Caroline Bailey

The problem of “alien” language—what it sounds like, who translates it, and who speaks it—transcends both retrospective and futuristic imaginations. I study the presence of linguistic Othering in fiction, focusing on both historical and science fictional texts. My work looks at the influence of linguistic anthropology on the novel, deciphering how authors understand the discipline and apply its findings to a fictional context. I touch on topics including historical translation, language loss, controversial claims such as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, and the current market for multilingual and indigenous-language books.

I focus my research on the Americas, two continents that were once considered a frontier, a space of linguistic encounter as well as violent colonization. I study how contemporary literature of the Americas reckons with this identity by looking into both past and future. In doing so, my work covers indigenous studies, queer theory, and structuralism in both linguistics and literary studies. My dissertation will explore how contemporary historical and science fiction depicts language contact, multilingual characters, and the future of human speech.