Spanish and French loanwords in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises : representation strategies of cultural and linguistic exchange in a travel narrative

This article analyses the role of Spanish and French loanwords in the representation of cultural and linguistic exchange in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (1926). A total of 512 foreign words were identified, compiled, and classified according to their lexico-grammatical and semantic categories, and frequency of use in the novel. Further, their etymology, functions in the literary text and potential effect on the 1920s reader's perception are considered. The study demonstrates the crucial role of loanwords, particularly those nouns referring to culture-specific concepts, in conveying local flavour. It also shows the strategies used to represent the characters' encounters with language difference, and to assist the reader in understanding unknown or unfamiliar foreign words. The results cast light on the mechanisms used in travel writing to depict the encounter with the foreign Other, and the significance of the genre in the process of lexical borrowing.