Exoticism

An exoticism is a foreign word that designates a reality characteristic of the life, everyday practice or culture of a particular people or country and unusual for the linguistic milieu in which it is used: "saklia," "chador," "samurai," "geisha." Unlike barbarisms, exoticisms name concrete national objects and phenomena for which the language has no equivalent of its own. In literature exoticisms reproduce the national colour of the depicted country, immerse the reader in a foreign cultural atmosphere, lend the description verisimilitude and picturesqueness. They are especially characteristic of works about the life of other peoples, of travel essays and historical-adventure prose. Exoticisms border on borrowings and barbarisms and are an important subject of lexicology, cultural linguistics and stylistics.