changes over time (Clankie, 2000, p. 2). For
instance, a youth entertainment retailer, which began in 1948 as Children’s Supermart,
was transformed into Toys ‘Я’ Us nine years later (DePuy, 2012). Having been granted a
formal recognition by a governmental trademark office also means that brand names
carry a proprietary status. This is the second difference between brand names and
other names. Having proprietary status means that an ‘ownership of the name’ is
granted to the trademark holder, affording protection from infringement by
competitors who make similar products (Clankie, 2000, p. 2).

The third difference between brand names and other names is that there is little
concern for ‘orthographic, stylistic, and other rules of the language’ for brand names so
it is common to find brand names that are purposely misspelled or violate morpheme
boundaries (Clankie, 2000, p. 2). Brand names are known to be guilty of ‘sensational
spelling’ or the deliberately incorrect spelling of a word for a variety of reasons. The
main assumption is that this will draw attention to or trademark an otherwise common
word so that it creates a ‘unique, identifiable brand association’ (DePuy, 2012). For
example, the word ‘blue’ in Blu-ray purposely leaves out the ‘e’. Other examples are
Creme Egg, Froot Loops, Krispy Kreme, and Proactiv. These purposeful deviations from
standard written English are used because it ‘sets you apart’, ‘gets people talking’ and
it ‘helps with recall’ (Stevens, 2011).

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The final difference between brand names and other kinds of names lies in their
grammatical status. While most names are considered proper nouns, brand names are
considered to be proper adjectives. This is due to the proprietary status that brand
names carry. Brand names are given a common class noun phrase as the actual name
for the goods or services once they are registered. This means that the brand names
are representative of the ‘maker of the product and not the name for the product itself’,
giving it the role of a proper adjective modifying the common class noun phrase
(Clankie, 2000, p. 2). For instance, Band-Aid brand adhesive bandages is the official
name for the brand of adhesive bandages produced by the Johnson & Johnson
company. In this case, adhesive bandages is the common class noun phrase and Band-
Aid is a proper adjective, referring to the maker of the product, Johnson & Johnson. The
fourth and final key area relates to the research aims so I will further discuss the status
of brand names from a linguistic perspective.

2.3 Brand Names as a Persuasive Tool

Brand names started to be widely used in the 19th century due to industrialization and
‘the coming of packed goods’ (Mačura, 2009, p. 58). Various kinds of products were
produced in factories and labels were required for the products to be distinguishable
from those of other producers. However, modern branding only started in the post-war
era in the belief that consumers could take ownership of a brand name, and thus have
an emotional attachment to the goods or services associated with the brand name
(Mačura, 2009). According to Aaker (1991), who is the most frequently cited author in
the brand strategy literature, ‘a brand is a distinguishing name and/or symbol (such as
a logo, trademark, or package design) intended to identify the products/goods or
services of either one seller or a group of sellers, and to differentiate these goods from
those of competitors’ (as cited in Mačura, 2009, p. 58).

In financial terms, brands are increasingly being defined as ‘intangible assets’ (Moore,
2003, p. 337). According to Interbrand’s Grace, intangible assets, including brands, can
represent up to 97% of a company’s value (Garone, 1998, p. 21). This is especially true for
major brand corporations like Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s, IBM, and AT&T (Garone, 1998, p. 21).
In the literature of business and brand strategy, brands are often defined as a form of
protection as they protect the consumer from counterfeit goods, and the producer from
unfair competition. According to one strategist, ‘if brand names did not exist there would
be no trustworthy marketplace’ (Batra & Ljungberg, 1998, pp. 6–7). A brand thus signals
to the customer the source of the product, and protects both the customer and the
producer from competitors who might attempt to provide products that appear to be
identical (Aaker, 1991, p. 7).

In psychological terms, brands are ‘promises that consumers believe in’ (Chiaravalle &
Schenck, 2007) (as cited in Mačura, 2009, p. 58). It follows that brands are understood
as ‘belief system’ and there is a very strong psychological link between what a product
is, what it does, and what kind of promises are connected to it (Mačura, 2009, p. 59). By
acting as indicators of source, brand names promise a consistent level of quality,
helping consumers to decide whether to purchase a desirable good or service

26

again (INTA, 2012). Therefore, a smart company will focus its marketing and branding
efforts on the types of consumers who will invest in its goods or services. For example,
a California-based craft brewing company, Lagunitas Brewing Co., frequently
accentuates the spelling of many of its products to create iconic, over-the-top names
for their beers such as ‘Little Sumpin’ Wild Ale’, and ‘Brown Shugga Sweet Release Ale’.
This is targeted at the beer-drinking adults and sits well with the attitude of the
branding (DePuy, 2012).

