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Invented languages and new worlds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2004

JOSEPH LO BIANCO
JOSEPH LO BIANCO
Affiliation:
Holds the Chair of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Melbourne, is Adjunct Professor at the School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland, and was Founder and Chief Executive of Language Australia: The National Languages and Literacy Institute of Australia (which publishes the journal ‘Australian Language Matters’). He has been a consultant on language policy and literacy planning in Alberta (Canada), Fiji, Hawaii (USA), Italy, Northern Ireland and Scotland (UK), South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tonga, and Western Samoa
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Abstract

THE LIFE of a language involves relationships between linguistic elements and extra-linguistic contexts. The linguistic elements are varied and multiple, involving both written and spoken symbols and grammars, while the extra-linguistic contexts are the innumerable societies, cultures, and sub-cultures of humankind, including its worlds of reality, imagination, and ideology. This article discusses invented languages, partly in order to explore the motivations and schemes of their inventors and partly to compare languages created for international use (often called international auxiliary languages or IALs) with English, which itself functions as an IAL but is very much an uninvented language.

Type
Original Article
Information
English Today , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , April 2004 , pp. 8 - 18
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

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