Place Names and Enregistered Identity of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula

Abstract

A clever reward system for frequent catalogue shoppers of Zingerman’s – a renowned delicatessen in Ann Arbor, Michigan – uses Michigan place names to indicate spending and reward levels. In favoring those of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (UP), the item participates in the process of enregistering UP dialect.

Keywords:

• place names
• socio-onomastics
• enregisterment
• Michigan
• Upper Peninsula
• Lower Peninsula
• Zingerman’s

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my friend and colleague Kate Remlinger for commenting on more than one draft of this article – I have taken her advice on several points – as well as Brad Hedeman of Zingerman’s for commenting so candidly on the creative process behind the Frequent Foodie Reward Program feature – he has been a most forthcoming, supportive, and friendly correspondent.

Notes

1. You can imagine my relief when, on 23 October 2017, Brad Hedeman informed me that the old sandwiches are still available for the asking.

2. Deciding what to call those living in the LP isn’t easy. Yooper is well attested for citizens of the UP and has been reappropriated by Yoopers in a blatant act of second-order indexicality. LP folk, arrogating the normative position, see no reason to name themselves, and Yoopers refer to them as trolls – that is, people who live under the bridge, in this case the Mackinac Bridge, which connects the two peninsulas (see Houston Hall 2014, s.v. “troll,” “Yooper”). Sympathetic as I am to Yoopers, I am nonetheless from the LP and uninterested in reappropriating troll, so I felt the need to invent a term, in the interest of dispassionate onomastic discourse. After reading an early version of this article, Kathryn Reminger suggested on 28 October 2017 that while she likes the moniker Looper, she doesn’t think it’s quite right, because Yooper is founded on UP, and Looper can’t similarly be formed on LP. She’s right, of course. She proposed Lopper, instead, but that can be read as a forestry term more appropriate to life and industry of the UP (see the Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “lopper” n¹). I tried out Loper, picking up the first syllable of Lower, which makes structural sense but also carries irrelevant connotations having to do with rope- and cabinet-making and dancing (see the Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “loper” n.). In the end I returned to Looper, formed not on LP or Lower Peninsula but on Yooper, as a mark of respect for the people of the UP and their bold reappropriation of what was no doubt meant originally by Loopers as a derogatory name. In other words, if Loopers don’t like Looper, they have only themselves to blame.

3. The linguistic and brand identities are not necessarily distinct or competitive – they would overlap and cooperate in brand identities given by Yoopers to products or services identified with UP culture – but the Frequent Foodie Reward Program may serve both masters without overlap, even admitting a residual Yooper interest in the design of the catalogue feature: “Branding adds a dimension to products that was absent from the marketplaces of the past – ‘cultural meaning’ which in semiotics is known more specifically as ‘connotative meaning.’ And the more of such meaning that can be built into a brand, the more likely it will become itself socialized (spread into the social mindset). The cultural meanings of brands can hardly be pinned down exactly. They can only be inferred. They are, in a phrase, ‘mental constructs.’ These can be defined simply as the culturally shaped images that come to mind in relation to a specific brand” (Danesi 2006, 22). The brander in this case – Zingerman’s in the interest of Zingerman’s – shaped Michigan – part of its brand identity as an Ann Arbor (that is LP), Michigan corporation – into a humorous take on what it means to be a Michigander, tilting towards the UP and its otherness within the Michigan context. The cultural meanings represented in various forms of enregisterment thus support cultural meanings in the construction of a brand identity and brand community, instantiated in the agency of Brad Hedeman and his marketing colleagues at Zingerman’s and in the readership of the FBG, a sort of meta-semiotic representation that Silverstein (2003) calls a “double arrow of indexicality.” When the readership participates in the construction of cultural meanings transactionally – by consuming and receiving rewards for consuming – Zingerman’s through the FBG inscribes those meanings on members of its brand community as well as on the brand itself.

4. Zingerman’s sells Sour Cream, Hot Cocoa, and Lemon Poppyseed coffee cakes, among others, for $55 in a box, $65 in a crate. If you join the Coffee Cake Club for six months, it costs $230, so you spend $460 if you want a coffee cake every month of the year (Zingerman’s 2017, 29–30). You can see how quickly one arrives at the latitude of spending marked by Paw Paw. If you spring for enough Reuben Sandwich Kits to feed everyone at the tailgate – one kit at $200 serves eight (Zingerman’s 2017, 13) – then Bad Axe is soon in sight. They have tailgate parties up there in the UP, but not in the sauna, where crumbs are unacceptable and one should focus on the pleasures of the sauna itself, without gustatory distractions. Well, beer is allowed.