Anthroposemiotics of Trade Names in the City

1 Introduction

It is undeniable the influence that the American cultural industry – or American industry of control of thought, as Chomsky put it (2000 2003) – has had on the establishment of a certain way of life and of a worldview since the last century, like a dominant scopic regime (Ledesma 2009) which has resulted in the sale of the much-publicized American dream or the equally well-known American way of life. To achieve this, it has made use of television, film, and advertising as the battle horses of the ideological state apparatuses (Althusser 1974, 1988) that legitimize and reproduce this particular approach to seeing the world. Such ideological apparatuses also impose a symbolic violence, which manifests itself through the various consequences observed in society and which reveal the symbolic efficacy (Bourdieu 2005, 2009) at play in this cultural industry and the control of thought for the achievement of its aforementioned main objective.

One of the consequences of this symbolic efficacy in Venezuelan society is the conflict between what can be designated as a negation of the self, of identity as a Spanish-speaking people, and an otherness that imposes itself with the principles and values of its own sociocultural and ideological context, displacing or rather giving rise to an identity hybrid that only expresses the wanting or desiring to be like the other. This is a behavior that also reveals a certain shame toward the society’s Latin roots, which represent a mixture of indigenous, black, and white people.

This wanting or desiring to be like the other, denying the self, manifests itself in different forms or expressions, which in this research is highlighted by the large number of commercial stores and products observed in Venezuela that have foreign names (specially in English). This is a practice that goes beyond the specific cases of those transnational companies that operate in the national market, as in that case the presence of trade names in languages other than Spanish would be justified.

Since this phenomenon has been observed for a long time, this paper has the general objective of understanding the reason for the presence in Venezuela of trade names written in a language other than Spanish. This central aim was divided into three specific objectives: a) explaining the presence of foreign trade names as an expression of the conflict of identity and otherness; b) understanding the use of foreign trade names as a cultural text that breaks violently into another already established text; and c) analyzing the presence of foreign trade names as a semiosphere and a device with cultural memory that expresses an ideological hegemony.

2 Theoretical-methodological foundations

In order to reach these objectives, the anthropological notion of identity by García Gavidia (2005) and that provided by Andach (2001) from a semiotic perspective were used. In addition, Lotman’s semiotics of culture (1996, 1998, 1999, 2000) was applied, especially in terms of its contributions related to the semiosphere, the text as a device with cultural memory, and the proper name within the culture, among others. It also makes use of the contributions by Bourdieu (2005, 2009) around symbolic violence and symbolic efficacy.

This research was developed from a rationalist-deductive epistemological approach (Padrón Guillén 2001, 2003). According to this approach, reason is the access path and the mechanism of the production and validation of knowledge, through a system of reasoning in a chain that takes into account the empirical data grouped in the corpus (the different commercial advertisements observed especially in Maracaibo, Venezuela), but used just as a mechanism of empirical control of the deduction (Chacín and Padrón 1996). In this sense,

…knowledge is an act of invention and not of discovery (in the sense of the empirical-inductivists, detecting patterns of regularities and frequencies of occurrences), so that theoretical systems appear as the product par excellence of scientific knowledge; they are systems that are invented or designed, but are never the result of a fortuitous discovery. In addition, such theoretical systems are based on great conjectures or assumptions about how this reality is generated and behaves, of which only a part and not all of it will always be known (Mosquera 2013: 97).

On the other hand, in order to carry out this chain of reasoning, the hypothetico-deductive method rephrased by Clark Leonard Hull (Aragón Diez 2001) was used, following a sequence that went from the facts (thought) to the problem and from this to the general hypothesis, to use the input theories that addressed the problem.

In that sense, it was based on the observation already expressed above about the strong recurrence of foreign trade names in Venezuela in general and, particularly, in the city of Maracaibo (Zulia state). The following hypothesis was put forward: The presence of foreign trade names in Venezuela is evidence of the symbolic efficacy exerted by the American cultural industry and its control of thought in Latin American societies. This was demonstrated by deduction when carrying out the analysis of foreign names of commercial houses using the aforementioned method and from an anthroposemiotic perspective, since it is a phenomenon that is part of the culture and the society. This also involves what concerns the processes of the meaning of man through a set of semiotic operations that help to impregnate those trade names with meaning: “a sense that, in turn, marks the society and culture in which they are actively articulated” (Finol and Finol 2008: 384).

