ABSTRACT
In the interpretation of individual words or sentences we take account of what is denoted and what is connoted. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) distinguished denotative meaning, what the word or statement denotes, from connotative meaning, what connotations the word, phrase or sentence conjures up. Gottlob Frege (1848-1925), the founder of modern mathematical logic, made a similar distinction as Mill in speaking of Sinn and Bedeutung (sense-meaning and referential-meaning). Frege argued we should not ask for the meaning of a word in isolation, divorced from context. If we do (as we commonly do), respondents are inclined to answer by describing the instantaneous mental images that are conjured up on hearing the word. Respondents fall back on what is immediately available in the mind, which may be very different from the mental images anchored to some context. We typically ask about meanings (e.g., what a certain brand signifi es for the consumer) without the question being tied to a context. Frege refers to the corresponding mental images as the ‘coloring’ of the word, with the same word likely to have a different coloring in different contexts. The image is likely to be different in different contexts (various classes of store, different times, different moods) and for different consumers. A brand image is not likely to be a fi xed, unchanging image, as the image is likely to be different for different people, in different contexts, at different times and even different at the point of sale. An overall brand image is a composite and marketers would be wise to talk and measure that image only for a group defi ned by a specifi c context.
