Organic intelligence, artificially presented
Another post on PtS about Burgess’s invented languages today. (I did say there was 10,000 words of this…)
This one is about George Orwell, multicultural Seventies droogs, whether language shapes thought, and Chinese porno dolphins.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Also some rumination on the linguistics of class warfare and the difficulty of predicting the future in fiction.
“Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity,” Henry David Thoreau once wrote. Lingthusiasm, by contrast, is neither supernatural nor serene.
It’s the state of being excited by language, how it works and how it functions.
It’s about being fascinated by phonemes, seduced by semantics and in love with lexis.
It’s why I’m interested in what invented languages do, because in their artificial creation, they reveal the obsessions of their creators in relation to the generally opaque modes through which we communicate.
Over at the Ponying the Slovos blog, we have become very lingthusiastic recently, inspired in no small measure by the achievements of Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne.
We recognise kindred spirits. Their lingthusiasm is ours. And may be yours too.