Institutt for kultur- og språkvitenskap
Universitetet i Stavanger

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Date: 21 September 2023
Room: HG N-106
Time: 15:15

Monika Kirner-Ludwig (University of Innsbruck)

Going medieval: How obsolete frames are linguistically evoked in Game of Thrones

Studies on linguistic features in the genre of pseudo-medieval fantasy film so far have mostly been restricted to the Tolkienian fantasy oeuvre, although it has to be acknowledged that Tolkien's strategical insertion of medieval components was intricately built upon his philological and historical linguistic expertise. In other words, Peter Jackson and his screenplay co-authors of Lord of the Rings, for instance, did not have to add many linguistic patterns of pseudo-medieval quality to make the telecinematic product appear more medieval, as Tolkien had already provided the best-possible template to begin with (cf. e.g. Traxel 2017; Tober 2017).

When it comes to the vast majority of medieval film and medieval fantasy film, screenplay writers as well as the authors of the textual originals do generally not possess much deep-reaching knowledge about the diachronic varieties of English. This is reflected in such pseudo-archaisms and pseudo-medieval features that are repetitively and often anachronistically and incorrectly inserted into e.g. video games and telecinematic discourse scenarios that are supposed to appear 'medieval' (cf. Harris 2004; Bryant 2010; Traxel 2008, 2012; Kirner-Ludwig 2018, 2020).

Considering that George R. R. Martin, author of the novel series A Song of Ice and Fire, has been called "[a]n American Tolkien" (cf. TIME) and has, by his own account, been influenced tremendously by J.R.R. Tolkien's epic fantasy novels, the present paper will zoom in on Martin's employment of (pseudo-)medieval linguistic features in his work and on how its TV adaption adjusted these for their viewers.

References
Bryant, Brantley L. 2010. Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog. Medieval Studies and New Media. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Harris, Roy. 2004. The Linguistics of History. Edinburgh: University Press.
Kirner-Ludwig, Monika. 2018. "Great pretenders: the phenomenon of impersonating (pseu-do-) historical personae in medieval blogs (or: blogging for someone else's fame?)". In The Discursive Construction of Identities On- and Offline: Personal, group and collective. Bös, Birte, Sonja Kleinke, Sandra Mollin and Nuria Hernández (eds.) [DAPSAC 78]. Amsterdam/New York: John Benjamins. 15-56.
Kirner-Ludwig, Monika. 2020. "Adapting scripture to transcript: A cognitive-pragmatic approach to cinematic strategies of evoking obsolete frames." In Telecinematic Stylistics. ed. by Christian Hoffmann and Monika Kirner-Ludwig. London: Bloomsbury.
Tober, Carolin. 2017. "How J.R.R. Tolkien used kennings to make The Lord of the Rings into a medieval epic for the 20th century." In Binding them all: Interdisciplinary perspectives on J.R.R. Tolkien and his works, ed. by Monika Kirner-Ludwig. Stephan Köser & Sebastian Streitberger. Zurich / Jena: Walking Tree. 253-278.
Traxel, Oliver M. 2008. "Medieval and Pseudo-Medieval Elements in Computer Role-Playing Games: Use and Interactivity". Studies in Medievalism 16: 125-42.
Traxel, Oliver M. 2012. "Pseudo-Archaic English: The Modern Perception and Interpretation of the Linguistic Past". Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 47(2-3): 41-58.
Traxel, Oliver M. 2017. "Exploring the linguistic past through the work(s) of J.R.R. Tolkien: Some points of orientation from English Language History." In Binding them all: Interdisciplinary perspectives on J.R.R. Tolkien and his works, ed. by Monika Kirner-Ludwig. Stephan Köser & Sebastian Streitberger. Zurich / Jena: Walking Tree. 279-304.

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