Fashion, journalism and linguistic design: A case study of the wedding dresses

It is well known that, over time, linguistic studies on Fashion have changed. Today we can reflect on them by considering the differences among the three principal approaches— historical, sociolinguistic and semiotic. In particular, the socio- semiotic perspective of Roland Barthes and his analysis of clothing of the 1960s represented a sort of revolution, for many different reasons. He studied the language of fashion magazines, analysed it as a complex code, and defined the rules of the vestems system. Since then, however, cognitive linguistics has elaborated a new holistic paradigm to describe many aspects of the lexical construction of objects and activities. The processes of conceptualisation have become the focus of many studies, and the relationship among words, perception, context and mind is now considered a necessary topic of the most innovative analysis. In the field of fashion these kinds of studies have yet to be conducted systematically, and we know little or nothing about the different ways in which our mind represents garments and accessories. After a short excursus on some of the principal previous studies, the chapter presents some topics observed according to the cognitive perspective. In particular, the denominations used to describe wedding dresses are analysed in light of the Spatial Grammar and the Word Design Theory. The lexical constructions are reexamined as examples of the interfaces between the narrative or the descriptive textual shape and the rhetorical figures. The new taxonomy proposed can offer additional research perspectives on both a theoretical and an applied plane.