Proper Nouns as Cultural Referents: How Can We Adjust Them to a New Cultural-Linguistic Environment?
Proper Nouns as Cultural Referents: How Can We Adjust Them to a New Cultural-Linguistic Environment?

Summary/Abstract: This paper aims to analyse certain proper nouns, profoundly rooted in the culture of a speech community. Since a natural language evokes a distinct reality, characteristic to a cultural and geographical space, a proper noun that appeared in such a space may hide peculiar significances. As we know, a culture-bound term requires the revival of the context in which it appeared so that it continues to exist in quotidian usage. Thus, we’ll analyse some proper nouns (encountered in Salman Rushdie’s and David Lodge’s novels) whose origins are made known through the intertextual references revealed within the contexts. Sometimes, an author resorts to puns and allusions involving proper nouns. When translating works of literature, the translator may write down notes, at the bottom of the page, to explain such linguistic artifices, sometimes influencing the text’s reading and interpretation.

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