A Social Perspective of CONSTRUCTED Languages BY CLARK FENNIMORE Throughout human history, many languages have developed with unique cultures attached to them. This connection is described by Anderson as part of an “imagined community.” There are, however, currently several constructed languages with origins outside of that natural process of formation. Like the languages that have formed naturally, some constructed languages have developed cultural characteristics among users as an interesting phenomenon among modern languages. In short, constructed languages have developed a distinct form of imagined community. First of all, more detail is needed concerning Anderson’s concept of the “imagined community.” The connection between language and culture is important because it brings people out of the mere awareness of the local environment and into a larger awareness of society. It allows people to recognize their place in a people group, whether that be a nation or a group of some other kind. It allows the formation of governments and other kinds of shared society. The sharing of language is then a large part of how we share culture because we can then communicate the many things we have in common with others. The imagined community is about people connecting through language and finding many things in common (Anderson). Next, more detail is needed as to what a constructed language is. Other terms for the concept include planned or artificial language. It has already been contrasted with most languages, of which the features resulted from gradual changes in older languages. Instead, a constructed language has features resulting from a person or small group essentially sitting down and putting together a set of features to form a new language. Several types of reasons have inspired people to construct new languages. Two of these reasons are of primary importance here. The first is provision of a neutral language in which people of different linguistic backgrounds can speak to each other—an alternative to the necessity of one of them knowing the other’s language. The second is provision of a language as part of the credibility of settings in stories of speculative fiction— an alternative to fitting real languages into imaginary settings. Though these are the two reasons to be discussed in detail here, there are others, such as testing of linguistic hypotheses (Constructed Languages). There are too many constructed languages for an exhaustive discussion here. The discussion is to be limited to major examples. Those examples will be shown to have an impact in the modern world. That impact relates to the concept of “imagined community.” The term constructed language is often abbreviated conlang. The process of forming such a language is called conlanging. A person engaged in this process is a conlanger. There is a special organization for such people, called the Language Creation Society—or LCS for short. Activities include meetings and publications for those interested in the conlang world (Language Creation Society). The first type of constructed language mentioned above is the type constructed as a neutral language (Constructed Languages). A specific term for this type of language is an International Auxiliary Language—or IAL for short (Chandler, “International Auxiliary Languages”). This type of constructed language manifested itself in Volapuk, which became a part of public consciousness before any other constructed language. The concept of constructed languages existed centuries before Volapuk, but it was not until this one’s 1880 publication—from author J.M. Schleyer—that a significant number of people wanted to learn an IAL. However, its popularity quickly waned as people found it to be far short of practical. An important point is that its vocabulary was based on similar terms throughout the languages of Europe (Chandler, “History”).
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