Jung-In Kim

TOK

Alice in Wonderland and its language

Alice in Wonderland is a novel from Lewis Carroll, and Disney made an animation based on this novel. Alice in Wonderland is about a girl called Alice having an adventure in a, so called, Wonderland which is a world in her dream. There she meets many strange creatures, flowers etc. They all tell Alice a little story. The spoken language is English but what they speak is actually a different language. How can be a language different to the same language?

In the world of Alice, everything what the creatures in that ‘country’ says is solidly logical. What they say is what it is, there are no metaphors or any kind of word-game like in our world. In the movie the Kind tells the Hatter “take off your hat”, and the Hatter answers with a Wonderland language “It is not mine”.

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The logic we have in our mind is turned upside down in the Wonderland (and that is probably why the furnitures are up sided down in the entrance of the Wonderland).

English is spoken in the Wonderland but still a different language is spoken.

In the Wonderland, there are many strange creatures, like singing flowers, Water pipe smoking Caterpillar, a cat which can disappear etc. Those actions are possible because it can be described in words. Everything must be logical in that country , so everything which are able to describe can happen in that world.

In this world ...

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