Imaginary Languages
Myths, Utopias, Fantasies, Illusions, and Linguistic Fictions
$44.63
- Paperback
352 pages
- Release Date
24 October 2023
Summary
In Imaginary Languages, Marina Yaguello explores the history and practice of inventing languages, from religious speaking in tongues to politically utopian schemes of universality to the discoveries of modern linguistics. She looks for imagined languages that are autonomous systems, complete unto themselves and meant for communal use; imaginary, and therefore unlike both natural languages and historically attested languages; and products of an individual effort to lay hold of languag…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780262547154 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0262547155 |
| Author: | Marina Yaguello, Erik Butler |
| Publisher: | MIT Press Ltd |
| Imprint: | MIT Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 352 |
| Release Date: | 24 October 2023 |
| Weight: | 369g |
| Dimensions: | 203mm x 133mm |
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Critics Review
“Expanding on a study published in France in 1984, a noted linguist surveys the history of language invention, an enterprise undertaken by centuries of “lunatic lovers of language,” for reasons philosophical, political, artistic, and arcane. Yaguello recounts the utopian impulses behind projects like Esperanto and Volapük; speculative fiction’s explorations of linguistic theory; and the search, rooted in Judeo-Christian mythology, for an original, universal tongue. The mind-bending nature of the book’s subject, which offers seemingly infinite paths of inquiry, could overwhelm, but Yaguello relates the material with gusto, offering an idiosyncratic, illuminating perspective on the development of Western thought.”
—the New Yorker
About The Author
Marina Yaguello
Marina Yaguello is Professor Emerita of Linguistics at the University of Paris VII.
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