Seddik
M. Gohar
UAE
University, UAE
Abstract
The present
paper examines the difficulties encountered by Emirati students in
comprehending English and American literary texts due to semantic and trans-cultural
ambiguities deployed in the target texts.
The paper identifies several types of culturally loaded vocabulary
embedded in American slang and popular culture proliferated on a wide scale in
contemporary American fictional and dramatic texts. Due to lack of cross-cultural and
collocational knowledge on the part of EFL students, culturally determined
vocabulary such as military slang in American war novels represents a major
obstacle in analyzing and understanding the texts. Since most of the American slang and
idiomatic expressions in literary texts are language and culture specific
elements with no equivalence in TL, Emirati EFL students fail to understand
them. Through inappropriate
inter-lingual transfers, they reach perplexing conclusions formulating
misconceptions about English language.
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