Abstract
In this essay, I explore how “Nadsat” is used in Anthony Burgess’s 1962 novella A Clockwork Orange. “Nadsat” is a constructed language that suffuses English vernacular with words and phrases of Russian origin, and it can often prove a significant obstacle to reader comprehension of the overall narrative. However, apart from merely acting as a whim of experimentalism, I argue that Nadsat serves a functional purpose in the text, drawing on research from a variety of fields including literary studies, psychology, philosophy, and linguistics. I begin by showing how Nadsat excludes those who do not “speak” it or (in the case of stymied readers) attempt to learn it, drawing on M.A.K. Halliday’s study of the “anti-language” in “anti-society.” Just as anti-societies are in conflict with dominant society, anti-languages are in conflict with dominant language and repel it while simultaneously strengthening their own position through a variety of means, such as relexicalization and overlexicalization. Nadsat is an anti-language that functions in this way, and the tension between Alex and the adults he encounters in the novella sheds light on the discrimination that dialects in the real world experience from society’s “dominant” languages. Nadsat also obfuscates violence in the book by veiling it in obscure language that diminishes shock factor, and here I explore how euphemism can be used in unethical ways, drawing from real world examples like the Jerry Sandusky-Penn State child sex abuse scandal and the Nuremberg Trials. These examples show how language can be used to make actions appear murky, thus shielding both the speaker/narrator and listener/reader, as is the case with Alex in A Clockwork Orange. Finally, I look at how A Clockwork Orange, a book that is “about” brainwashing, “brainwashes” the reader. This “brainwashing” is twofold: first, Burgess makes the reader learn “minimal Russian” by reading the text and coming to understand (in a way) Nadsat. This leads into the second way ACO “brainwashes” the reader, which is by making readers see the world through Alex’s eyes and sympathize with him. Once readers see a world of “vecks” and “devotchkas,” of “millicents” and “ultra-violence,” they begin to see him not as a juvenile delinquent but as one of their “droogs” (friends), which ultimately makes them complicit in his crimes.
Recommended Citation
Hugo, Ian
(2025)
An “Other” Tongue: Nadsat as Anti-language in A Clockwork Orange.
The Graduate Review, 10.
Available at: https://vc.bridgew.edu/grad_rev/vol10/iss1/10
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