Walls of the Tongue: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed

“Good” science fiction, if one may be allowed to propose such a definition, is that which transports its readers out of the banal and ordinary, into the world of the what if? and the alien. Writers of good science fiction naturally differ in their implementation of this, but some have opted to employ the more sophisticated tools of linguistics, constructing exotic alien languages or fragments thereof. Le Guin, however, has taken this a step further in The Dispossessed, adding to her repertoire of tools not only linguistics, but sociolinguistics. The field of sociolinguistics concerns itself with “the study of language and linguistic behavior as influenced by social and cultural factors” (American Heritage Dictionary). Modern sociolinguists hold to the idea that a true understanding of language usage cannot be achieved when abstracted from its social context. Unearthing the influences of society on language use is thus the driving force for all areas within sociolinguistics, which include variation, language & power, gender issues, language contact, and language acquisition.