Based on these definitions of brands from different perspectives, it can be seen that
without a protected brand name, a brand does not exist because branding has a major
impact on sales, corporate awareness, and consumer choice. However, it is the value of
the brand name that is implied in its protection that is vulnerable to genericide. A finding
of genericide results in cancellation of the trademark, which is the very thing that private
enterprises have spent time and energy promoting (Moore, 2003). From a linguistic
perspective, ‘brands have integrated into our language as linguistic tokens for products
and services’ (Mačura, 2009, p. 58). What happens in the case of genericide is that
consumers ‘take over’ the trademark such that the brand name becomes a mere word of
the language, the product is transformed into a mere commodity, and the producer
ceases to be identified as its source.

2.4 Classification of Trademarks and Brand Names

According to Moore (2003, p. 345), brand strategists and intellectual property lawyers
agree that the key to avoiding genericide is to use a brand name as an adjective
modifying a noun that identifies the product class or even to insert the word ‘brand’
itself as has been done in the case of NutraSweet brand sweetener. He also explained
that evidence of genericness may be gathered from various sources including ‘direct
testimony of members of the relevant public’, ‘consumer survey or poll results’, as well
as use of the term in books, newspapers, dictionaries and other texts (Moore, 2003, p.
345). As stated in the Trademark Clarification Act of 1984, a registered mark shall not
be deemed to be generic solely because such mark is also used as a name of or to
identify a unique product or service. The primary significance of the registered mark to
the relevant public, rather than purchaser motivation, shall be the test for determining
whether the registered mark has become the generic name of products/goods or
services on or in connection with which it has been used (Moore, 2003, p. 345).

It is important to recognize that the courts have employed a classification of trademarks
and brand names as ‘generic’, ‘descriptive’, ‘suggestive’, ‘arbitrary’ and ‘fanciful’, in
ascending order of distinctiveness. Based on this classification, the strongest protection
applies to ‘arbitrary/fanciful’ terms, which are words that are made up and have no
meaning other than as a brand name (e.g. Exxon for petroleum products). Such marks
generally receive the broadest scope of protection (INTA, 2012). On the other end, the
least protection applies to ‘descriptive’ terms, which are terms that describe
products/goods or services that cannot be protected as a mark unless the public has
come to recognize them as marks (e.g. Gold Medal for flour, and Ford for automobiles)
(INTA, 2012).

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In the dispute between King-Seeley Thermos Co. and Aladdin Industries regarding the
brand name Thermos, the court held that Thermos had become the generic term for
vacuum-insulated bottles and that the original registrant of the trademark had failed to
recapture it from its generic status despite the extraordinary efforts taken by the
company. The court also agreed that the generic use of the term Thermos had become
so firmly impressed in everyday language that these extraordinary efforts had failed to
keep the term from falling into the public domain (Lockhart, 1999, p. 29).

2.5 Studies on Genericization of Brand Names

Having presented the above literature, we would now like to focus more on studies that
have explored this issue from a linguistic perspective. In his research, Mačura (2009,
pp. 58-62) observed a total of 192 brand names from a linguistic perspective and
presented an elementary classification of brand names into seven categories:

1) Overt and covert promise

2) Perseverance and tradition

3) Owners

4) Abbreviations, initialisms, acronyms

5) Geography and place names

6) Coinages

7) Genericized trademarks

We would like to draw your attention to his description of the final category, which is
‘genericized trademarks’ (Mačura, 2009, p. 61). In his article, Mačura explained that
trademarks or brand names became generic and settled in the lexicon as ‘independent
lexemes’ or ‘generic descriptors’ instead of ‘names’ (Mačura, 2009, p. 61). He further
mentions that brand names are ‘filled with all kinds of other information, reference,
history, tradition, uniqueness, geography etc. that is foregrounded for specific
communicative purposes’, and comes to a conclusion that branding does not only serve
the purpose of conveying ‘basic denotative information about the product/company’ but
also to ‘maintain some other linguistic function(s)’ (Mačura, 2009, p. 61).

