Språklig förlust i främmande framtid : Nyspråk och språkkontroll i svenska dystopier 1958–1979

Sammanfattning: Dystopian fiction seeks to make conscious the faults of contemporary society through estrangement. Newspeak plays an important role in this estrangement, being a euphemistic and propagandistic language meant to distort the characters' perception of the fictional world. This type of language, however, has two different functions: one fictional and one didactical, where the latter seeks to emphasize the negative aspects of the fictional world to the reader. In this thesis I analyze the use of newspeak and language control as a means for social criticism in five Swedish dystopian novels published from the late 1950s through to the late 1970s. The novels analyzed are: Strålen (1958) by Ann Margret Dahlquist-Ljungberg, De sista (1962) by Arvid Rundberg, Elektra. Kvinna år 2070 (1967) by Ivar Lo-Johansson, Klotjorden (1970) by Kerstin Strandberg, and Järnblommorna (1979) by Jenny Berthelius. Apart from newspeak and language control I also examine the use of obsolete language and literary onomastics. Additionally, the thesis contains a smaller bibliography of Swedish utopian and dystopian novels published from 1950 to 1979. Language plays a central role in the novels analyzed: they contain different forms of newspeak and whilst these languages only figurate sporadically, their function is clearly didactic and meant for social criticism. Language control on the other hand, is a common theme that is often used to accentuate a totalitarian threat towards society. Most of the novels, however, primarily deal with obsolete language. It is the lost and forgotten that produces anxiety. This type of language emphasizes a loss of normative values that makes the reader question the fictional society as well as their own.