3 Foreign trade names: identity vs. otherness

Megaparty, Baron’s, Click Super Hotel, Family Restaurant, Ocean City Restaurant, Olympia Gym, Physical Spa, Dental Control, Amauta Computer, Salva Style, Quick Press, Liberty Express, Music & Sport, Paco Store, Pro Player, Doral Center Mall, Cerezo’s Shoes, Oh Yeah Extasis – Sex Shop, Exotic Pet Store, Coffee Star – Juice + Food, Global Care, Nurse’s Boutique, Davi’s Bridal, Control Security, Courier Box – Mail and Office Services ... These are not names that appear during a walk in the streets of an English or American city, but in any city of Venezuela in general, and particularly in Maracaibo, capital of the oil state of Zulia, although Spanish or Castilian is the native language of this Latin American country.

Now, to understand the presence in Venezuela of these trade names written in a language other than Spanish – commonly English – implies, first, approaching this phenomenon as an expression of the eternal anthropological conflict between the identity and the otherness of being human; two of the components of the triple experience that gives rise to the production of anthropological knowledge (together with diversity) (Augé 2006). This conflict involves the wanting or desiring to be another and was outlined by the young Venezuelan writer Geyser López in the presentation of his narrative work Los hijos de Israel (2009) when he pointed out how the protagonists of his literary creation are involved in a non-deep-root cultural process because they are always just looking for an imaginary that has been built by the American cultural industry (Chomsky 2000, 2003) and its different ideological state apparatuses (Althusser 1974, 1988):

In search of such a coveted American dream, the characters of this story decide to emigrate and take possession of a life imagined and constructed through magazine covers and TV series. We speak of a symbolic configuration, a stereotype of life, a reality for some people but a myth for the vast majority of immigrants (López, 2009: 132, emphasis added).

Despite this affirmation, it is worth noting that García Gavidia (2005) refers to individual or personal identity as an equivalent to the self, alluding to the perception that a biological subject or human animal (in my words) has of himself as a person and being collective in his individuality. It means that he is unique, but without many differences to others, in addition to expressing the social and symbolic orders of his culture, through his gestures, speeches, behaviors, attitudes, values, etc. This happens because of the awareness that this individual is one for another, so that identity “is only possible in the recognition of the different as a unit” (García Gavidia 2005: 14).

This is a similar appreciation to that given by Andacht (2001), when stating that one cannot avoid the conceptual inclusion of the other as a foundational contrast, since this is determinant in the process of socialization, and from that encounter arises, precisely, personal identity (the self) and the collective identity. In fact, Andacht emphasizes that “the self or itself includes as one of its integral aspects to the other, in what it limits, defines, and determines, in the logical or semiotic, as well as political and ethical sense of the term” (Andacht 2001: 222). This approach is related to his idea that “every identity is, by definition, reactive, because it is born of the dialectical and constitutive confrontation with what it is not” (Andacht 2001: 232). This position is equally endorsed by Lotman, who states that “the ‘I’ and the ‘other’ are the two sides of a single act of self-knowledge and they are impossible the one without the other” (Lotman 1999: 52).

However, the presence of these foreign trade names in Venezuela (a phenomenon that has also been observed in different Spanish-American countries, including Argentina, Colombia, Panamá, Mexico, and Chile) reveals that it is not a recognition of alterity and diversity or of the awareness that one is for another, but of a wanting/desiring to be like the other, thus denying the self, which is completely displaced or distorted by the otherness. In this case, this occurs through the act of denomination by using the English language, so that unicity is covered by a discourse that reveals a social and symbolic order of a culture that is not its own culture, as well the ideological hegemony imposed by a dominant American culture.

It is possible to affirm that it is an identity/alterity relation that brings up the mirror image of which Lacan (1977) spoke, referring to that copy of the subject reflected in the mirror that distorts and annihilates the self. This happens because the mirror offers him –through the use of these foreign names – the illusion of having reached a social and cultural imaginary that places him in the same range and the same parameters as his other. And this without neglecting the fact that

…the personal identity is built thanks to the presence of the Other (the otherness) and the Others (plurality) (Silva 2002; Choza 2002; García Gavidia 2005), since anthropology is only possible and necessary on the basis of this triple experience (Augé 2006) that Yurman (2008) has locked in the metaphor of the gaze in the mirror that includes the gaze of the other and the others, which ratifies the fact that identities are constructed by way of negotiation (Mosquera 2010: 122).