The second study that will be addressed here is Clankie (2000, pp. 1-11). In his article
‘Genericization: A Theory of Semantic Broadening in the Marketplace’ Clankie provides
an overview of genericization and the findings of his previous study (Clankie, 1999).
Clankie (2000) examined the linguistic factors that create an environment where
genericization of a brand name could take place. His study aimed to ‘provide insight
into more traditional problems of semantic change’ (p. 1). His study is based on four
hypotheses that are believed to form genericization: ‘novelty’, ‘length and

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predominance’, ‘genericization as a regular process’ and ‘single association’ hypotheses
(Clankie, 2000, pp. 5, 6). He found that:

1) 50 of the 100 brand names were novel in their original semantic class;

2) Generic brand names were shorter than their corresponding class noun phrases
in each of the three levels as in ‘word’, ‘syllable’, and ‘morpheme’;

3) 99 of the 100 brand names matched the proposed pattern that generic brand
name change occurs in the same pattern; and

4) 89 of the 100 brand names were in association to a single product alone (Clankie,
2000, p. 7).

Interestingly, Clankie (2000) also looked at genericization in a language other than
English and examined Japanese. He found that genericization in Japanese functions
according to the precise patterning and triggers in English. The explanation for this is
that Japanese brand names are similarly bound to legal constraints through
international trademark conventions such as the Madrid Protocol and the structural
similarity required by those laws (Clankie, 2000, p. 8). He concluded his research by
discussing the two types of generic change and the problem of actuation in American
English.

2.6 Issues/Disputes on Genericization of Brand Names

2.6.1 Well-known past cases

In the English-speaking world, Hoover, Kleenex, and Aspirin are some of the most well-
known past cases when it comes to the genericization of brand names. One of the best-
known cases is that of Monopoly, which took place in 1982. The court found that the
term Monopoly was generic as applied to a board game. Relying largely on consumer
survey evidence, the court found that, even though only one producer had ever
produced the game, the primary significance of the term was as a type of product,
rather than an indication of the source of the product. Therefore, the court decided
that the term had become generic and the trademark was no longer valid (Lockhart,
1999, p. 65). Congress later rejected this finding of genericness because it was based on
evidence about ‘purchaser motivation’ rather than data about the actual use of the
term by a relevant public. As mentioned in Section 2.4, it is the ‘primary significance’ of
the mark to the relevant public, not consumer motivation that determines whether a
trademark has become generic (Moore, 2003, p. 346).

2.6.2 Well-known recent cases

The clash started off in 2011 when the world’s largest online retailer, Amazon.com Inc.,
launched its Amazon Appstore for Android. Apple cried foul, claiming it had the sole right
to use the term App Store. Amazon claimed the term App Store was a generic term and
denied that Apple had exclusive rights to the phrase because the term is

29

‘unprotectable’ (Gullo, 2011). In its defence, Apple claimed that the United States
Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) approved its application to register App Store as
a trademark in the United States. The dispute reached a stage where Amazon cited the
work of a leading group of US linguists in an attempt to win the dispute. Butters, a
linguist paid $400 an hour by Microsoft, corroborated Microsoft’s view that App Store
is too generic and too widely used to qualify for trademark status (Malone, 2011).
Butters wrote, “The compound noun App Store means simply ‘store at which apps are
offered for sale,’ which is merely a definition of the thing itself – a generic
characterization” (Malone, 2011). Microsoft’s semantic parsing of App Store is meant
to challenge the opinion of Apple’s own linguistic expert, Robert A. Leonard, who
argued that App Store is indeed a proper noun, even if the two words are generic when
separated, and therefore deserves trademark recognition (Malone, 2011). After a long-
running dispute, on 9 July 2013 Apple decided not to file suit over Amazon’s use of the
term, causing Amazon to drop a countersuit. Commenting on the case, Apple
spokesperson Kristin Huguet said, “With more than 900,000 apps and 50 billion
downloads, customers know where they can purchase their favourite apps” (Mogg,
2013).

Luxury New York-based jewellery chain, Tiffany & Co., sued US wholesaler Costco,
accused it of infringing its trademark by selling Tiffany engagement rings (Tulett, 2014).
Rather than denying Tiffany & Co.’s accusation, Costco took an aggressive defensive
position, claiming that although the Tiffany setting started out as a trademark by
Charles Tiffany, popularized in 1886, frequent third-party use had caused it to become
genericized. Therefore, Costco alleged that ‘Tiffany setting’ was now a generic term for
solitaire-style ring, comprising a diamond mounted on a single band with six prongs. It’s
now so commonly known that the term ‘Tiffany setting’ even appears in the dictionary
(Suddath, 2013). Tiffany objected to Costco’s claims of genericide but worryingly for the
company, US district judge Laura Swain concluded there was a ‘genuine factual dispute’
as to whether the trademark has a ‘primarily generic meaning in the minds of members
of the general public’ (Tulett, 2014). The case is set for another hearing, but if it
eventually concludes in Costco’s favour, Tiffany’s trademark for one of the world’s most
famous ring settings would effectively be worthless.

