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Research Outline
Prepared for Petunia | Delivered September 16, 2019
English Novels with Author-Created Words
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Goals
Identify five English language novels where the author created their own words, or utilized English words in ways that had not been done previously (used them as slang). For each book found, provide some examples of the words and what they mean.
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Early Findings
Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
The book tells the story of 12-year-old Riddley Walker after
surviving
a
n
u
c
l
e
a
r
holocaust
.
The author, Russell Hoban, tells the story utilizing "
a combination of post-apocalyptic slang
and Riddley's own awkward preteen UK slang."
Not only did the author use slang, he also altered the sentence structure, as shown in this example: “
T
h
e
y
r
e
m
o
r
blip dogs
nor real 1s tho.”
One example of slang in the novel is “
wester day
,” which means "yesterday."
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
The book tells the story of two castaways who
altered the culture
, government and religion of the island nation of San Lorenzo.
Vonnegut created a series of slang words based on
real, English words
. These words had supposedly been introduced to the islanders by the castaways, and then altered to fit into their own language.
One example is
"
k
a
r
a
s
s
"
which came from the English word “class,” as in 'a class of people'. Vonnegut then builds off this
b
a
s
e
w
o
r
d
"
k
a
r
a
s
s
" to create a second slang term "
d
u
p
r
a
s
s
: a
k
a
r
a
s
s
consisting of exactly two people."
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