Fictional languages in Science Fiction Literature surveys a large number of fictional languages, those created as part of a literary world, to present a multifaceted account of the literary phenomenon of glossopoesis (language invention). Consisting of a few untranslated sentences, exotic names or even fully-fledged languages with detailed grammar and vocabulary, fictional languages have been a common element of English-language fiction since Thomas More’s Utopia (1516).
Different notions of the functions of such fictional languages in narrative have been proposed: as rooted in phonaesthetics and contextual features, or as being used for characterisation and construction of alterity. Framed within stylistics and informed by narrative theory, literary theory, literary pragmatics, and semiotics, this study combines previous typologies into a new 5-part reading model comprising unique analytical approaches tailored to science fiction’s specific discourse and style, exploring the relationship between glossopoesis, world-building, storytelling, interpretation, and rhetoric, both in prose and paratexts.
Fictional languages in Science Fiction Literature surveys a large number of fictional languages, those created as part of a literary world, to present a multifaceted account of the literary phenomenon of glossopoesis (language invention).
Contents
Acknowledgements
List of texts
List of figures
Chapter 1 Fictional languages as stylistic and narrative devices
Chapter 2 A speculative function: philosophical languages
Chapter 3 A rhetorical function: dialectal extrapolations
Chapter 4 A descriptive function: world-building languages
Chapter 5 A diegetic function: superlanguages and antilanguages
Chapter 6 A paratextual function: different textualities
Chapter 7 Multifunctional readings
References
Index
Israel A. C. Noletto is Professor of English Language and Literature at the Federal Institute of Piauí (IFPI), Brazil, and a conlanger. He is interested in literary stylistics and fictional languages in science fiction as a literary phenomenon and has published several articles on glossopoesis in writers ranging from George Orwell to Ted Chiang, Jonathan Swift to Anthony Burgess, Thomas More to Ursula K. Le Guin. He co-edited the book Reading Fictional Languages (2023), a collection of papers in glossopoesis by scholars in stylistics and professional language inventors from the UK, mainland Europe, USA, and Brazil.
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