ABSTRACT
My first serious encounter with science fiction was through an interest in the political implicatio~ls of language and its structures for women. Language is of paranlount importance with rcgard to how we structure reality (providing a cognitive framework for compartmentalising objects and sensations into linguistic units of meaning). Indccd it has been argued that: 'rcality construction is probably to be regarded as the primary function of human language',' a claim which emphasises the need for women to challenge the patriarchal bases of language if we are also to challenge the patriarchal bases of society. However, trapped as we are within a patriarchal linguistic and social framework, it is very difficult for any writer to distance hcrsclf from that framework and write through and about alternative structures whilst still aiming to depict reality as it is lived and cxperienccd. As this cssay sets out to demonstrate, it is not enough merely to challenge surface manifestations (with revisions of words such as 'chairman', 'mastery', 'authoress' and so on, important though such revisions are), but we ~niist also analyse and subvert the deep structural principles of language. Because of its ability to provide the writcr with this much-needed distancing from lived reality, science fiction is an obvious choice for the writer intent on such exploration. The two novels upon which this essay focuses (Doris Lessing's T h e h.larvia<qes Bettveen Z o t ~ e s Tlzrec, Four and F ive , and Suzette Elgin's N a t i v r T o n g t ~ c ) succeed in illustrating two important issues: first, that the power structures upon which societies
dcpend are structured by and through the structures of language; and, second, that by providing a fictional context for what has otherwise been largely theoretical abstraction, contemporary science fiction by women has made a by no means insignificant contribution to the current theoretical debate on women's relationship to language - and thus power.
