Estranged Futures and Language Lost : Newspeak and Language Control in Swedish Dystopian Fiction 1958–1979

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