First, I want to define speculative fiction. In general, I would call it the combined genres of science fiction and fantasy, but most horror falls under the category, as does quite a bit of romance, but not really in the same way. Really, what makes speculative fiction special is that it does not portray life as it is, but as it could be. The world doesn’t really have space colonies, unicorns or ghosts, but that doesn’t stop us from writing about them. (As a little aside, this problem has actually been tying philosophers up in knots for quite a while, with the question “How can we write about Pegasus if Pegasus does not exist?” but that’s not really important). This distinction between the real and the possible, has a profound impact on the language we use to tell stories, which often goes unrecognized by writers in these genres.
This connection is rooted in Tolkien, and LOTR. Tolkien was, as some know, a philologist, a now largely defunct area of study, which can be bluntly described as a collision between literary theory and linguistics. It is natural that linguistics and language should have played a key role in his work, and one untrustworthy source says that he composed the Elvish languages first, and then wrote the story as they grew out of it. One of the consequences of this work is that LOTR is actually a translation from Elvish into English! Not that he wrote the entire book in Elvish first, but the world Tolkien constructed was so intricate that he actually intended LOTR to be read as a translation, not as an original work in English. This actually created some interesting anachronisms throughout, like a metaphorical reference to a train in the first chapter (obviously elves would have no concept of trains). Read more…
I would just title this section “slang,” but the word is so loaded by now, that it really wouldn’t communicate the meaning I want it to. The idea of slang, as beaten into us by teachers and parents, is that it is, for some reason, fundamentally wrong. It implies that there is a correct “proper” language and then slang words which we should ignore, because if we ignore them, they will just go away. This attitude towards slang is really an attitude against change. We want our language to remain the same, but the fact of the matter is that language is constantly changing, and slang is the form these changes take.
Slang is best contrasted with dialect. While dialects are very old, and often unchanging, slang is very new, and constantly shifting as we adapt to the ever changing world around us. This, in many ways, is the most important thing to remember about slang—a change in slang, means that there was some change in the way individuals who use that new slang see the world. While dialects and slang might, on the surface, look similar (they both change the way our characters use language) they actually communicate very different things about them. While dialects tell us where characters are from, slang tells us what has happened to them, and how they perceive the future. Read more…
Dialect is used often in writing, and often used badly. This is because dialects are often poorly executed, and poorly utilized. I myself am hardly an expert on them, and am not a subtle enough author to use them well. That said, I still want to offer a few cautionary points to think about if you do want to use a dialect in a story.
First, it is important to consider why you want to use a dialect. Often, authors use it because they want their character to have a distinctive voice. This is a bad reason to use dialect, because it is often poorly executed and disconnected from the character. Besides, there are much better ways to give a character a distinct voice without using something as heavy handed as a dialect. Dialects actually affect a character’s history. It tells us much more about our character’s family, their childhood, their education, and where they live and work, then just “how they sound.” If the dialect is disconnected from the rest of the character’s history, it no longer makes any sense for it to be there. Read more…