2.7 Protections of Registered Trademarks

The main purpose of a trademark is to enable the public to recognize the products/goods
or services as originating in a particular company. Trademarks are protected by law in
order to serve this source-indicating function and prevent the public from being confused
about the source of the goods or services (INTA, 2012).

In this section, we will look at the ways in which companies can get protection for their
brand names in order to avoid them being genericized. Although there are systems
which facilitate the registration or enforcement of trademarks, it is currently not
possible to obtain a single trademark registration that will automatically apply around
the world. This is because the protection offered by many trademark registrations is
typically only limited to the country in which they are obtained, a quality

30

known as ‘territoriality’ (INTA, 2012). Therefore, individual trademark applications are
filed in each country in which protection is sought. However, there are initiatives that
enable trademark owners to be covered in several countries with a single trademark
application. For example, the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM) is
the European Union’s trademark office, where a registered trademark can be obtained
that will be valid in all member countries of the European Union (INTA, 2012a).
Information on trademark protection can be obtained from the website of The
International Trademark Association (INTA): http://www.inta.org.

Headquartered in New York, INTA is a not-for-profit global association of trademark
owners and professionals dedicated to supporting trademarks and intellectual property
to protect consumers and to promote fair commerce. Founded in 1878, INTA strongly
supports and encourages the governments of the member countries of the World
Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) to take all action necessary to adhere to the Madrid
Protocol. Under the provisions of the Madrid Protocol it is possible to file a single
international trademark application to obtain registrations in several countries to
reduce complexity and costs of registration (INTA, 2012). At present, INTA represents
about 30,000 trademark professionals, including brand owners from major
corporations as well as small- and medium-sized enterprises, law firms, government
agency members, professors, as well as student members. Through its advocacy work,
INTA, in partnership with the USPTO, WIPO, and other IP associations, has played a
leading role in promoting the Madrid Protocol in Latin American countries. INTA policy
seminars conducted throughout the world also have helped identify the challenges that
must be addressed by local authorities and IP stakeholders (INTA, 2014).

As mentioned above, the Madrid Protocol provides a centrally administered system for
securing trademark registrations in member jurisdictions by extending the protection of
an ‘international registration’ obtained through the WIPO. The WIPO is a global forum
for IP services, policy, information and cooperation that is headquartered in Geneva,
Switzerland. In other words, WIPO provides ‘a world reference source for IP
information’ to help governments, businesses and society realize the benefits of IP
(WIPO, 2014). Established in 1967, it is a self-funding agency of the United Nations, with
187 member states, and its mission is to lead the development of a balanced and
effective international IP system that enables innovation and creativity for the benefit
of all (WIPO, 2014). As a global forum for IP services, WIPO provides ‘a policy forum to
shape balanced international IP rules for a changing world’ and ‘global services to
protect IP across borders and to resolve disputes’. It also offers ‘technical infrastructure
to connect IP systems and share knowledge’. In its latest report on global brands, it
warned that ‘questions of trademark dilution have gained new prominence with the
rise of e-commerce and the emergence of new market intermediaries like eBay and
Amazon’ so the monitoring of infringements has also increased (WIPO, 2014).

With online channels becoming increasingly important for a company’s commercial and
marketing activities, there is a need for companies to be protected in the online world as
well. Such is the kind of protection offered by companies like

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NetNames. Established as Group NBT in 1995, the company was renamed NetNames in
2013, and is headquartered in London. NetNames offers a single point of contact for
the management of Internet domain names and protection for brands across all online
environments. It is a company that serves to optimize private enterprises’ online
presence whilst protecting their reputation, revenue, and IP (brand protection). It helps
protect companies and enterprises against problems like counterfeiting (production or
sale of fakes), phishing (spam, e.g. to obtain financial or confidential information from
consumers), or cybersquatting (the registration of a commercially valuable Internet
domain name, as a trademark, with the intention of selling it/profiting from its use).
The NetNames Group is the largest and most trusted name in Europe for online brand
protection. During the past decade, it has built a network of more than 2000 companies
worldwide, including clients like Unilever, Aviva, ASOS, and Thomas Cook, charging
anywhere from GBP 50,000 to GBP 200,000 per client per year.

