Résumé
The existence of literature is solely based on language. In this regard, language and literature share an interrelated and unbreakable bond that binds them together. It is often observed in the realm of literature that writers often recur to a linguistic distortion in an attempt to shed light on the importance of language in its capacity to frame identity. By doing so, they show as in Benjamin Lee Whorf’s terms, how “language shapes the way we think and determines what we can think about.” Relying on the linguistic relativism of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, this paper aims to examine the way some writers play with language to shape the identity of certain characters within their fictional narratives. Indeed, such linguistic distortion could be furtherly observed in George Orwell’s 1984 and Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. Both writers create a distinctive language that molds their characters’ identity. Orwell admonishes the power of linguistic manipulation as he creates a government who imposes the limited vocabulary of ‘Newspeak’ on its people in an attempt to install a subservient behavior, while Burgess, through the creation of ‘Nadsat’, decries the power of language in its ability, as a “brainwashing device” to fathom, justify or even adhere to the characters’ violent behavior.