The Tempus Imperium -- The Spectrum of Estrangement: A Model that Explores the Effect of Neosemes and Neologisms on the Implied Reader

Abstract

This thesis comprises an upper Young Adult novel, The Tempus Imperium, and an exegesis exploring the estranging effect of neology in speculative fiction. The novel, which is targeted at readers aged 15-18, follows seventeen-year-old Charlotte “Charlie” Lamp as her life is upended when a mysterious creature murders her grandmother. Charlie soon learns that her grandmother belonged to a secret agency of time travellers tasked with preventing an impending apocalypse, and she must choose whether to follow in her grandmother’s footsteps or forge her own path. The accompanying exegesis investigates the prevalence of neology in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life,” and William Gibson’s Neuromancer and The Peripheral. Utilising my own model, which I have labelled a “Spectrum of Estrangement,” this exploration focuses on the effect of such neology on the implied reader and how this relates to their likely experience of estrangement and/or immersion when reading speculative fiction texts. My methodology involves assembling a list of the unique neology in each text and graphing them to show their position on this spectrum. The theoretical basis for my research is drawn from Darko Suvin’s and Istvan Csicsery-Ronay’s work on science fiction, the field of cognitive poetics and key theorists Jeremy Scott and Peter Stockwell, and finally Wolfgang Iser and Stanley Fish’s reader-response criticism. Chapter One presents a close reading of Never Let Me Go and “Story of Your Life,” in which I look at the familiar settings of these two texts and the restricted range of neology used to portray them. Chapter Two explores the unfamiliar dystopias of William Gibson’s Neuromancer and The Peripheral and the more extensive variety of neology used to depict them. The final chapter of the exegesis discusses the function of neology in my creative work, and how I utilised insights gained from my close readings of these texts.