Thesis advisor: Margaret Thomas / This research paper aims to compare fictional languages, in particular those created in works of science fiction, to natural languages. After an introduction to conlangs in general, and to Quenya, Klingon, Dothraki and Na’vi specifically, Greenberg’s linguistic universals will be used to test their resemblance to natural languages, and suggest a taxonomy of fictional languages. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Linguistics.

The purpose of this thesis is to introduce the so far ignored topic of fictional languages in literature. In the first part it focuses mainly on the function of the fictional languages in the literary works, and analyses the basic options of the fictional languages classification, based on whether they can be labeled as an independent work of art, as an autonomous part of a work, or as an instrument of the aesthetic function in the work. Furthermore, it divides the fictional languages in accordance to the way in which they take effect, either through the expression-form, through the expression- substance, through the content-form, or through the content-substance, taking the terminology from the Louis Hjelmslev's sign model. The second part consists of the analysis of the cases of fictional language usage in prose; these usages are grouped into three divisions. Languages, which help to create an invented world (and eventually add up to its authenticity), are represented by J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional languages. The dystopian languages include Newspeak from the novel Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell, ptydepe and chorukor from the play The Memorandum by V. Havel, and "Moon Czech" from the prose The True Excursion of Mr. Brouček to the Moon by S. Čech. Fictional languages related to philosophy are...

The PhD thesis "Constructed Languages in Literature" focuses on the phenomenon of consciously designed or drafted languages and their usage in literary texts. The first chapter of the thesis offers reflections on the delimitation of constructed languages, especially from the perspective of the mostly illusory opposition of natural and constructed. It also puts forth the problems of glossolalia and encryption or encoding of a text in a natural language, while suggesting these two ways to create a new utterance should be perceived as possible starting points for language creativity, rather than a completely different phenomenon. The subsequent chapters then turn to individual cases and introduce extensive groups of constructed and virtual languages - animal languages, utopian and dystopian languages, sacred and divine languages and constructed and virtual languages in poetry. In those chapters examples of both elaborated and drafted languages appear, so that the imagination characteristic of each group comes out.