But, although it is true that “identities are interpreted as collectively constructed, invented and re-created phenomena, they are rhetorical narratives” (García Gavidia 2005: 23), in the case of the use of these foreign trade names, one should ask oneself how true it is to speak about the existence of a real negotiation between the I / You / They (identity / alterity / diversity) and not a true annihilation of the self. The latter in view of the fact that the subject constructs a reality that is not objective (when the subject imagines itself as the other), but a simulacrum that gives rise to a virtual reality characterized by a subjective perception of facts, based on the imaginary constructed – and which he makes his own – around alterity.

The truth is that with this practice comes López’s statement through one of his characters, stating that:

Latinos are a people that tend to despise their native matter... and we prefer to adopt an imported culture that allows us to think, uselessly, that with this we distance ourselves from that reality so inferior in the pyramid but so great that forms the basis of the ignorance (López 2009: 24).

And all thanks to the influence of that industry of the control of the thought that Chomsky mentions (2000, 2003), like a resource that is at the service of the United States to impose – through publicity, propaganda, the cinema, television, fashion, food and other ideological state apparatuses identified by Althusser (1974, 1988) – a certain dominant scopic regime (Ledesma 2009). This regime is understood as what can be or is allowed to be seen, what in each epoch is considered plausible in relation to the visible; that is to say, a certain way of seeing that is determined by a set of historical, cultural, and epistemic aspects that make a certain way of looking “normal,” in accordance with a particular ideological conception of a historical period and typical of a certain culture (Mosquera 2010).

In other words, such foreign trade names are an expression that legitimizes the dominant scopic regime of the Americans, as well as their worldview and ideological hegemony, in the Venezuelan and Spanish-speaking world in general. It can be said with Lotman that perhaps the most acute manifestation of the nature of man is “the use of proper names and the evidence, linked to that use, of individuality, the originality of the singular person as the basis of its value for ‘the other’ and the ‘others’” (Lotman 1999: 52), since one name also marks the limit with respect to that other.

4 Identity building: Negotiation and non-displacement

The idea that identities are built through negotiation has already been mentioned, which implies the awareness that there is always one for another and the need to recognize differences as part of a unit. In other words, in the image of the mirror, the eyes of the other, and of all the others, converge to make identity possible.

However, the use of foreign trade names can be considered as a cultural text that bursts violently in another text already established, trying to displace it and to occupy an important place in the culture of arrival. It is enough to remember that Lotman (1999) considered this type of irruption as part of cultural dynamics, which is neither an isolated and immanent process nor a passive sphere that is subjected to external influences. Otherwise, I raise such dynamics as a process where internal and external structures converge which are in a permanent reciprocal tension and are inseparable.

Therefore, when this intersection occurs between two different cultural structures – in this case, Venezuelan culture with American culture – the foreign culture seeks to stop being such to be able to penetrate the space that it invades. One way of doing this is precisely by assuming a name and a place in the language of the invaded culture, in order to transform itself from the alien (the alosemiotic) into its own (the semiotic) through this act of denomination, which is concretized by designating different commercial or service houses with those foreign names, thus making them become “normal” for the Spanish speakers.

However, Lotman (1999) speaks of this cultural dynamics as a part of the process of cultural transformation that all societies experience and that occurs when there is a broad cultural context that attracts or absorbs the elements that invade from the outside, giving rise to a transculturation that involves adapting these elements and integrating them into the culture of arrival. Then, it can be said that it has, in turn, deprived a process of negotiation that affects the construction of identity. An example of this is the incorporation of a pagan celebration into a ritual of the Catholic religion, as is the case of the Dancing Devils of Yare in Venezuela (today a cultural heritage of humanity), which were integrated into the ritual of Corpus Christi (a religious feast day falling on the first Thursday after Trinity Sunday); that is, they acquired a proper name and place within the Venezuelan culture.

But Lotman (1999) also mentions that if the irruption of this external culture is presented in a very energetic way, a whole new language is introduced that completely eliminates the language of the invaded culture, thus producing an acculturation. The latter originates because the society’s own language (the traditional Spanish names) is displaced completely by the strange one (the English names), which often also manifests itself even in the peculiar names that the parents give to their children, a phenomenon that can “generate an estrangement from oneself... in the way how a man perceives himself and conceives himself and the world” (Choza 2002: 16).

