engleski

The (Ab)Use of Language in Twentieth Century British Dystopias

The idea that words possess power to perform existed even before the publication of J. L. Austin’s seminal work How to Do Things with Words (1962) and his speech-act theory, but the twentieth century, plagued by several prominent totalitarian regimes, pushed this realization to the forefront of both literary and non-literary texts. The paper will focus on the (ab)use of language in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange (1962). The two dystopian novels, set in different societies, illustrate how language is used to wield power and construct or deconstruct identity, creating the effect of defamiliarization and inviting the readers to critically assess both the written narratives and the society they live in. More specifically, albeit from opposing angles, both works show how depriving one of language is necessarily linked to loss of power and identity. While A Clockwork Orange employs an “anti-language” (Halliday 1976) within the domineering social group that clashes with the expected social behaviour, Nineteen Eighty-Four constructs a language with the specific aim of controlling the society.

language, power, identity, George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

nije evidentirano