À propos de la représentation linguistique de l’altérité culturelle dans Ni d’Ève ni d’Adam d’Amélie Nothomb

Abstract

Amélie Nothomb. The writings of Amélie Nothomb, a French-speaking Belgian novelist whose biography is closely linked to Japan and its culture, represent important testimonies of this closed country, which had always been little present among the major themes of francophone literatures. It is in Tokyo Fiancée (2007), a deeply autobiographical text, that we find an eloquent description of the intercultural Japanese-Belgian contacts, but also the one of the behavior of the Japanese in everyday life (unlike Fear and Trembling which is often considered the most “Japanese” novel by Nothomb but which focuses essentially on the drama of the professional life of the Nippon without paying much attention to the everyday living). In this article, we aim to examine the representation of the different manifesta tions of cultural otherness that the narrator faces during her stay in Japan, especially in terms of interpersonal relationships, communicative strategies and language behavior.