This intrusion of the exterior into the spheres of culture becomes a catalyst that accelerates or reinforces the changes (as a cultural resistance), and therefore the tension between both structures can give rise to an explosion, from which a new structure will arise with a complex hierarchy within the invaded language. In other words, a hybrid can be generated that has some of both structures, as can be seen in certain trade names in Venezuela, where, for example, Spanish is mixed with English (Spanglish) or those names are presented with the syntagmatic structure of an external language: Prodent Clínica dental; Fast Food La Mata Roja; Cybermanía M & P Papelería, fotocopis, Internet; Joe Laundry Lava Seco; Rumba Full On; Alvarito Pizzeria; Taxi Lucky Strike; Lago Motor; Big Market Veritas; Big Pan Panadería; Micro Data System; Net Uno; Blue Azul Bar – Bar & Grill (later renamed as Electric Bar – Snack Bar); Full Cachapas; Bingo Seven Star; Joyería Solid Gold; Full Pizza; Happy Hours Cotillón; La Grande Orange Fuente de Soda Restaurant; Neo’s Belleza; Coca Club Charcutería; Joyería Gold America; Quio’s Café; Infusión (a restaurant whose “Delivery” number is 0261-7988589); Caucho Center; La 79 Speed Car Wash; Super Refresh Market. La gente de la carne; Atlantic Cerrajería; Diamond Taller de Joyería; Elegant Sur; Cars Autobody Especialistas en Pintura; Foto Estudio Fast …

This demonstrated the introduction of a text from an external language into another text (Lotman 1996, 1998, 1999) belonging to the invaded cultural space as a result of the aforementioned and unforeseeable explosion that gives rise to new texts. This happens because of an act that Lotman (2000) calls redenomination, which in this case would consist of giving a new name to something that already had one. So zapatería becomes shoe store, a redenomination that arises “as a reincarnation or rebirth as another” (Lotman 2000: 148), to establish that this “change of name is conceived as annihilation of the old thing and birth, instead, of a new one, which satisfies more the requirements of the initiator of that act” (Lotman 2000: 161).

It is an annihilation that can be that of the self if the culture invaded does not have the necessary tools to absorb that process of transformation of the common names of the invading culture (the anonymous, gradual, and predictable) in proper names of the culture of arrival (the known, explosive, and unpredictable), from the alosemiotic in the semiotic. That is, if the negotiation necessary to strengthen the construction of identity is not imposed, although always bearing in mind that “the intrusion of a ‘fragment’ of text into a foreign language can play the role of generating new meanings” (Lotman 1999: 100), that does not necessarily have to be translated in the displacement of the own by the other alien thing.

5 The name as a semiosphere and a device with cultural memory

It should not be forgotten that the tension in which such an attempt at displacement takes place is characteristic of any dynamic system if one keeps in mind the Lotmanian conception of culture as a complex, heterogeneous, polyfunctional, and organized text in a way “which is divided into hierarchies of ‘texts within texts’ and thus forms a complex plot with them” (Lotman 1999: 109). In short, culture represents a macro-text composed of different micro-texts that are developed within a semiotic space or continuum, which I call a semiosphere (Lotman 1996), to refer to that place where processes of semiosis occur.

On the other hand, when speaking about hierarchies, it refers to the nuclear and peripheral structures that converge in a semiosphere, which gives rise to the notion of the boundary that is established between these structures, each of which is, in turn, a microsemiosphere composed of a center and a periphery. Hence the mention made of the natural tension between these structures which seek to displace one another, and for that reason the border becomes a translator filter, which transforms alosemiotic texts (peripheral texts) into semiotic texts (central texts) or vice versa.

This constant interaction implies the continuous introduction of external elements to a certain cultural system; thus the fragment that was non-text (or an alosemiotic text) is inserted in the text (the culture of arrival) and becomes part of it. That means, simultaneously, it modifies all that text in which it is inserted and translates it to another level of organization, giving rise to a new system (a new text) that will have some characteristics of the two structures that collided.

In this sense, the presence of foreign trade names in Venezuela, and especially in the city of Maracaibo, can be interpreted as a semiosphere and a device with cultural memory or semiotic person. First, it has already been said that a name also marks the boundary of the self with respect to the other, since it represents the border of a peripheral structure by means of a text that was alosemiotic, because it was codified in a language other than Spanish (mainly English). That is, it becomes reminiscent of an external culture, since it is a bearer text and refers to the existence of a set of values, traditions, norms, history, ideology, etc., that are owned by the American culture. These names not only transmit information, but also transform it and produce new messages, thus giving it a character as a device with a cultural memory or a semiotic person.

