Linguistic representation of ethnocultural dissonance in Amélie Nothomb’s novel “Tokyo Fiancée”

Abstract

The life and work of the modern Belgian writer Amélie Nothomb are directly connected with Japan and Japanese culture, so her works can be considered as important sources of knowledge about the country, which remained closed to foreigners for several centuries and does not often come into the focus of attention of modern French-speaking authors. In particular, the autobiographical novel “Tokyo Fiancée” (“Ni d’Ève ni d’Adam”, 2007) is an example of a detailed description of cross-cultural Japanese-Belgian contacts, as well as the behavior of representatives of Japanese linguoculture in everyday life, which the author had the opportunity to observe during her life in Japan. The purpose of the article is to analyze the main linguistic means of representing cultural otherness and, as a consequence of that otherness, ethno-cultural dissonance in the above-mentioned novel. The paper also clarifies the key concepts of ethno-cultural dissonance and otherness. The main research methods are linguistic-stylistic and linguistic-cultural analysis of an authentic literary text. Based on the results of the research, conclusions will be formulated about the specifics in the linguistic representation of ethno-cultural dissonance and cultural otherness in the novel under analysis.