Linguistics stuff is funnn. I wish I had more suggestions because I do love reading and watching stuff about linguistics, but for a non-fiction rec: Man Made Language by Dale Spender. I read the version from 1980, which was very good, but I think there's an up to date version on her website? It's about patriarchy and the history of English linguistics and stuff. Very good.
I don't know if you've read any of C.J. Cherryh's work, but her Foreigner series is a reverse first contact science fiction series focused on cross-cultural linguistics (and politics): the protagonist is a sort of ambassador/interpreter (or as he starts out, a dictionary writer for humans of the alien language). It's not a perfect series, but it's a lot of fun in many ways. Sarah Monette/Katherine Addison's "Doctrine of Labyrinths" and "The Chronicles of Osreth" also focuses a lot on fantasy language, and DoL does a bit with cross-cultural language interpretation.
"Cyclopedia Exotica" is a fantasy encyclopedia about a world with cyclopes and although it's more... I guess fantasy anthropology based, there's a lot of focus on labels and self-presentation, and it sort of has a linguistics vibe in vague terms?
There's also a radio play from "Doctor Who" featuring the Sixth Doctor called "...ish". It's a very fascinating production in that it really only functions as a radio play, because there's really no way to visually show what's going on and it's all about comprehension of language and sounds in particular.
I think we already talked about this before but if you haven't read the Simon Snow series, that one's also got some neat linguistics stuff in it.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2024-06-03 02:09 am (UTC)Linguistics stuff is funnn. I wish I had more suggestions because I do love reading and watching stuff about linguistics, but for a non-fiction rec: Man Made Language by Dale Spender. I read the version from 1980, which was very good, but I think there's an up to date version on her website? It's about patriarchy and the history of English linguistics and stuff. Very good.
I don't know if you've read any of C.J. Cherryh's work, but her Foreigner series is a reverse first contact science fiction series focused on cross-cultural linguistics (and politics): the protagonist is a sort of ambassador/interpreter (or as he starts out, a dictionary writer for humans of the alien language). It's not a perfect series, but it's a lot of fun in many ways. Sarah Monette/Katherine Addison's "Doctrine of Labyrinths" and "The Chronicles of Osreth" also focuses a lot on fantasy language, and DoL does a bit with cross-cultural language interpretation.
"Cyclopedia Exotica" is a fantasy encyclopedia about a world with cyclopes and although it's more... I guess fantasy anthropology based, there's a lot of focus on labels and self-presentation, and it sort of has a linguistics vibe in vague terms?
There's also a radio play from "Doctor Who" featuring the Sixth Doctor called "...ish". It's a very fascinating production in that it really only functions as a radio play, because there's really no way to visually show what's going on and it's all about comprehension of language and sounds in particular.
I think we already talked about this before but if you haven't read the Simon Snow series, that one's also got some neat linguistics stuff in it.