by Juliette Wade
I love to use non-English languages in a story. To me, a foreign language behaves like a form of music – it creates mood and atmosphere for the readers who don’t understand it, and it further creates a layer of meaning for those readers who do understand it.
by Juliette Wade
I love to use non-English languages in a story. To me, a foreign language behaves like a form of music–it creates mood and atmosphere for the readers who don’t understand it, and it further creates a layer of meaning for those readers who do understand it.
Member News for Andrew Burt, Trent Hergenrader, Lauren Beukes, Juliette Wade, Felix Gilman, N.K. Jemisin, Nnedi Okorafor, Genevieve Valentine, Yasmine Galenorn, Kevin Evans, Karen Evans and Catherynne Valente.
Resources, Industry News, and Member News for Tony Pi, Mary Robinette Kowal, Cat Rambo, Jess Wynne, Juliette Wade, and Lynn Flewelling!
Resources, Industry News, and Member News for Paolo Bacigalupi, Leanna Renee Hieber, Ted Kosmatka, Shiloh Walker, Victoria Strauss, Monica Valentinell, John Scalzi, Juliette Wade, Ekaterina Sedia, Lori Devoti, David Levine, Jay Lake, Lisa Mantchev, Saladin Ahmed, Andrew Burt, and Leah Cypess!
As you put your world together, ask yourself how your people divide themselves up. Is it by town? By side of town (other side of the tracks, etc.)? Is it by larger geographical region? Is it by profession? By upper and lower class?
So what is Pragmatics? Basically, it deals with those areas of meaning which aren’t really meaning. What does that mean? It deals with implications (in the lingo, “implicature”), and with presuppositions, and with using language to do things rather than just send messages.
As part of her continuing series on How Linguistics Can Help You, Juliette Wad discusses that ubiquitous genre activity making up words.
Neural networks are really amazing things. In my last post I talked about how a word brings up all of its meanings simultaneously; today I’m going to talk about how that’s not all it brings up.
I’m talking about connotations and allusion.
Choosing the right word is critical to getting our meaning across as writers. Here are a few initial things to think about:
1. Does this word have the meaning I’m looking for?
2. Does it supply that meaning unambiguously?
3. Does it have the proper positive, negative, mysterious, or other desired connotations?
4. Does it reflect on the attitude or identity of the point of view character?
A millennium ago, Mikael tried to confess his love to Adecca and trapped them in eternal sleep instead. Now Adecca wakes in a steam-powered future bereft of magic and must discover why—and what Mikael’s feelings mean for their friendship.
Douglas Phillips is the author of the Quantum Series, science fiction thrillers set in the fascinating world of particle physics where bizarre is an everyday thing.
