Language and Linguistics - Shaw

[Chad Douglas Nilep]

>Would Tolkien's literary use of his invented languages apply here?
>
>Ron

Tolkien's fiction was affected by his knowledge of philology. In addition to creating artificial languages, he often made playful allusions to Old English or other European languages in, for example, personal names. I also vaguely remember a scene in The Hobbit in which Gandalf argues, in sort of a parody of Socratic teaching, about the meaning of the greeting "Good Day." And the full title of his short story "Farmer Giles of Ham" is "Aegidii Ahenobarbi Julii Agricole de Hammo Domini de Domito Aule Draconarie Comitis Regni Minimi Regis et Basilei mira facinora et mirabilis erortus". Clearly Tolkien enjoyed linguistic jokes, if nothing else.

I'm not quite sure, though, if he qualifies as one of "the great (or even not-so-great) literary giants of English" according to Lawless's definition.

I can't say whether it is more generally "of any benefit to a writer to be able  to articulate the structure and history of the language". I would, however, point to the tradition of literary criticism informed by linguistic theory. Structuralist poetics is perhaps the best known.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism#Structuralism_in_literary_theory_and_literary_criticism

Chad D. Nilep
Linguistics
University of Colorado at Boulder
http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~nilep