A mistake in the form of a word or image resulting from the violation of a standard custom. Barbarisms are common in modern art -- Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon is a noted example -- and in cases of colonializing primitivism the barbarism works in two directions. E.g., anatomical distortions appropriated from African artifacts violate European standards of figural representation, while the artist s who do the appropriating are often indifferent to the significance of the motif in the original culture, thus violating its norms as well. Although the word frequently describes the transference of a motif from a non- European culture to a European one, it can go either way. James Clifford's Predicament of Culture, for instance, describes a tribal person using a beer cooler for ritual purposes. This may be an instance of a barbarism serving as a perruque.
Barbarism is a term used by some people to refer to a non-standard pronunciation, word or expression in a language. For example, the use of the word nucular instead of the word nuclear is a barbarism. The term is little used by linguists today, because of its pejorative tone, and the fact that it not clearly defined.