The “Interplanetary” Artistic and Artificial Languages in Literature and Art of the 1900–1920s (Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Alexander Bogdanov, Alexey Tolstoy, Brothers Gordins)

In the history of culture, projects of artificial languages were mainly associated with the search for some universal and, if possible, ideal means of communication, as evidenced, in particular, by the projects of Rene Descartes, John Wilkins, Johann Martin Schleier, Ludwik Zamenhof, Edgar de Waal, Jacob Linzbach, and others. In the late nineteenth-early twentieth centuries, not only scientists but also science fiction writers, the first of whom was H.G. Wells, offered illustrations and sketches of fictional artificial languages. The esssay mainly examines cases of artificial languages employed for interplanetary communication that take place in Russian science fiction novels (“The Red Star” by Alexander Bogdanov and “Aelita” by Alexey Tolstoy). In addition, it covers experiments in the field of inventing an interplanetary language by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in a number of popular science and fiction works, as well as by Wolf Gordin in his works on the pan-methodological language of AO. In line with the philosophical ideas of Roland Barthes about the discourse of power, as wellas considering two types of sociolects and, accordingly, two types of languages (encratic and acratic), artificial languages are classified as acratic, since they are usually created in order to confront the mechanisms of power as such. The projects of the artificial and artistic (fictional) languages of the early twentieth century not only an attempted to find a language of communication between the inhabitants of different planets; they also urged to invent a universal means of language communication that would bring together the people of the East and the West who were separated by revolutions and wars.

The design(ing) of language

Courses on invented languages can do much more than just introduce students to linguistics. Through three case studies, it is shown that as students learn how to design a language, they also learn about the design of human language in a way that is unlikely to occur in other courses. The first case study involves the creation of a lexicon, in relation to John Wilkins’ invented language of 1668 and to Saussurean arbitrariness, commonly regarded as a fundamental design property of human language. The second case study concerns phonemic inventories. By designing their own from scratch, students see the competing pressures that phonemic inventories must satisfy in all languages. The third case study concerns inflectional morphology and the pressures that determine the form of particular morphemes. All of these case studies are accessible to students and help them engage with important aspects of the design properties of human language.

2019 Wilkins–Bernal–Medawar lectureLife begins at 40: the demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis

In 1965, the psychoanalyst and social scientist Elliott Jaques introduced a term, the ‘midlife crisis’, that continues to structure Western understandings and experiences of middle age. Following Jaques's work, the midlife crisis became a popular means of describing how—and why—men and women around the age of 40 became disillusioned with work, disenchanted with relationships and detached from family responsibilities. Post-war sociological and psychological studies of middle age regarded the midlife crisis as a manifestation of either biological or psychological change, as a moment in the life course when—perhaps for the first time—people felt themselves to be declining towards death. Although the midlife crisis has often been dismissed as a myth or satirized in novels and films, the concept has persisted not only in stereotypical depictions of rebellion and infidelity at midlife, but also in research that has sought to explain the particular social, physical and emotional challenges of middle age. In the spirit of the pioneering research of John Wilkins, John Bernal and Peter Medawar, each of whom in different ways emphasized the complex interrelations between science and society, I want to argue that the emergence of the midlife crisis—as concept and experience—during the middle decades of the twentieth century was not coincidental. Rather it was the product of historically specific demographic changes and political aspirations—at least in the Western world—to keep alive the American dream of economic progress and material prosperity.

The Russian China in the Last D. A. Prigov’s Novel

The article relates to the last novel by D. A. Prigov “Katya the Chinese” (published in 2007), based on the memories of the writer’s wife, N. G. Burova from Harbin, who was born and grew up in the Russian China and left it in 1950s. The main task of the article is to show what stylistic techniques, plots, motives, subtexts allow to recreate the atmosphere of the Russian China and the generalized image of the East. The narration synthesizes the memories of the people of Harbin and recognizable storylines of D. A. Prigov’s work (such, for example, as a fantastic bestiary). In the subtext of the novel the following works are found: feuilleton by I. Ilf and E. Petrov “Nikudykin the Commtied”, pro- totyped by the “futurist of life” V. Goltsshmidt, who traveled in 1918–1920s with lectures on Siberia and the Far East, V. Nabokov’s novel “The Gift” with his father’s Asian journey (the plot about his father in “The Gift” influenced the plot about the girl’s father in “Katya the Chinese”), the “Chinese” stories by J. L. Borges “The Garden of Forking Paths” and “The Analytical language of John Wilkins”, etc. In Prigov’s narrative, a particular role is played by an autobiographical excerpt about the Tashkent artist A. N. Volkov and an insertion novel about the “Monastery of Flying Cats”, in- tentionally inaccurately stylized by Prigov as a Chinese legend. Many motifs and subtexts of the novel pass through the prism of the child’s consciousness (the “girl’s”, who is the main character of the novel), which gives the image of the Russian East, along with documentary, fantastic features.

Media Structural Defacement and Its Philosophical Implications

Examples given in this paper deal with print media, but the argument applies to all media. These examples illustrate structural-linguistic principles, principles that may be extended to any medium. The approach is structuralist.The history of handwritten and printed texts in the West is an inseparable history of punctuation and lettering. Written and printed texts represent spoken language: letters are representations of segmental-phonemes (linguistically meaningful sounds); graphemic punctuation represents meaningful supra-segmental phonemes (intonation, pitch, pause, etc.).Alphabetical, graphemic representation in the West has through the ages developed many arbitrary systems of grammatic punctuation to show speech, but the semantics of speech representation remains under-developed. This is no less true of digital media as of print media. Digital print media are particularly vulnerable to ambiguity. Emoticons and emojis came about of necessity. Just as early-print punctuation was primarily invented by printers and printers’ devils, not scholars, so too emoticons are Silicon-Valley formalization of user-invented semantic punctuation. :-) becomes [smiley emoji] or [smiling alien emoji]. :-( becomes [frowning emoji] or [frowning alien emoji], and so on—and ambiguity is the hothouse of error and misreading that affects all media. We should not be surprised. It is said that a similar devil, Titivillus, caused medieval manuscript scribes to make errors in their copying.I am specifically interested in the ramifications of semantic punctuation on philosophical texts—above all, irony, though sarcasm, ridicule, double entendre, derision, mockery, satire, scorn, sneering, scoffing, gibing, taunting, acerbity, causticity, hate, trenchancy, etc., as well as positive expressions such as love, amusement, friendliness, approval, sincerity, etc. are also of semantic-punctuation representational importance. Does the failure of traditional written and printed tests to reflect, for the most part, semantic values handicap printed representational discourse? In fact, can the handicapped discussion of profound ideas be adequately represented graphemically and philosophical inquiry limited without representation of the full range of human linguistic communication?Representation of irony in print has long escaped writers and scholars. In the 17th century, John Wilkins in An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language (1668) proposed, among other semantic punctuations, an inverted exclamation mark (¡) to indicate irony: “That is terrific work¡” for a job poorly done. “What a lovely hat you have¡” said with sarcastic irony to someone sporting a ridiculous hat. (Later, an inverted question mark was suggested for ironic statement, ¿, but confusion with Spanish inverted question marks makes it a less attractive alternative).Wilkins’ term “philosophical language” refers to language as printed representation, not speech. His argument is an early reference to what I have elsewhere argued is the failure of “bookish philosophy” that has come to typify academic philosophy, for example, the gibberish of Heidegger, Derrida, post-structuralists, post-modernists, post-humanists, numerous analytic and “linguistic” philosophers, and many others.One possible way out of these difficulties is a process of mediation, unmediation, and immediation.