Apart from the various organizations and agencies that offer some sort of defence for
companies as indicated above, some have also launched their own marketing campaigns
in order to defend their trademark. For instance, an advert from photocopier firm Xerox
in 2003 that reads ‘When you use ‘Xerox’ the way you use ‘aspirin,’ we get a headache’ is
an attempt to save its trademark from falling into the trap of genericization (Tulett, 2014).

3. METHODOLOGY

3.1 Research Design and Selection

The theoretical and contextual outline presented above has highlighted the importance
of our research questions. The present section outlines the research design and reviews
the data obtained from the research conducted. The methodology of this experiment is
largely original; however, it is in part inspired by other studies that have researched the
genericization of brand names, particularly the two studies discussed in section 2.5,
Mačura’s (2009) classification of brand names into seven categories and Clankie’s
(2000) theory of semantic broadening. The current research encompasses both
qualitative and quantitative analyses. It seeks to analyse a total of 100 brand names
from both the products/goods and the services sectors, all of which were created in the
late nineteenth century.

This array of genericized brand names can be found by following this link
http://robdkelly.com/blog/marketing/top-100-synonymous-genericized-brands/. There
is actually a way of classifying the brand names of products/goods and services
according to the WIPO, called The Nice Classification (NCL). NCL is an international
system used to classify products/goods and services for the purposes of the registration
of marks. Based on NCL, products/goods can be divided into 34 categories and services
into 11 categories (Appendix B). After careful consideration, we decided to divide the
list of brand names intuitively as we feel that due to the linguistic (instead of legal)
nature of the research, having too many classes will only complicate our analysis and
not necessarily contribute to the aims of our research.

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Therefore, for this research, the list obtained from the website was subdivided into a
number of general categories. The identification of categories was purely intuitive and
largely depended on the available data, leaving a gap for further research in the future.
The following list of brand names and categories is by no means exhaustive and some
brand names may be assigned to more than one category. Overall, there are thirteen
categories the brand names fall into: household, medical, food & beverage, computing
& IT, industry, fashion, automobile, stationery, toys, electronics, cosmetics, services, and
miscellaneous (Appendix C). The list is divided into categories to show the possibility of
some products/goods and services categories having a higher probability of becoming
generic than others ‘because of some intrinsic characteristic of the product’ or service
(Phillips & McQuarrie, 2002, p. 10).

3.2 List of Brand Names and Companies/Organisations

The data of brand names for this research is obtained from a marketing website owned
by Rob Kelly. A total of 100 brand names with their respective companies are as follows:

Table 1. Brand Names and Companies/Enterprises

Brand Name Company / Enterprise

1. Band-Aid Johnson & Johnson

2. Zipper B.F. Goodrich

3. Jell-O Kraft Foods

4. Yo-Yo Duncan Yo-Yo Company

5. Frisbee Wham-O

6. Escalator Otis Elevator

7. Butterscotch Parkinson

8. Videotape Ampex Corp

9. Popsicle Unilever

10. Thermos Thermos GmbH

11. Kleenex Kimberly-Clark Worldwide

12. Scotch-tape 3M

13. Vaseline Unilever

14. Ping Pong Jacques and Son (and later Parker Bros)

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15. Windex SC Johnson
16. Heroin Bayer AG
17. Q-Tips Unilever
18. Saran Wrap S.C. Johnson & Sons
19. Plexiglas(s) Rohm and Haas (later sold to Arkema).
20. Kool-Aid Kraft Foods Company
21. Velcro Velcro
22. Bubble Wrap Sealed Air Corp
23. Cellophane Innovia Films Ltd (originally a trademark of
Dupont)
24. Kerosene Abraham Gesner
25. Aspirin Bayer
26. Dumpster Dumpster
27. Styrofoam The Dow Chemical Company
28. Super Heroes DC Comics and Marvel Comics
29. Trampoline George Nissen
30. Tupperware Tupperware Brands Corp.
31. Post-It Note 3M
32. Astroturf AstroTurf LLC (originally trademarked by
Monsanto).
33. Crock-Pot Sunbeam Products
34. Ace Bandage 3M
35. Rollerblade Nordica
36. Murphy Bed Murphy Bed Co. Inc.
37. Hacky Sack Wham-O