Everything happens because each structure of the semiosphere develops its own metalanguage in order to achieve its symbolic self-reproduction and its legitimation, since “each system knows what ‘its symbol’ is, and needs it for the functioning of its semiotic structure” (Lotman 1996: 144). In fact, these foreign names can be seen as a symbol that “serves as a plane of expression for other content, usually more culturally valuable” (Lotman 1996: 144), since it indirectly refers to the American way of life which has been simultaneously disseminated and imposed through the various products of the powerful American cultural industry: television series, films, music, fashion, books, objects, transnational junk food, etc.

That is the reason why Lotman (1996) points out that symbols are one of the most stable elements of the cultural continuum, because they do not belong to a single synchronic cut of the culture, but are constantly moving back and forth from the past to the present and from this to the future, in a sinusoidal movement that never makes them disappear. In other words, they may at times be hidden by the presence of “new” symbols, and thus “throughout the history of culture, they are constantly found, discovered, taken from the earth or from the dust of libraries, ‘unknown’ monuments of the past” (Lotman 1996: 159).

So, foreign trade names act as a clear mechanism of the cultural memory of a given semiosphere when transposing texts, mental schemas, and other semiotic formations from an external structure (the United States) to another internal (Venezuela), from which may arise new hybrid texts such as those already mentioned above in the style of Joe Laundry lava seco (a laundry service) or Atlantic Cerrajería (a locksmith). In addition, as symbols of that invading culture, such trade names represent a sort of index-sign that refers to a broader text as already mentioned (the American culture), with which they establish a metonymic relationship: the part (the foreign names) for the whole (the country of origin of those names). Saying it with Lotman:

…by means of a single symbol, another can be “revealed”, the memory of which, in this case, may have an unconscious character, which does not prevent it, at certain historical moments or in artistic texts, from being updated and becoming a fully conscious link of cultures. (Lotman 1998: 160)

In other words, these foreign trade names not only imply the memory of the culture from which they originate (and to which they refer by association of fact or thought), but also manage to be updated as they become part of the imagery of the culture of arrival in the form of “proper names,” with which it is even possible to designate people, after a process of Spanishization: Brallan (from the English pronunciation of Bryan), Usnavy (from United States Navy), Mayquel (from Michael), etc.

This ratifies the existence of what, since the last century, researchers like Althusser (1974, 1988) have pointed out as the different mechanisms used by the hegemonic classes of a society (and which he called state ideological apparatuses) to produce, impose, and reproduce their ideology, in order to ensure their survival throughout the history. Other scientists like Chomsky (2000, 2003) are more direct in unveiling the presence of a thought-control industry through which the United States has permeated the cultural and ideological boundaries of various countries of the world, with the pretension of carrying out what Ritzer (1993, 2006) and Andacht (2005) have called the McDonaldization of the planet and what Montesinos (2007) denounces as “domestication of the youth” (when it is politically killed and stripped of its natural rebelliousness), which is nothing more than another way of validating that already mentioned American way of life by means of so-called globalization.

6 Conclusion: The name as a reconfiguration of identity

The presence in Venezuela of trade names written in a language other than Spanish (mainly English) makes obvious the identity/otherness conflict, since these names represent a cultural text that breaks violently into another already established text, as an expression of the tension between the nuclear and peripheral structures of a semiosphere, which also function as a device with cultural memory that can create new texts.

So this conflict or tension causes such foreign names to promote a process of reconfiguration of Venezuelan identity, which can be manifested through three phases illustrated by Andacht (2001) using the metaphors of penetration, cloning, and addiction. In fact, in Andacht’s words, I consider that these “three verbal images are some common, shared ways of shaping this regional identity fabric” (2001: 226).

Referring to the Lotmanian notion of intrusion of a text in another text, Andacht reveals the cultural/television penetration of language to which a certain society is exposed (thanks to the symbolic action of the cultural industry), with the result of a growing cultural subjugation in everyday language, evidenced by the use of these foreign names in Venezuela. “In this way, we are living a new penetration of the American way of life, through its symbols” (Baena, quoted in Andacht 2001: 227).

Because of the penetration of English names in national culture, the passage was inevitable to the next phase of cloning of other, which especially “governs the discourse of youth identity... and operates in virtually all groups” (Andacht 2001: 235). Hence the presence of such foreign trade names in the country (and also some English expressions that integrate everyday language or some adapted foreign names used for naming people) is so strong, although sometimes that cloning is somewhat defective, because –for example – the syntagmatic structure of English (or spelling) is poorly copied, and sometimes arising from the linguistic hybrids with parts of both languages (Spanglish) that were mentioned above.

