ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies and analyses the most fundamental level (or layer) of naming & framing operations, referred to as Level 1, understood as the very fact that something has been given a dedicated name, and the cognitive and societal implications of that circumstance. The point is illustrated by a selection of real-life examples pertaining to politics, health care, marketing, product development, and everyday life. On this background, the chapter addresses the question of whether there are any limits to what could possibly be provided with a dedicated name within a given population, and if so, which sorts of factors that might contribute to such limits. Drawing on existing theorizing and empirical evidence on linguistic universalism versus linguistic relativism on the one hand, and on the conceptual basis of human categorization and the psychological mechanisms through which ad-hoc categories may grow into more permanently acknowledged ones on the other, key preconditions for successful naming are identified and assessed in integration.
