Abstract
The goal of this paper is to offer an analysis of cyberpunk, steampunk, and other genre names related via the punk element. We study the emergence and popularity of these names among science fiction fans and scholars, comparing them with “mainstream” appreciators. We carry out a corpus study that analyses data extracted from textual corpora in four languages (English, German, French, and Italian) and encyclopedias (fandom communities, e.g., Aesthetics Wiki). We show that the proliferation of punk genre names tends to be closely related to science fiction and other (fan-)fiction communities, who display an emotive and intellectual investment in punk subgenres. We propose an analysis via a frame-theoretical model that shows how cyberpunk and related genre names can describe the core narrative themes of each subgenre. We then propose that punk genre names form sets of near-synonym words via their ability to describe fictional narratives featuring anti-authoritarian protagonists across different world settings and technologies. We conclude by discussing the consequences of our account for possible theories of genres, genre names, and linguistic studies focusing on science fiction and other fictional genres.
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Supplementary Material
This article contains supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2022-0161).
© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Introduction to the special issue on “The language of science fiction”
- The impact of Star Wars on the English language: Star Wars-derived words and constructions in present-day English corpora
- “To boldly go where no man has gone before”: how iconic is the Star Trek split infinitive?
- From Star Trek to The Hunger Games: emblem gestures in science fiction and their uptake in popular culture
- The language of men and women in Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: Discovery
- “So, I trucked out to the border, learned to say ain’t, came to find work”: the sociolinguistics of Firefly
- Subverting motion in science fiction? Beam in the Star Trek TV series
- Perceiving with strangeness: quantifying a style of altered consciousness as estrangement in a corpus of 1960s American science fiction
- “There was much new to grok”: an analysis of word coinage in science fiction literature
- Cyberpunk, steampunk, and all that punk: genre names and their uses across communities
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Introduction to the special issue on “The language of science fiction”
- The impact of Star Wars on the English language: Star Wars-derived words and constructions in present-day English corpora
- “To boldly go where no man has gone before”: how iconic is the Star Trek split infinitive?
- From Star Trek to The Hunger Games: emblem gestures in science fiction and their uptake in popular culture
- The language of men and women in Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: Discovery
- “So, I trucked out to the border, learned to say ain’t, came to find work”: the sociolinguistics of Firefly
- Subverting motion in science fiction? Beam in the Star Trek TV series
- Perceiving with strangeness: quantifying a style of altered consciousness as estrangement in a corpus of 1960s American science fiction
- “There was much new to grok”: an analysis of word coinage in science fiction literature
- Cyberpunk, steampunk, and all that punk: genre names and their uses across communities