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38. Chapstick Pfizer
39. Wite-Out Bic Corporation
40. Drano S.C. Johnson & Sons
41. Nyquil Procter & Gamble
42. Realtor The National Association of Realtors
43. Tarmac Tarmac Limited
44. Taser Taser International
45. U-haul AMERCO
46. Tabasco McIlhenny Co.
47. Speedo Pentland Group
48. Stetson Old Granddad Industries
49. Dry Ice Dry Ice Co.
50. Powerpoint Microsoft Corp.
51. Photoshop Adobe Systems Inc.
52. Winnebago Winnebago Industries
53. Cuisinart Conair Corp.
54. Formica Formica Corp/Fletcher Building
55. Sharpie Newell Rubbermaid
56. Lysol Reckitt Benckiser
57. Ziploc S.C. Johnson & Son
58. Onesies Gerber Childrenswear
59. Dramamine Prestige Brands
60. Cigarette Boat Cigarette Racing
61. Skype Skype

35

62. Armor-All Armored AutoGroup
63. Google Google
64. Jet Ski Kawasaki Heavy Industries
65. Advil Pfizer
66. Dust Buster Black and Decker
67. Memory Stick Sony Corp.
68. Jacuzzi Jacuzzi
69. Matchbox Cars Mattel
70. Word Microsoft Corp.
71. Muzak Muzak Holdings LLC.
72. Jeep Chrysler
73. Excel Microsoft Corp.
74. FedEx FedEx Corp.
75. Bengay Johnson & Johnson
76. Bisquick General Mills
77. Brillo Pad Church and Dwight
78. Brita Clorox
79. Coke Coca Cola Corp.
80. Groupon Groupon
81. Head & Shoulders Procter & Gamble
82. Zipcar Zipcar
83. JumboTron Sony
84. Levi’s Levi Strauss & Co.
85. Mack Truck Renault Vehicules Industriels

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86. Pepto Bismol Procter and Gamble
87. Polaroid Polaroid Corp.
88. Roto-Rooter Roto-Rooter Group, Inc.
89. Swiffer Procter and Gamble
90. Tums SmithkLine Beecham Corp.
91. Tylenol McNeil Consumer Healthcare (a subsidiary of
Johnson & Johnson).
92. Xerox Xerox Corp.
93. Krazy Glue Elmer’s
94. Vespa Piaggio
95. Walkman Sony
96. Netbook Psion
97. Zamboni Frank J. Zamboni & Co. Inc.
98. Altoids Wrigley
99. Shredded Wheat Kraft
100. X-ACTO Knife Elmer’s

3.3 Qualitative Data Analysis

In conducting this research, we have made use of several reliable instruments and each
will be outlined in this section.

3.3.1 The Oxford English Dictionary

Firstly, we have made use of the electronic edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED)
published by Oxford University Press. We are aware that there are various American-
based dictionaries which may seem to be more suitable choices for this research as it
focuses on genericized brand names in American English. However, after careful
consideration, we decided to refer to the OED primarily because it is the largest historical
dictionary of English and includes entries for all of the generally used words that are
found in Middle English and later varieties (Kay & Allan, forthcoming). This

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makes the OED an enormously valuable instrument for the design of our research.
Another benefit of the OED is that it is available in an electronic edition so it makes OED
Online very convenient and most up-to-date as it includes revised entries that are
added every few months (Kay & Allan, forthcoming).

We utilized the OED to observe the ways in which each brand name (Table 1) in the list is
entered as an entry in the dictionary. We looked for morphosyntactic evidence
(whether the brand name is entered with its first letter in uppercase or lowercase) as
well as the word class that the brand name is classified, e.g. noun, verb, adjective, etc.
We also made use of the OED to look for the definition of the brand names and included
all this information in a table (Appendix D). These data are arranged according to the
13 categories mentioned in section 3.1 and then organized alphabetically in each
category for a better overview.

3.4 Quantitative Data Analysis

3.4.1 Corpus of Contemporary American English

Our research also requires the use of a corpus to find examples of the use of brand
names. The Corpus of Contemporary American English (CoCA) is the largest freely
available corpus of English, created by Mark Davies of Brigham Young University. The
corpus contains more than 450 million words of text and is equally divided between
spoken text, fiction, popular magazines, newspapers, and academic texts. It includes 20
million words from each year from 1990-2012. One of the key benefits of the CoCA is
that it is updated regularly, with the most recent texts from summer 2012. Because of
its design, it is perhaps the only corpus of English that is suitable for looking at current
and on-going changes in the language (CoCA, 2014).

