TexMoot 2023 Registration
Signum University’s sixth Annual Texas Language and Literature Symposium (TexMoot) invites you to join us as we consider what J.R.R. Tolkien called "the secret vice", the invention of languages, specifically as it pertains to speculative fiction.
From Tolkien's own Elvish, to Star Trek's Klingon, to George R. R. Martin's Dothraki, invented languages have played a crucial role in immersing the audience in their respective invented worlds. Indeed, these invented worlds can hardly be imagined without the invented languages on which they depend. The power of this connection also raises important considerations about our own language and reality.
At TexMoot 2023, you will explore questions like: What purposes do invented languages serve? What makes for an effective and compelling ConLang (constructed language)? How do these invented languages help create the invented worlds in which they're spoken--and vice versa? How do these invented languages inspire the state of what Tolkien calls the "unwilling suspension of disbelief"? And what can invented languages teach us about language in the "real" world--and our relationship to it?