Language and Linguistics as a Sub-Genre of Sf: a Brief Overview
Language and Linguistics as a Sub-Genre of Sf: a Brief Overview

Summary/Abstract: The role of language and linguistics as topics in science fiction has been noticed a long time ago, and has been studied, to some extent, already. The purpose of this paper is to present this field as one sub-genre, and to achieve a brief, introductory, general overview of some specific thematic areas inside this sub-genre, with the hope of also providing a hint of an overall theoretical framework as orientation for further study. We examine, briefly, the languages of aliens; the novels The Languages of Pao by Jack Vance; Babel 17 by Samuel R. Delany; 1984 by George Orwell; A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess; languages in the TV series Star Trek; the real present-day tendencies on Earth, such as planetary English and a new, very special kind of language called pomobabble; and, the languages of distant past, as they are (mis)represented in literary works, for example in Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe. We look at a similar problem with the ancient Serbian language.

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