Description
Constructed Languages and the Sociolinguistics of Language Making examines so-called "constructed" languages from the French Revolution to the present, challenging the assumption that they are linguistic curiosities or exceptions. Instead, the contributors approach them as no more artificial, and no less natural, than any other language. Read in their social and political contexts, constructed languages emerge as revealing efforts to negotiate historical tensions through language itself: tensions surrounding revolutionary ideals, the limits and injustices of the nation-state, and industrial capitalism, debates over socialism and liberal democracy, and the legacies of colonialism. Usually tied to modernist assumptions about achieving progress through technology and rational thought, they allow for the expression of sociopolitical visions of alternative, possibly better, worlds.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1IntroductionDavid Karlander and Monica HellerChapter 2The Politics of Constructed Languages in Revolutionary France: From Universal Harmony to Rapid CommunicationJames CostaChapter 3Constructed Languages and Linguistic Theory: The Parallel Trajectories of Basic and Minimal EnglishJames McElvennyChapter 4Lingua Franca Competition in the Early Twentieth Century: Language Ideologies and (Inter)Nationalism in Two Early International OrganisationsMaria Rosa GarridoChapter 5Constructing Languages of Intellectual Co-operation: Towards a Social History of the League of Nations Bipasha BhattacharyyaChapter 6Linguistic Unity and Revolutionary Action: The Sennaciist Esperantism of Eugène LantiDavid KarlanderChapter 7A Constructed Language in the Vietnam War: Communicating Anti-imperialism and Postcolonialism in Esperanto Youth Media, 1963-1975Guilherme FiansChapter 8The Invention of Interlanguages: Connecting Machines, Animals, and Humans in the Climate CrisisCourtney Handman Chapter 9Selling the Authentic Alien: Sociolinguistic Variation in Klingon and the Construction of Authenticity in the Star Trek FranchiseRebecca Lurie Starr, Roey Gafter, and Rebekka Puderbaugh
