{"product_id":"imaginary-languages-isbn-9780262547154","title":"Imaginary Languages","description":"\u003cb\u003eAn exploration of the practice of inventing languages, from speaking in tongues to utopian schemes of universality to the discoveries of modern linguistics.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eImaginary Languages\u003c\/i\u003e, 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYaguello 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 \u003ci\u003eUtopia\u003c\/i\u003e, 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRecent 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 \u003ci\u003eImaginary Languages\u003c\/i\u003e (an updated and expanded version of the earlier \u003ci\u003eLes Fous du langage\u003c\/i\u003e, published in English as \u003ci\u003eLunatic Lovers of Language\u003c\/i\u003e), Yaguello shows that the invention of language is above all a passionate, dizzying labor of love.Preface ix\u003cbr\u003eForeword: The Love of Language xi\u003cbr\u003ePart I: From Myth to Utopia 1\u003cbr\u003e1 From Austral to Astral Voyages: Foundational Myths 3\u003cbr\u003e2 The Dreamer Dreaming: Profiles in Logophilia 17\u003cbr\u003e3 The Dream of the Dreamer's Rib: Female Bodies, Male Science 29\u003cbr\u003ePart II: In the Course of Time (The Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century) 37\u003cbr\u003e4 The Unfinished Quest: The Search for an Ideal Language in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 39\u003cbr\u003e5 Science Against Fiction: The March Toward Positive Fact 53\u003cbr\u003e6 Utopia in Action: The Ascent of International Auxiliary Languages 71\u003cbr\u003e7 Myth at the Heart of Science: Modern Linguistic Theories as Reflected in Science Fiction 89\u003cbr\u003ePart III: Two Poles of Linguistic Fantasy 109\u003cbr\u003e8 The Emperor's New Clothes: The Case of Nikolai Marr 111\u003cbr\u003e9 The Queen of the Night: Language and the Unconscious--Spiritualist and Religious Glossolalia 131\u003cbr\u003ePart IV: The Defense and Illustration of Natural Languages 165\u003cbr\u003e10 Sleeping Beauty at Rest: Artificial Languages, Prisons of the Mind 167\u003cbr\u003e11 Opposing Forces 177\u003cbr\u003eAppendix 1: Synoptic Table 183\u003cbr\u003eAppendix 2: Selected Texts 187\u003cbr\u003eNotes 283\u003cbr\u003eBibliography 307\"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.\"\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ethe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eMarina Yaguello is Professor Emerita of Linguistics at the University of Paris VII.","brand":"The MIT Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300954427621,"sku":"NP9780262547154","price":24.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780262547154.jpg?v=1767729866","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/imaginary-languages-isbn-9780262547154","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}