‘Exchange Economies’: A Review Essay of A “Brand” New Language, The Rule of Money, and Doing Literary Business

Canadian Review of American Studies Volume23, Number 2, Winter 1993, pp. 203-210 203 'Exchange Economies': A Review Essay of A "Brand" NewlAngua,ge, The Rule of Money, and Doing Literary Business CarolynRedl Monroe Friedman. A "Brand" New Language: Commercial Influences in Literature and Culture. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991. Peggy McCormack. The Rule of Money: Gender, Class, and Exchange Economics in the Fiction of Henry James. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1990. SusanCoultrap-McQuin. Doing Literary Business: American Women Writers inthe Nineteenth Century. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990. Each of these three books, in one wayor another, addresses the topic ofcapitalism and its effects on American culture. All three are concerned, at least in part, with economics in the literary world. Here, the similarities between the three cease. In both approach and content, A "Brand" New Language (BNL) is a sociological study of advertising in literature and in culture.It is gender neutral whereas the other two studies are feminist. The Rule of Money (RM) is literary criticism: it is, to borrow McCormack's own terminology, a study of "exchange economics," this time, the business or exchangeeconomics of five American women writers working in the nineteenth century. 204 Canadian Review of American Studies The scope of Friedman's study (BNL) is indicated by the book's subtitle and by the title of the series under which it was published, Contributions to the Study of Popular Culture. Despite drawing evidence from popular literature, the most prevalent and accessible of sources, BNL is indisputably boring, particularly in comparison to the other two works. Friedman's simple, straightforward style and factual diction of popular culture limps helplessly in the shadow of the vibrant discourse used by both Mccormack and Coultrap-McQuin. In fact, I checked BNL several times to determine if what I was reading was perhaps a draft of a dissertation, so close is its structure to a dissertation's format. The book begins with a chapter which is awkwardlytitled, "Consumer Cultural Origins of Language Commercialization," and which traces the history of advertising and consumer culture. The history begins at the inception of advertising, presumably when industrialists realized reduction of stockpiles created by excessiveproduction would not occur until the practice of self-denial for workers was stopped and concludes with the present day, when "advertising clutter" is likened to pollution. In each of the major chapters of the study, Friedman examines types of brand names which are evident in a specific area of American culture and their prevalence during a specified period. The chapter "Brand Names in Popular American Novels," for example, analyzes the use of brand names in American novels published between 1946-75. The study monitors changes during this period in the use of brand and generic names and determines if brand names are increasingly used in popular language. The study sample includes only best-selling novels, usually early or first novels by thirty-one different authors, eight of which were published in the 1940s, seven in the 1950s,five in the 1960s,and eleven in the 1970s. Other variables such as the length of the book and variations of brand names are considered. Means are devised to measure generic names such as "coke" or "pop" rather than the brand name, "Coke." Some conclusions are drawn about the use of brand names in popular language while other conclusions are held in abeyance until after the analyses of American and British hit plays, American songs, American newspapers, American humour, and miscellaneous popular culture works which are the foci of succeeding chapters. Of possible interest to linguists is the final miscellaneous category which measures neologisms Carolyn Red! I 205 formedfrom brand names: "U-hauling," "Windexing," "Hilton-wide," "hands ofVelcro," and the "McDonald's of Music," or "McDonald's of Banking." Final conclusions about the use of brand names are predictable. Choicesin each area are found dependent on the psychological dimension of value expressiveness; for example, ownership of expensive products implieswealth. In some cases, brand names are used as trademarks by particular authors. Brand names are generally status symbols except in humourwhere choices are less dependent on value expressiveness and more dependent on incongruity. Although this study uses questionable...