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Africanisms in French Dictionary: Analysis of African Cultural Diffusion Patterns in France

  • Cross-Cultural Studies
  • 2025, 74(), pp.49-74
  • DOI : 10.21049/ccs.2025.74..49
  • Publisher : Center for Cross Culture Studies
  • Research Area : Humanities > Literature
  • Received : January 10, 2025
  • Accepted : February 7, 2025
  • Published : February 28, 2025

Kim Minchai 1

1경희대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to examine how African culture was introduced, disseminated, and transformed within French culture by analyzing Africanisms, loanwords of African origin, included in French dictionaries. To achieve this, we utilized the etymological search function of an online version of the French dictionary, Le Petit Robert de la langue française, to extract loanwords of African origin. Extracted words were quantitatively analyzed based on four criteria: ‘introduction process and donor language’, ‘category, part of speech, and field of borrowing’, ‘period of appearance’, and ‘specific marker in a dictionary’. Based on our analysis results, we inferred patterns of African cultural diffusion in France by dividing them into three stages: ‘introduction patterns’, ‘settlement patterns’, and ‘transformation patterns’. Through this series of tasks, it was confirmed that it was a rare occurrence for African culture actively introduced from regions under French influence during the late First Colonial Empire and the early to mid Second Colonial Empire to deeply impact French culture.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.