We utilized the CoCA to find examples of use of each brand name (Table 1) in the list.
We looked for morphosyntactic signs of genericization, e.g. whether the brand name is
entered with its first letter in uppercase or lowercase, or both. Similarly, these data are
then arranged according to the 13 categories mentioned in section 3.1 and then
organized alphabetically in each category for a better overview (Appendix E). Due to the
interface of the corpus and the manual nature of the research, it was not possible to
obtain the frequency of occurrences separately for the instances written with the first
letter in uppercase from the ones written with the first letter in lowercase.

4. MAIN RESULTS

In this section, we will report the findings of our research according to the instruments

that we have employed. The material we have examined consists of 100 brand names

obtained from http://robdkelly.com/blog/marketing/top-100-synonymous-

genericized-brands. Of 100 brand names used as data for this research, 93 are of

products/goods. This leaves only seven being brand names of services which are

Realtor, U-Haul, Google, FedEx, Groupon, Zipcar, and Roto-Rooter.

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Table 2: Proportions of Goods or Services

Goods Services

93% 7%

This imbalance is possibly due to it being more common for brand names of
products/goods to suffer from genericide due to advertising and marketing strategies,
which lead consumers to identify more easily and closely with products/goods than with
services. Therefore, the findings of this research are more applicable to brand names of
products/goods as these makes up 93% of the data. In order to help us answer the
research questions, we decided that two-token testing would help us determine
whether a brand name has been deemed generic or not from a linguistic perspective.
In other words, the criteria for identifying a brand name as generic included its use in a
generic context through demajusculization, in two separate sources, as evident in the
OED and the CoCA.

4.1 Findings from the OED

The analysis of brand names in the OED revealed that of 100 brand names, 42 are written
with its first letter in uppercase, while 26 brand names are written with its first letter in
lowercase, and 32 brand names do not make it as entries in the OED. Figure 1 graphically
displays the proportion:

Proportions of Letter Cases in the OED

32% Uppercase
42% Lowercase
Not Included
26%

Figure 1: Proportions of brand names written with first letter in uppercase vs. lowercase, and brand
names not found in OED

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As can be seen from Figure 1 above, 42% of the brand names are written with their first
letter in uppercase. This shows that these brand names are treated as a ‘proprietary
name’, which is ‘a word or phrase over which a person or company has some legal
rights, especially in connection with trade’ (OED, 2014). With regards to our research
aims, this finding serves as the most straightforward morphosyntactic evidence that
these brand names are not deemed to be generic from a linguistic perspective. A much
smaller proportion (26%) of the brand names are written with their first letter in
lowercase, which suggests that they are deemed to be generic as they have lost their
capitalization, which is definite evidence of genericization. The remaining 32% of the
brand names that are not found in the OED may not be so commonly used and have not
entered consumers’ everyday speech so are assumed to retain their proprietary status
and rights to the trademark.

However, definitions in the OED with regards to proprietary status and letter cases for
brand names also presented a particular challenge in our research. Although it was
possible to ascertain the proprietary status of these brand names from the relevant
national authority, like the USPTO, which maintains a database of registered
trademarks, analysing them from a linguistic perspective was not straightforward. For
instance, unlike other brand names, yo-yo, popsicle, crock-pot, and realtor are defined
as ‘proprietary name’ but are not written with its first letter in uppercase. Only the
definitions for crock-pot and realtor gave some sort of indication of its extended use,
which suggests its generic status. The problem remained for yo-yo and popsicle as to
whether these brand names are deemed to be generic or not. This is because no
indication of its loss of proprietary status or extended use is being given despite the
demajusculization. For instance, popsicle is only defined as ‘a proprietary name for an
ice lolly’ (OED, 2014). Ultimately, these brand names seemed to occupy a fuzzy position
in the research, necessitating careful consideration.

Another peculiarity that arose when working with brand names in the OED is that there
are several ways of describing a brand name’s proprietary status. Whilst the OED very
often begins the definition with describing the brand name to be a ‘proprietary name’
(Appendix D), this poses a challenge to us when Thermos is described as a ‘trade term’.
We later found that a ‘trade term’ should not be treated as the absolute synonyms of
‘proprietary name’. This is because according to INTA, a trade term is ‘the name used by
a company in its business activities, which is also known as a ‘commercial name’ (INTA,
2012). Additionally, a company’s trade name may also be its corporate name, and it
may or may not also be used as a trademark. Even though a trade term is an officially
approved corporate name and it can be used on legal documents, if it infringes
another’s trade name, trademark or service mark, it cannot be used in ordinary trade
(INTA, 2012).

