Experiments with Words

Writing is always about language, and it may be argued that each step in a sentence, each new word chosen from the lexicon of English (more than a million of them, according to the Global Language Monitor, 2013) can be an adventure, a step into the unknown. Any fiction writer knows the tentativeness and, often, agony of taking the step of the next word forward. This is particularly the case when the next word is an author-invented word. Memorable language experiments have occurred in fiction as part of the speech of certain groups or subcultures. Anthony Burgess's nadsat language in A Clockwork Orange (1962) is a combination of English and Russian invented to suit a depicted youth culture of the near-future:

Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker (1980) is narrated in a language created to reflect post-apocalyptic degradation, when formal education has disappeared and the survivors are doing the best they can with what is left:

The most famous literary experiment with words in a work of fiction is James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (1939), a 628-page novel that ends mid-sentence and continues the same sentence at the beginning of the book. However, circular structure is not the only challenging aspect of this work. Having already conducted one of the most influential experiments with the novel form and narrative structure in Ulysses (1922), Joyce turned his attention to the structures and associations of language itself. Finnegans Wake – ostensibly the story of crises and humorous moments in the lives of the Dublin-based Earwicker family – is much more an account of relationships in language and culture.