Abstract: In Périple autour de la Méditerranée by ‘Ali al-Dū‘āğī (1936), lexical and syntactical paradigms play a role in the construction of irony, understood as a textual functioning which dictates the choice of terms and syntactic constructions. The stress is placed on the conceptions that the characters have of their respective languages. The audacious novelistic style of the author reveals the extent and limitations of linguistic “acculturation”.
