A CULTURAL-LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE UPON THE INTERPOLATION OF INDIGENOUS TERMS IN POSTCOLONIAL NOVELS IN ENGLISH
A CULTURAL-LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE UPON THE INTERPOLATION OF INDIGENOUS TERMS IN POSTCOLONIAL NOVELS IN ENGLISH

Summary/Abstract: The interpolation of indigenous terms within literary texts written in English is a common practice in postcolonial novels and can be explained as a consequence of the need to highlight the elements of cultural specificity of different peoples or ethnic groups. The number of words from the characters’ native language or the level of difficulty thus created depends upon the author’s intentions regarding the accessibility of the respective work to an English-speaking reader. For instance, most of the African postcolonial authors in English include a wide range of indigenous terms belonging to specific tribal languages resulting in a complex image of the cultural practices and way of life of the respective tribe. Therefore, the aim of the present paper is to investigate the postcolonial role of such a device in several novels with a closer look at the intratextual or extratextual strategies that are employed in order to facilitate the integration of such terms into English.

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