The socio-onomastic significance of American cattle brands: a Montana case study

[摘要] English: For more than two centuries, cattle ranchers in Montana and other American states such as Texas and Wyoming have used hot iron brands as the primary means of identifying, tracking and proving ownership of their livestock. Despite modern innovations such as the development and use of radio-frequency ear tags (RFID), hot iron brands remain the preferred means of animal identification in the Western regions of the United States. One of the leading arguments put forward in this thesis is that the system of American cattle brands is essentially a linguistic one with a prominent onomastic component. This assumption is based on the fact that cattle brands are compound entities comprising symbols (images) as well as corresponding spoken and written forms which function as proper names.In addition to possessing onomastic features of their own, cattle brands display a range of associations with other types of names. This network of onomastic relationships is socially-constructed and therefore reflects underlying social meanings. It is therefore posited that although cattle brand names do not possess lexical or linguistic meaning, they acquire various dimensions of meaning on the basis of their associations with different elements in their socio-cultural surrounds. The overall goal of this study is to ascertain and explain the social and cultural significance of the contextual meaning of cattle brands and to determine the extent to which names and naming strategies play a role in its establishment. Since this thesis is primarily concerned with exploring the relationship between the onomastic features of cattle brands and their socio-cultural meanings, it is presented as a study in socio-onomastics.The research has identified two prominent onomastic practices which play a powerful role in establishing the contextual or associative meanings of cattle brands. The first process entails the use of various types of names (including parts of names) as the basis for the visual designs of cattle brand symbols, whilst in the second approach names of cattle brands are adopted as other kinds of names. The study indicates that cattle brand (language) users purposefully employ these naming strategies to create associations between cattle brands and various elements in their socio-cultural environment. It is contended that these connections not only ascribe meaning to cattle brands but also indicate how deeply cattle brands are embedded within their socio-cultural surrounds. The study has shown, for instance, how the narratives which become attached to cattle brands by virtue of onomastic associations trigger memories of people, places and events that are deemed important in the lives of the individuals, families and groups of people who are connected to the brands. It is argued that on the basis of these connections, cattle brands become infused with diverse aspects of socio-cultural meaning which are then reflected and projected back into their surroundings during the course of everyday life.This thesis represents the first scholarly endeavour to examine the socio-cultural meanings of American cattle brands from an onomastic perspective. Through its emphasis on accounting for social and cultural influences in exploring the meanings and functions of cattle brand names, the study makes an original contribution to the field of socio-onomastics and illustrates the value of the approach in research which aims to arrive at socially and culturally-relevant interpretations of onomastic meaning. Furthermore, the intersection of the present work with research in the fields of cultural heritage, cultural identity and social semiotics emphasises the interdisciplinary nature of onomastics research and draws attention to the fact that names are important textual elements in diverse social and cultural contexts.

[发布机构] University of the Free State