It follows that, with the reconfiguration of identity in these terms, one runs “the risk of turning them, of ceasing to be us, and becoming merely a reiteration, a sad duplication without a being of its own” (Andacht 2001: 235). The danger that Andacht points out is that it is one thing to take an element from another culture and integrate it into one’s own culture (in order to speak of a process of transculturation) “and another very different thing… to indulge in an explicit and decidedly cloning project” (Andacht 2001: 249), since in this way a process of acculturation would be imposed.

Finally, the repetitive use of these foreign trade names reveals the metaphor of addiction to the other, who is irresistibly seductive, because the other is invested with all that one does not possess and yet wishes to possess for our group of belonging (Andacht 2001). That is, this text represented by the names (the part) refers to a broader text (the whole) represented by the American culture with its desired American way of life, and therefore becomes addictive (producing an exaggerated and harmful dependence on the other), repetitive (an overwhelming presence of that other), and a clone (the copy or imitation of the other). Moreover, the usefulness that such names mean to the commercial world cannot be ignored, insofar as it also refers to the old myth inserted in the Venezuelan imaginary that everything that sounds foreign is of good quality: once again, the part refers to the whole.

In conclusion, this process of reconfiguration of identity, which is expressed through foreign trade names, really becomes an identity, personal, and collective imbalance, which

…is sharpened when one is overwhelmed by the other (penetration), or when he voluntarily succumbs to the fusion with the other and is obsessively and compulsively reproduced (cloning), or when he feels that, without his model presence, little can be done or being in an autonomous way (addiction) (Andacht 2001: 257).

In any case, it is worth noting that foreign trade names become a tool that drives the construction of the subject through an imaginary that involves wanting/desiring to be and not being in real life. Hence the specular image mentioned by Lacan (1977) in his essay on The mirror stage expresses the feeling of lack with which man is born and which did not exist when he was united with his mother until early childhood, but that later aligns toward wanting/desiring to be. This is done as a natural tendency to overcome this deficiency during the process of identity building in order to restore that imaginary of unity and completeness that was once possessed (Bignell 1997) and that he aspires to reach through that other, whose image is reflected on the mirror like those foreign names.

In short, it is an alterity with which the subject confronts the self, because as Silva (2002) said, first formed is the non-self and then the self. But, in any case, that image will always be a mere representation, an image of that longed-for whole, a distorted image of the self (which even puts it at risk of annihilation) and with which the individual identifies. This is a mirror image, which is nothing more than a copy or imitation (the Andachtian cloning), as translated from the Latin speculum (a mirror) and also, precisely, a copy. This is basically the role played by those foreign trade names present in Venezuela, which reveals the symbolic effectiveness exercised in the country by the American cultural industry, or industry of control of thought, achieving its goal of imposing that wanting/desiring to be other, because for the mediation of symbolic systems, “mental structures correspond with social structures, and thus they are traversed by relations of power and political struggle by the imposition of a way of defining and acting legitimately in the social world” (Martinez, in Bourdieu 2009: 19). In fact, this is the leitmotif of this industry, and Zallo (1988) shows this by describing the industry as a

…set of branches, segments and auxiliary activities producing and distributing merchandise with symbolic contents, conceived by a creative work, organized by a capital that is valued and finally destined to the consumer markets, with a function of ideological and social reproduction (Zallo 1988: 9, emphasis my own).

Finally, the use of foreign trade names in Venezuela reveals the ideological-hegemonic character that the acting of the American cultural industry or industry of control of thought has established as an effect, which expresses how some power-countries from the current world have used the particular approach that the so-called primitive societies gave to a name in order to impose their hegemonic vision of the world, that is, to impose that aforementioned ideological hegemony as a dominant culture. In fact, Winick (1969: 448) points out that: “In primitive thought, the name was not only a designation but often an entity itself, which was necessary in order to reach power over a named person or object,” a power that in this case the foreign names have exercised over Venezuelan people, because they have created over them such a sort of necessity of wanting or desiring to be the other that perhaps it is supported by the ancestral belief that “naming one person after another or after a god, [they] tried to give some characteristics of the former named” (Winick 1969: 448-449), thus feeling that their own transfiguration occurs in the other.