order, like typos in a hurriedly written email. Letters are added to or sub-
tracted from words, sometimes implying additional meanings. This seems
strangely at odds with the intellectual content, and Bernstein challenges
our ideas of what is, and is not, communicative.
In my own piece ‘The Riting of the Runda’, there is a short passage
which consists of a constructed language:
Example 8.16
ICHBROHOB TISH EDRONE. RURUNS RO. EOB
BROVICT WARSHAWE. WARSHAWASHAD. DOWIF-
BRON SESH OBEXOBE XOBE. ICHBROHOB NUR
PERWARWAN CHEBROCHA.
NUR LIHCOFLIH DROPSE RURUNS.TINSCREDIL XOB.
EDRONE WOSHANS WARSHAWASHAD. OBDAH
DOWIFBRON HOSHBOT DILCRETONS PEDWASDEP.
ICHBROHOB ICHBROHOB ISS.AD TISH XOOO DOWIFBRON. DROPSE TILCOFPER
HOSTIM PROVICT. DROPSE TILCOFPER VOHICTCAV
DARUN. XOB TISH UNUN UNUN DURMUGEDUM.
RURUNS WARSHAWASHAD.From ‘The Riting of the Runda’ (Smith & Dean 1996; Smith 2000b,
pp. 6–10)This language arose by breaking up words into syllables, and then gluing
them back together again into different ‘words’. In the context of the piece,
it has an ambiguous status as the language of the Runda—a clan from
which the woman who speaks the words is fleeing—or as a new language
to which the woman aspires.
Strategies for creating languages usually have psychological or political
purposes: otherwise constructing the language would simply be a game.
Making a new language may be a way of tapping into the unconscious, a
realm of thinking and feeling which is normally obscured. Or it may be
a way of showing deficiencies or limitations in the language: it can demon-
strate how the words we use are geared towards certain privileged social
groups and exclude others. In particular, it may be a way of formulating a
new feminist language.
Lexical experimentation does not have to use completely new words.
Poets sometimes write in dialect or introduce words from other languages.
In order to create your own language (Exercise 2e), try some of the
following strategies:
Postmodern poetry, avant-garde poetics 181