Interesting use of language in fiction

[Beth]

So here's a question that someone recommended I ask here - what's the best book you know that uses language in creative ways?

I'm not thinking poor spellings to reflect dialect, I'm thinking Nadsat, books written entirely in dialect with all the beautiful, unusual words, authors who use language in fascinating ways - anything that explores our wonderful world of words.

[Anna]

Everyone probably knows about them, and I haven't read anything by them, but Anne Garréta, Italo Calvino, and other members of Oulipo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo

Another thread that might be of interest:
Book List: Language Sci-Fi

[Jemppu]

Last year finally made the discovery I'd been long thinking would be but futile dream: an English language story written without gendered distinctions. Indrapramit Das' short story "The Worldless" in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection (incorrectly titled "The Wordless" therein).

Am renewed in hope to encounter more of such still.

(Awesome topic!)

[Kandice]

Anthony Burgess created Nasdat for A Clockwork Orange. He based it on English and Russian with the idea that the reader needing to really think about the words they were reading would impart a certain level of remove from the extreme violence on the page. It was a stroke of genius and still my favorite use of made up language today.

[Ian]

For science fiction .about the nature and function of language, Jack Vance's 1957 short novel The Languages of Pao is hard to beat.

As usual, Vance's style is excellent, but here he took as his premise a "strong" version of the (now widely discarded) Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, which holds that language controls how we think and what we think about. He applied this postulate to social engineering. (see Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguis...)

Granted the underlying theory, it is a sort of "hard science fiction" for the Humanities.

However, we get descriptions of the languages instead of examples. (Vance wasn't a Tolkien, who invented whole languages and only then wrote the stories to given them context.)

On the other hand, L. Sprague de Camp, in his "Viagens Interplanetarias" stories, created several "alien" languages, basing them on real ones, but unfortunately we only get a few words and sentences in them. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viagens...).

(For those unfamiliar with them -- I think they are sadly neglected -- these stories might be described as combining Edgar Rice Burroughs' plots and action with much more plausible aliens and technology. And, like de Camp's writings in general, they are in a much more sophisticated literary style than their model, and much better worked out. De Camp enjoyed Burroughs, but in his critical writings he commented on, e.g., ERB's certain Barsoomian [Martian] customs which were clearly invented ad hoc to solve plot problems: like the one requiring Barsoomians to use swords in personal combat when they have extremely accurate and very deadly firearms available for pitched battles.)

[Beth]

Anna wrote: "Everyone probably knows about them, and I haven't read anything by them, but Anne Garréta, Italo Calvino, and other members of Oulipo.

Oulipo is new to me but I do actually have a Calvino on my TBR. This makes me even more excited to check it out, thank you!

[Beth]

Jemppu wrote: "Last year finally made the discovery I'd been long thinking would be but futile dream: an English language story written without gendered distinctions. Indrapramit Das' short stor..."

Ooh that sounds really cool. I think I managed to find it online and it is now bookmarked, thank you for the recommendation!

[Beth]

Kandice wrote: "Anthony Burgess created Nasdat for A Clockwork Orange. He based it on English and Russian with the idea that the reader needing to really think about the words they we..."

Yes indeed, brilliant book! That was actually what inspired me to ask :)

[Beth]

Ian wrote: "For science fiction .about the nature and function of language, Jack Vance's 1957 short novel The Languages of Pao is hard to beat.

I just had a look at this and it sounds so fascinating. My TBR just got longer again! :D

[Stephen]

Riddley Walker comes to mind.

[Beth]

Stephen wrote: "Riddley Walker comes to mind."

I've just read a sample - this is *absolutely* the sort of thing I was thinking of. It's gone straight on my TBR. :)

[CBRetriever]

Beth wrote: "Stephen wrote: "Riddley Walker comes to mind."

I've just read a sample - this is *absolutely* the sort of thing I was thinking of. It's gone straight on my TBR. :)"

I'm struggling through it now. Fortunately, someone wrote a guide/annotations website for it:

http://www.errorbar.net/rw/