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Joke shop names

Abstract Why does an ordinary suburban laundry call itself Soap Opera ? Why does a local hairdressers announce itself as Snip Joint ? What motivates these playful namings, and do they reflect a shift in societal attitudes to language, laundries and hairdressers? This paper examines a range of ‘joke shop names’ of the kind found on many contemporary British high streets (as elsewhere), and offers a commentary on their linguistic structure, semantic tendencies, as well as suggesting some of their interpersonal functions and effects. Such names enact or perform difference; for joke shop name establishments, the naming asserts and demonstrates that the proprietor and perhaps the staff, the modus operandi, the ambience, the treatment of customers, and so on, are non-standard by the expectations of normal mainstream businesses. Among other claims, I propose that joke shop names are almost the opposite of the processes of image-conscious logo-fashioning, the branding and re-branding of businesses, organizations and institutions that seems to be particularly actively pursued at present, driven by competitive and often globalizing forces.