blog entry #3

A lot of the sources I found were mainly on Tolkien's works and I was hoping to diversify the conlangs I have a little more, which is proving to be more difficult than I thought. I can't seem to find many sources on Kryptonian, maybe what I say about that conlang will have to be mostly based in my popular sources OR it might have to be dropped altogether. I'll look again, but since it doesn't have a single creator and many (many) people worked on it, each with their own different takes on it, it might be too complicated to include, even if I was really hoping to talk about it. On another note, there are far more conlangs than I thought! not every single one of them is entirely helpful to me for this specific project, but I still enjoy learning more about them. I think I might want to focus more on fictional conlangs, those who aren't part of that category will sadly have to fall out of my essay, otherwise it will probably be too long.

Okrent, Arika. In the Land of Invented Languages : Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build a Perfect Language. 1st ed., Spiegel & Grau, 2009. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,url,uid&db=cat01165a&AN=dawson.68247&site=eds-live&scope=site.

In this book, Okrent mentions many different meaningful names in the history of fictional languages, such as John Wilkins, Ludwik Zamenhof or Charles Bliss, among many others. She touches on the history of artificial languages and does a great job of mentioning the influence of previous creations on newer ones over the course of the time they were created. She does not solely focus on Tolkien, though she does mention him, she spends more time on the creator whose names have been overshadowed by the famous writer's.

This source will help me diversify my pool of fictional languages, having many examples and explanations of creations which are not necessarily as popular today as they were when they were first invented. It will also provide me with a wider pool of artificial languages, one of those discussed being made up of symbols (Blissymbols) and therefore compared to non-fictional languages such as Egyptian hieroglyphics or different forms of Chinese writing, allowing to broaden the references to "real" languages outside of primarily European languages.

Overbeeke, Bram. "Fictional Languages in Film and Television." University of Amsterdam. https://www.academia.edu/12472592/Fictional_Languages_in_Film_and_Television (2014).

In this paper, Overbeeke highlights the lack of an academic linguistic category for fictional languages which are only meant to help further build a fictional world meant primarily for media consumption. He mentions other conlangs seem to have their own categories, agreed upon by scholars for quite some time now, but denounces the lack of recognition of these specific fictional languages from the academic community. He also mentions the fact that, due to this, the different functions of fictional languages have been rarely discussed or pondered, taking it upon himself to reflect on what exactly those functions are.

This source will be useful to me as it is a great summary of the overall opinion of the academic community on media-driven fictional languages. It will help me paint a clear picture of what exactly those languages do for their respective communities, going further than just immersing the audience in the works.