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“Language, Language”: The Social Politics of ‘Goloss’ in Time for a Tiger and A Clockwork Orange

Julian Preece Orcid Logo

Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture, Pages: 117 - 129

Swansea University Author: Julian Preece Orcid Logo

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DOI (Published version): 10.1007/978-3-031-05599-7_6

Abstract

Anthony Burgess’s Alex is as linguistically astute as any first-person narrator in the international history of the picaresque genre, to which A Clockwork Orange emphatically belongs. Alex alters his voice or ‘goloss’ according to the effect he wishes to have on his interlocutor, insists on language...

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Published in: Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture
ISBN: 9783031055980 9783031055997
ISSN: 2634-629X 2634-6303
Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 2023
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URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa62484
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spelling v2 62484 2023-02-02 “Language, Language”: The Social Politics of ‘Goloss’ in Time for a Tiger and A Clockwork Orange 6cf10f340b4335c30856d022675b34b2 0000-0002-8887-740X Julian Preece Julian Preece true false 2023-02-02 AMOD Anthony Burgess’s Alex is as linguistically astute as any first-person narrator in the international history of the picaresque genre, to which A Clockwork Orange emphatically belongs. Alex alters his voice or ‘goloss’ according to the effect he wishes to have on his interlocutor, insists on language supremacy over his ‘droogs’, and judges everyone he meets by how they speak. Alex’s acts of deception depend on his ability to imitate others’ language usage but he gets arrested when his preferred ‘Nadsat’ is recognised by one of his victims. It is not only Alex’s individual speech acts, however, which confront and mock a world controlled by adults, authority, religion, and science, his whole narrative is a non-confession, like classic picaresque novels from Lazarillo de Tormes to Simplicissimus, mixing high and low registers and challenging a range of readers’ preconceptions, above all those of bien-pensant liberals, who are the target of Burgess’s satire. Stanley Kubrick’s film gives Alex a Lancashire accent and, again through voice, intonation and speech patterns, emphasises the story’s class-based British setting, thus in some instances undermining the novel’s reactionary agenda. This chapter relates the language politics of A Clockwork Orange to Burgess’s other early fiction, most notably The Malayan Trilogy, and to his interest in linguistics more broadly to argue that his knowledge of other languages and understanding of how their interaction with one another is determined by power relations also influenced his representation of English in his fiction. Book chapter Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture 117 129 Springer International Publishing Cham 9783031055980 9783031055997 2634-629X 2634-6303 Adaptation; Language; Nadsat; Linguistics; Malaya; Malayan Trilogy; Picaresque; ‘Goloss’ 1 1 2023 2023-01-01 10.1007/978-3-031-05599-7_6 COLLEGE NANME Modern Languages COLLEGE CODE AMOD Swansea University This output is attached to the AHRC-funded Open World Research Initiative, which ran from 2018-19. 2024-02-23T14:56:04.2050046 2023-02-02T14:33:53.2511116 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences School of Culture and Communication - Modern Languages, Translation, and Interpreting Julian Preece 0000-0002-8887-740X 1
title “Language, Language”: The Social Politics of ‘Goloss’ in Time for a Tiger and A Clockwork Orange
spellingShingle “Language, Language”: The Social Politics of ‘Goloss’ in Time for a Tiger and A Clockwork Orange
Julian Preece
title_short “Language, Language”: The Social Politics of ‘Goloss’ in Time for a Tiger and A Clockwork Orange
title_full “Language, Language”: The Social Politics of ‘Goloss’ in Time for a Tiger and A Clockwork Orange
title_fullStr “Language, Language”: The Social Politics of ‘Goloss’ in Time for a Tiger and A Clockwork Orange
title_full_unstemmed “Language, Language”: The Social Politics of ‘Goloss’ in Time for a Tiger and A Clockwork Orange
title_sort “Language, Language”: The Social Politics of ‘Goloss’ in Time for a Tiger and A Clockwork Orange
author_id_str_mv 6cf10f340b4335c30856d022675b34b2
author_id_fullname_str_mv 6cf10f340b4335c30856d022675b34b2_***_Julian Preece
author Julian Preece
author2 Julian Preece
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container_title Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture
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institution Swansea University
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doi_str_mv 10.1007/978-3-031-05599-7_6
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description Anthony Burgess’s Alex is as linguistically astute as any first-person narrator in the international history of the picaresque genre, to which A Clockwork Orange emphatically belongs. Alex alters his voice or ‘goloss’ according to the effect he wishes to have on his interlocutor, insists on language supremacy over his ‘droogs’, and judges everyone he meets by how they speak. Alex’s acts of deception depend on his ability to imitate others’ language usage but he gets arrested when his preferred ‘Nadsat’ is recognised by one of his victims. It is not only Alex’s individual speech acts, however, which confront and mock a world controlled by adults, authority, religion, and science, his whole narrative is a non-confession, like classic picaresque novels from Lazarillo de Tormes to Simplicissimus, mixing high and low registers and challenging a range of readers’ preconceptions, above all those of bien-pensant liberals, who are the target of Burgess’s satire. Stanley Kubrick’s film gives Alex a Lancashire accent and, again through voice, intonation and speech patterns, emphasises the story’s class-based British setting, thus in some instances undermining the novel’s reactionary agenda. This chapter relates the language politics of A Clockwork Orange to Burgess’s other early fiction, most notably The Malayan Trilogy, and to his interest in linguistics more broadly to argue that his knowledge of other languages and understanding of how their interaction with one another is determined by power relations also influenced his representation of English in his fiction.
published_date 2023-01-01T14:56:00Z
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