Lexicon by Max Barry

Posted August 12, 2013 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Thriller / 0 Comments

Title: Lexicon (Goodreads)
Author: Max Barry
Narrator: Heather Corrigan, Zach Appelman
Published: Hachette, 2013
Pages: 384
My Copy: Personal Copy

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

They are an ancient secret society known only as the Poets; words are their weapons and the art of manipulation is their game. When one young woman breaks the rules for love, things start to unravel. Street-wise runaway Emily Ruff finds herself as a new recruit, training in a facility disguised as an exclusive school outside of Arlington, Virginia. She learns to use language to manipulate minds. While an innocent man is ambushed in an airport bathroom; they claim he is the key to winning a secret war that rages on. Lexicon is a fast paced thriller that explores the power of language and coercion.

I’ve been meaning to read a Max Barry novel for a while now; they all seem to be corporate or in the case of Jennifer Government marketing satires but never got around to trying them. Then Lexicon was released and it seems to tick a few of my boxes to make me sit up and take notice of it. While this has been getting a bit of buzz in America (well done fellow Australian, Max Barry) I just knew I had to read this one. I wasn’t trying to jump on the bandwagon it just seemed like my type of book and I had an opportunity to read it, so I took it.

While this is obviously a fast paced thriller (as I think most of Barry’s books) I can see where the idea a satire comes into play with his works. In Lexicon we look at modern ideas on privacy, identity and information and using an old idea that language is power we can see how Max Barry is toying with the idea that all those things we hold sacred can be manipulated and lost. This is where the corporate satire comes into play; even in Lexicon, privacy, identity and data-collection are all important and need to be protected and Barry plays with the readers fears to suck them into his thrilling world.

Not only is this a thrilling and addictive read, I really enjoy the way the two different stories are weaved together. You get the story of Emily as she discovers this secret society and learns to coerce through the power of language and then you get the other plot thread and discover what happened in Broken Hill. I love the way this was done and it’s nothing new but it worked really well for a book like this one.

The problem with reviewing a book like Lexicon is there are so many things I want to say about the book but I think anything I do say will possibly be a spoiler. Max Barry really knows how to mix satire into a thriller and produce an altogether addictive read. I hate to do this normally but in an effort to give people an idea what this novel is like; Rebecca Schinsky (from Bookriot) says this about the Lexicon;

“Imagine X-Men plus The Magicians with a side of Nick Harkaway”

Which is a good way to describe the book; the X-Men idea really works as a way to describe the training facility disguised as an exclusive school that Emily is training at. I’ve not read The Magicians but it’s been on my TBR for a while but I tend to avoid fantasy that but I love the Nick Harkaway shout out. Angelmaker was my favourite book of 2012, it is also an addictive thriller with some literary merit and I think this is definitely the case with Lexicon. I know this seems like a glowing review, I did really enjoy it and highly recommend it but it does have flaws but honestly I didn’t care, I was immersed and wanted to know what happens next.

Homonyms

Posted February 7, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Linguistics / 2 Comments

Slightly off topic, but with the upcoming university studies, I may start talking about the beauty and complexity of the English language. I know most people know the basics but I’m writing this out of interest and as a refresher. We all have an idea what a homonym is, but do you know the difference between a homographs, homophones, heteronyms, polysemes and capitonyms? Well, there are only slight differences but I will try to explain them all now.

To begin with I just want to remind people what a Homonym is; a word that is spelt and pronounced the same but has different meanings. The word comes from the Greek word homonumos which means ‘having the same name’.

But that is the literal meaning; Homonym seems to also be an umbrella definition that includes other linguistic concepts that are related. Below are examples of them;

Homographs: these are normally words that are spelt the same regardless of their pronunciation.

Homophones: refer to words that share the same pronunciation regardless of their spelling.

Heteronyms: are subsets of homonyms; they are spelt the same but have a different pronunciation and often meaning (normally referred to as Heteronyms and Heterographs).

Polysemes: have different but related meaning; for example man (male) or man (the human species) or man (an adult male).

Capitonyms: are words have a different meaning when it capitalised; for example march (the rhythmical walk) and March (the third month of the year).

To make things easier here is a chart to help see the differences;

Term	Meaning	Spelling	Pronunciation
Homonym	Different	Same	Same
Homograph	Different	Same	Same or different
Homophone	Different	Same or different	Same
Heteronym	Different	Same	Different
Heterograph	Different	Different	Same
Polyseme	Different but related	Same	Same or different
Capitonym	Different when capitalized	Same except for capitalization	Same or different

While I knew the concepts of homonyms, I never realised there was so many different concepts that are related to it. Linguistics is normally divided into three different aspects of study; form, context and meaning. Even though homonyms are a very tiny fraction of the study of linguistics, I find it interesting that it seems to hit on all three parts of the science. I hope people have learned something new or at least found something interesting to think about.

Tag: language