Next, we also analysed the 100 brand names with regards to word class and found that
a majority (82%) are classified solely as nouns. It came as a little surprise to us that 16%
of the brand names are also classified as another word class, in addition to being a
noun. Meanwhile, the remaining 2% of the brand names is classified as verbs.

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Table 3 below illustrates the analysis of word class for the 100 brand names as classified
in the OED.

Table 3: Analysis of the word class of 100 brand names in the OED

Noun Noun & Verb Noun & Adjective Verb

82 14 22

As shown in Table 3, 14 brand names are also classified as verbs in addition to being
nouns. These brand names are zipper, yo-yo, vaseline, ping-pong, bubble wrap, kerosene,
astroturf, rollerblade, tarmac, taser, jet ski, muzak, jeep, and Xerox (Appendix D).
Interestingly, Xerox is the only one in this group that does not suffer from
demajusculization according to the OED. This is because even though the genericization of
the trademark has begun by commonly hearing people say “Xerox this for me”, the
trademark is fortunately saved by efforts by the company to reign in its generic use
(Swyers, 2012). Two brand names that are also classified as adjectives, in addition to
being nouns, i.e. band-aid and polaroid. Following the rules of inflection and morphology,
nouns that come to be used as words of other classes are deemed to be generic so both
of these brand names seem to fall in that category.

As mentioned above, we also found that Photoshop and Google are classified as verbs in
the OED (Appendix D). This is a rather peculiar finding because despite this
classification, both brand names are written with the first letter in uppercase. However,
this phenomenon of a changed word class might be the start of the word falling into
the public domain. According to Google’s Rules for Proper Usage (Appendix A), the
trademark should be used as ‘adjective, never as a noun or verb, and never in the plural
or possessive form’. However, this statement seems to be self-contradictory because
adjectives are words like ‘big’ and ‘good’. What Google may try to mean is that it wants
its trademark to function as attributive modifiers as in Google search engine. Here, the
proper noun Google functions as attributive modifier and does not become an adjective
because adjectives do not name things. The guideline also states that ‘You are NOT
googling, but searching on a Google search engine’. What Google may mean is that we
should never use a noun trademark as a verb, despite the classification in the OED. This
is because its loss of proper noun status might be the start of its falling into the public
domain (Pullum, 2004)

4.2 Findings from the CoCA

Other than the OED, we also made use of the CoCA and looked for examples in use in
contexts for all the brand names from our list (Table 1) in order to observe the ways in
which they are written. We found that of 100 brand names, 65% are written with the

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first letter in both letter cases (uppercase and lowercase). By contrast, 31% of the brand
names are written with the first letter in uppercase only, and the remaining 4% of the
brand names are only written with the first letter in lowercase. The results in Figure 3
show the proportion of the ways these brand names are written in the CoCA:

Proportions of Letter Cases of Brand Names in the COCA

Uppercase
31%

Lowercase

Uppercase & Lowercase
65%

4%

Figure 2: Proportions of brand names written with the first letter in uppercase only, lowercase only, and
both letter cases (uppercase and lowercase) in the CoCA.

As can be seen from Figure 2 above, 65% of the brand names are written with the first
letter in both cases (uppercase and lowercase) which means that these brand names
are no longer strictly treated as a ‘proprietary name’ and are losing their capitalization.
The fact that they are also written in lowercase is clear evidence of genericization. On
the other hand, 31% of the brand names have their first letter in uppercase only,
signalling that they still retain their proprietary status and rights to the trademark, and
are thus not deemed to suffer from genericization from a linguistic perspective. The
remaining 4% of the brand names that are entered with the first letter in lowercase only
in all contexts have definitely lost their proprietary status. These brand names are
zipper, videotape, trampoline, and dry ice.

Despite the findings presented above, it is vital that we take note of certain peculiarities
that were encountered during the analysis. Most importantly, we need to be aware that
the frequencies/occurrences of brand names in the CoCA as depicted in Appendix E
include a large number of false positives. This is because some of the brand names are
not always used with direct relations to the products/goods or services. For instance,
Band-aid is commonly used in another sense to refer to ‘a makeshift or temporary
solution to a problem’ (OED, 2014). For example:

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