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Lancelot Hogben’s hybrid tongues

From interglossa to global English

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Lancelot Hogben (1895–1975), a peripatetic and prolific mathematical geneticist and science populariser, occupies a special niche in the history of scientific communication and translation. Not only was he a trenchant observer of the increasing dominance of Global English in scientific publications, he also leveraged his command of the cosmopolitan scientific lexicon to offer an alternative: a constructed language he called ‘Interglossa’. His extensive attention to linguistic evolution and linguistic futures peaked during World War II, particularly as a result of his forced circumnavigation of the globe during the ‘Phoney War’ of 1940. Both political and linguistic disillusionments following the war pushed him inexorably to a grudging reconciliation with some form of English as the basis for scientific (and other) communication.
Keywords: Lancelot Hogben, Interglossa, constructed languages, Global English, Glosa
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Lancelot’s perpetual quests
  • 3.Fighting and fleeing fascism
  • 4.The rise and fall of Interglossa
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 28 January 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/target.00022.gor
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