Imaginary Languages: Myths, Utopias, Fantasies, Illusions, and Linguistic Fictions by Yaguello, Marina
Imaginary Languages: Myths, Utopias, Fantasies, Illusions, and Linguistic Fictions by Yaguello, Marina

Imaginary Languages: Myths, Utopias, Fantasies, Illusions, and Linguistic Fictions

An exploration of the practice of inventing languages, from speaking in tongues to utopian schemes of universality...
CHF 39.46
CHF 39.46
SKU: 9780262046398
Product Type: Books
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Author: Marina Yaguello
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
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Imaginary Languages: Myths, Utopias, Fantasies, Illusions, and Linguistic Fictions by Yaguello, Marina

Imaginary Languages: Myths, Utopias, Fantasies, Illusions, and Linguistic Fictions

CHF 39.46
Imaginary Languages: Myths, Utopias, Fantasies, Illusions, and Linguistic Fictions by Yaguello, Marina

Imaginary Languages: Myths, Utopias, Fantasies, Illusions, and Linguistic Fictions

CHF 39.46
Author: Marina Yaguello
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Description
An exploration of the practice of inventing languages, from speaking in tongues to utopian schemes of universality to the discoveries of modern linguistics.

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 language. Inventors of languages, Yaguello writes, are madly in love: they love an object that belongs to them only to the extent that they also share it with a community.

Yaguello investigates the sources of imaginary languages, in myths, dreams, and utopias. She takes readers on a tour of languages invented in literature from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, including that in More's Utopia, Leibniz's "algebra of thought," and Bulwer-Lytton's linguistic fiction. She examines the linguistic fantasies (or madness) of Georgian linguist Nikolai Marr and Swiss medium Hélène Smith; and considers the quest for the true philosophical language. Yaguello finds two abiding (and somewhat contradictory) forces: the diversity of linguistic experience, which stands opposed to unifying endeavors, and, on the other hand, features shared by all languages (natural or not) and their users, which justifies the universalist hypothesis.

Recent years have seen something of a boom in invented languages, whether artificial languages meant to facilitate international communication or imagined languages constructed as part of science fiction worlds. In Imaginary Languages (an updated and expanded version of the earlier Les Fous du langage, published in English as Lunatic Lovers of Language), Yaguello shows that the invention of language is above all a passionate, dizzying labor of love.

Author: Marina Yaguello
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 04/19/2022
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 8.10h x 5.50w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9780262046398

About the Author
Marina Yaguello is Professor Emerita of Linguistics at the University of Paris VII.
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