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Chapter 13: Pure Language
Explanation and Analysis—Pure Language:
Chapter 13 of A Visit from the Goon Squad takes place in a strange yet near future, with communication between people transformed by the advent of new technology. Alex's conversations with Bennie (now his boss) and Lulu (Bennie's assistant) are filled with unfamiliar vocabulary and shorthand, exhibiting Egan's vision for the dialect of the future.
Much of this futuristic dialect—the "pure language"—expresses itself in new slang. A strange vocabulary fills Alex and Bennie's speech as if it were second nature:
"We released this a couple months ago," Bennie said. "You've heard of him, Scotty Hausmann?" He's doing well with the pointers." Alex glances over at Rebecca, who scorned the term "pointer" and would politely but firmly correct anyone who used it to describe Cara-Ann.
In this exchange, Bennie explains to Alex that Scotty Hausmann's most popular listeners are the "pointers," a term he needs not explain because, it seems, Alex is already familiar with its meaning in normal conversation. For the reader, however, there is a moment of confusion: this language remains unfamiliar, as it only has currency in the futuristic world Egan has created. The narrator later reveals that "pointer" is slang for children who are too young to speak and therefore communicate through pointing. In a similar example later in the chapter, Alex and Lulu offhandedly uses another unfamiliar slang term, "parrot," to describe people who are secretly paid to market events.
Furthermore, a simplified form of writing, influenced by texting, characterizes the written dialect of the future. For their work assignment, Alex and Lulu write each other through their handsets in this new English:
Little grl, U hav a nyc dad, Alex dutifully read aloud. [...] Lulu T'd: Nvr met my dad. Dyd b4 I ws brn.
This exchange indeed highlights the strangeness of the futuristic dialect of Chapter 13. The reader struggles to understand the italicized text sent by Lulu, which features abbreviations, unconventional grammar, and uneven punctuation.
Dialect in this chapter serves the important purpose of further developing the theme of disconnection throughout A Visit from the Goon Squad. Dialect reproduces a form of disconnection seen across the novel between what is meant and what is said. For one, readers of the novel become disconnected from the characters who speak an, at times, unintelligible language. Even characters within the novel talk past each other: later in the exchange between Alex and Lulu, Alex misunderstands nyc to mean this earlier "nice" and not "New York City." Therefore, the emergence of a new dialect in Chapter 13 touches on the many forms of disconnection—both among characters and between the readers and the characters—caused by technological innovation.
Related Themes:
