- Native Tongue (Suzette Haden Elgin novel)
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Native Tongue Author(s) Suzette Haden Elgin Cover artist Jill Bauman Country United States Language English Series Native Tongue Genre(s) Science fiction novel Publisher DAW Books Publication date 1984 Media type Print (Hardcover & Paperback) Pages 320 pp ISBN 0-87997-945-3 OCLC Number 44270270 Dewey Decimal 813/.54 21 LC Classification PS3555.L42 N38 2000 Followed by The Judas Rose Native Tongue is the first novel in Suzette Haden Elgin's feminist science fiction series of the same name. The trilogy is centered in a future dystopian American society where the 19th Amendment was repealed in 1996 and women have been stripped of civil rights. A group of women, part of a worldwide group of linguists who facilitate human communication with alien races, create a new language for women as an act of resistance. Elgin created the language, Láadan, and instructional materials are available.
Contents
Contents
Summary
"Native Tongue" follows Nazareth, a talented female linguist in the 22nd century - after the repeal of the 19th Amendment. Nazareth is part of a small group on linguists "bred" to become perfect intergalactic translators.[1]
Nazareth looks forward to retiring to the Barren House - where women past childbearing age essentially go as they wait to die - but learns that the women of the Barren Houses are creating a language to help them break free of male dominance.
Author's comments
Elgin has said about the book:
- Native Tongue was a thought experiment, with a time limit of ten years. My hypothesis was that if I constructed a language designed specifically to provide a more adequate mechanism for expressing women's perceptions, women would (a) embrace it and begin using it, or (b) embrace the idea but not the language, say "Elgin, you've got it all wrong!" and construct some other "women's language" to replace it. The ten years went by, and neither of those things happened; Láadan got very little attention, even though SF3 actually published its grammar and dictionary and I published a cassette tape to go with it. Not once did any feminist magazine (or women's magazine) ask me about the language or write a story about it.
- The Klingon language, which is as "masculine" as you could possibly get, has had a tremendous impact on popular culture -- there's an institute, there's a journal, there were bestselling grammars and cassettes, et cetera, et cetera; nothing like that happened with Láadan. My hypothesis therefore was proved invalid, and the conclusion I draw from that is that in fact women (by which I mean women who are literate in English, French, German, and Spanish, the languages in which Native Tongue appeared) do not find human languages inadequate for communication.[2]
Of course, there are other equally valid ways of interpreting the results of Elgin's experiment: that women find their natural languages entirely adequate for self-expression; or so forth. Klingon is also tied into the Star Trek universe, which has a larger fan base than Elgin's novel.
Publication history
- August 1984, United States, DAW Books, ISBN 0-87997-945-3 (paperback)
- July 1985, Great Britain, The Women's Press, ISBN 0-7043-3971-4 (paperback)
- February 1987, United States, DAW Books, ISBN 0-88677-121-8 (paperback)
- March 1990, United States, DAW Books, ISBN 0-88677-459-4 (paperback)
- October 2000, United States, The Feminist Press at the City University of New York (CUNY), ISBN 1-55861-255-6, (Hardcover)
- November 2000, United States, The Feminist Press at CUNY, ISBN 1-55861-246-7, (Trade paperback)
- September 2003, Australia, Spinifex Press, ISBN 1-876756-05-5 (paperback)
Quotations from the book
- ...Showard began a steady dull cursing, bringing Job's beard into it as well as the private parts of the Twelve Apostles and a variety of forbidden practices and principles. —DAW 1984 edition, page 46.
- ...religion offers one of the most reliable methods for the proper management of women ever devised; religion offers a superb cure for the woman who might otherwise tend to be rebellious and uncontrolled. —DAW 1984 edition, page 130.
- Women had always had to be up and down all night long; if there weren't sick children, there were sick animals or sick people of advanced age. If there were none of those, there would be children with a bad dream, or a storm that meant someone had to get up and close windows—there was always something. A nurse only extended her ordinary female life when she learned to be instantly awake at a call, on her feet and functioning for as long as she was needed, and instantly asleep as soon as she could lie down again. It had never kept nurses, or women of any kind, from listening respectfully as the physicians whined about how their vast incomes were justified by the fact that they were awakened during the night to see patients. They would have said, "It's not the same thing at all!" As of course it was not. Women had to get up much oftener, stay up longer, and were neither paid nor admired for doing it. Certainly it wasn't the same thing. —DAW 1984 edition, page 210-211.
See also
- Nü Shu, the Chinese system of women's writing
- The Handmaid's Tale, a dystopic speculative fiction novel by Margaret Atwood
References
- Notes
- ^ "Native Tongue at The Feminist Press". http://www.feministpress.org/books/suzette-haden-elgin/native-tongue. Retrieved 30 September 2011.
- ^ Glatzer, Jenna (2007). "Interview With Suzette Haden Elgin". Archived from the original on 2007-06-12. http://web.archive.org/web/20070612005757/http://www.absolutewrite.com/novels/suzette_haden_elgin.htm. Retrieved 20 March 2007.
External links
- Native Tongue trilogy homepage
- Láadan language
- Native Tongue publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- "We have always spoken Panglish" (Panglish appears in Native Tongue)
Categories:- Feminist science fiction novels
- American science fiction novels
- 1980s science fiction novels
- 1984 novels
- Dystopian novels
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