In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build a Perfect Language - By Arika Okrent

Abstract

While it is not a scholarly work, Arika Okrent’s In the Land of Invented Languages recommends itself to linguistic anthropologists on a variety of counts. An intellectual picaresque describing the author’s historical and ethnographic forays into the imaginative worlds of language inventors and their followers, it offers engaging examination of shifting motivations behind the production and promotion of constructed languages (conlangs). It could be used alongside similarly accessible trade books in teaching introductory language and culture type courses. In this context, Okrent, who has graduate training in psycholinguistics, presents an argument that largely complements the linguistic anthropological perspective. Students primed with key concepts will be able to draw pertinent theoretical connections.