Noms propres et culture partagée

Abstract

Lexiculture, designed to fully incorporate teaching culture in language classes, proves to be difficult to apprehend when such aspects as proper nouns, which are heavily connotative, are not easily grasped by foreign students. Be it due to the additional value given to the meanings of such words, the cultural baggage that is shared (common culture) but unknown to students or to the lack of knowledge in the domain of scholarly culture, handling proper nouns and their derivatives (such as eponymous adjectives), both in scholarly and in popular culture, reveals gaps in the cultural knowledge of foreign learners. Teaching and learning these language phenomena are relevant to French as a foreign language, French as a second language as well as French for academic purposes.