Feast of Fools

So this is all her fault, because she got me going about Newspeak last week (despite the fact that I haven't read 1984 for yonks), and then this week I was poking about in her extensive Georgette Heyer collection and went off on one about literary slang.

From Frederica, by Georgette Heyer, set 1818:

"Oh, don't fly off the hooks again - you can have no notion how bracket-faced you look when you get into one of your pelters! Console yourself with my assurance that if Buxted had left you purse-pinched I should have felt myself obliged to let you hang on my sleeve."

From A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess, set about ten years later than now, whenever now may be, although there aren't really enough computers to get away with that for much longer:

'We came at last to a sort of village, and just outside this village was a small sort of a cottage on its own with a bit of garden. The Luna was well up now, and we could viddy this cottage fine and clear as I eased up and put the brake on, the other three giggling like bezoomny, and we could viddy the name on the gate of this cottage veshch was HOME, a gloomy sort of a name.'

And they're both using it for approximately the same purpose as far as I can see, which is to make the dialogue sound vernacular, as if you're reading a transcript of someone talking instead of an authorial account. I'm not sure also whether there's an intention to create verfremdungseffekt, to remind you that you're reading fiction and not living in the world of the book. You wouldn't think that would be Heyer's idea, at least, since she's writing a Regency romance, but I'm not sure that it doesn't emphasise the fantasy/daydream element of the books - makes them feel more like a fairytale (or at least, distances them further back in subjective time).

I certainly find it helps me enjoy her books, because it puts me in the right frame of mind to ignore the aspects of Regency culture and romance novels that would otherwise make me want to punch the male protagonist every fifteen pages. ^_^ Alternatively, they're both just authors who adore playing with language (has anyone ever read Burgess' Mozart and the Wolf Gang? One of those books (like the Baroque Cycle) that seem specifically designed to remind you that compared to the author you're really quite dumb.)

And if you cared enough to read that, here is an English to Nadsat translator which has been amusing me immensely for the past half hour. Feed it dialogue.

all the world's a stage,
and all the chellovecks and cheenas merely players;
they have their exits and their entrances,
and odin chelloveck in his raz fillies many parts,
his acts being seven ages.