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Alexander and his friends, he uses the second-person pronoun “thou” rather than the more
common “you.” The use of “thou” might suggest Shakespeare and the Elizabethan era to today’s
readers (as in Juliet’s famous “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?”), but Alex’s word
choice here has a function beyond mere artistic, “high literary” value. In his essay “Shakespeare
and the English Language,” Randolph Quirk writes about the use of “thou” versus “you”:
[I]t is often said that in 1600 you was polite, formal usage but thou was familiar or
insulting. This is a gross oversimplification [...] The modern linguistic concept of contrast
operating through marked and unmarked members can give us a truer picture. You is
usually the stylistically unmarked form: it is not so much ‘polite’ as ‘not impolite’; it is
not so much ‘formal’ as ‘not informal’. It is for this reason that thou can operate in such a
wide variety of contrasts with it. (qtd. in Muir 70)
“Marked” and “unmarked” are terms coined by the Prague linguistics school in the 1930s, with
“unmarked” referring to a form’s common usage and “marked” referring to an uncommon usage.
In this way, when “thou,” as the marked form, is used, it “stands out” and draws attention to the
context in which it is used. Quirk uses the following line from Twelfth Night to illustrate his
point, in which Sir Toby advises Sir Andrew to insult his rival by addressing him as “thou”:
“Taunt him with the license of ink. If thou ‘thou’-est him some thrice, it shall not be amiss,”
(3.2.43-5). Quirk writes:
But we need to notice that in this instance the device draws attention to the fact that while
Andrew and Fabian are using the unmarked you to each other and to Sir Toby, Sir Toby
is using thou to Sir Andrew with more than a suggestion of the contempt he is advising
Sir Andrew to use with the count’s serving man. It is important to realize that it is not Sir
Toby’s use of thou as such which conveys his lack of respect; it is the fact that he is
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doing so in a social context which makes it appropriate for other speakers to use you.
(qtd. in Muir 71)
This same idea is at work in the pronouns of A Clockwork Orange, with Alex’s decision
to use either “you” or “thou” informed by the situation he finds himself in. Julie Carson
highlights the significance of Alex’s deviation from pronominal norms, both in the “bratties”
scene and others in the novel: “The use of an argot to set a group apart is common enough. But a
deviation from, yet within, an argot carries greater implications, revealing Alec's [sic] position of
power relative to both society and to his droogs” (201). Carson writes how Alex uses “thou” in
situations in which he is clearly in power and addressing perceived inferiors, like when he speaks
to Dim, the “dimmest” of his droogs and lowest in the gang’s pecking order: “Come, gloopy
bastard as thou art. Think thou not on them” (Burgess 21). However, in situations where Alex is
not “in power”, he uses “you”, either because he is speaking to someone who has the same
amount of “power” as he does (like when he tries to quash his droogs’ incipient coup by
addressing them as his equals, this time including Dim) or because he is speaking to someone
who holds “power” over him (as when Alex thanks his long-time probation officer, P.R. Deltoid,
for spitting in his face while Deltoid and the police viciously “interrogate” him: “Thank you, sir,
thank you very much, sir, that was very kind of you, sir, thank you” 77). By using the marked
“thou” in a social context in which the unmarked “you” is appropriate, Alex falls in line with
Shakespearean tradition, thus doubly drawing attention to his word-choice: not only does his
Nadsat “sound” like the high literary language of Elizabethan theater, but it also adheres to its
rules, which both help enforce the anti-society’s power dynamic while also lending credence to
Fowler’s point that its anti-language process is “phoney.”
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While the power dynamic in the “What goes on, bratties?” exchange does not appear to
be in his favor, Alex is effectively attempting to assert control over the situation through his
overlexicalization. This is because in his anti-society, Nadsat equals power: “He assesses the
situation quickly and adopts nearly the proper linguistic posture for his power position, but he
cannot restrain himself entirely; his language, after all, has been his greatest means of self-
identification and self-assertion” (Carson 204). Just as in the aforementioned scene with Drs.
Branom and Brodsky, Alex’s Nadsat comes lashing out in self-defense; however, similarly to
that episode, Nadsat ends up doing Alex more harm than good, as it leads F. Alexander to
recognize him due to the way he speaks. Carson makes an interesting observation, writing that it
appears it is not Alex’s more notable Nadsat words and phrases (“polly,” “slooshy,” “jeezny”)
that reveal him as the individual responsible for the death of F. Alexander’s wife, but rather
Alex’s use of “thou.” Alex uses the marked “thou” during that early home invasion (before we
are introduced to F. Alexander in earnest), and in this situation and social context, he is firmly
the one in power: “Never fear. If fear thou hast in thy heart, O brother, pray banish it forthwith”
(Burgess 25). Alex and his droogs destroy F. Alexander’s house and rape his wife, but because
they are wearing masks, they cannot be identified—that is, except for Alex. For a character
whose language is so much a part of his identity, it is fitting that Alex’s words are what
ultimately implicate him in the crime.
Apart from its verbal “flair,” the other side of overlexicalization involves meaning and
connotation. In addition to its performative manner of speech, overlexicalization also
communicates certain attitudes to those “in the know,” those being speakers of the anti-language
in question who can parse the connotative meanings of words that appear interchangeable from
an outsider perspective. For example, when Alex uses the Nadsat word “soomka” (old
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woman/whore), he communicates a different meaning than if he were to use the word “ptitsa”
(woman) or “baboochka” (old woman). We can see this overlexicalization at play in the ill-fated
home invasion prior to Alex’s arrest. When Alex and his droogs are attempting to gain access to
the home of the old woman with the cats, she is initially described as a “baboochka” or a
“ptitsa.” Throughout the text, “baboochka” and “ptitsa” are rather neutral terms for old woman
and woman/girl, respectively. These words are “neutral” in the sense that they do not have any
inherently negative connotation when used on their own; there is no active hostility, though it is
important to remember that, in the Nadsat anti-society, everyone—especially the “old”—are
viewed from a baseline of hostility. But when the old cat lady fights back, Alex’s home invasion
begins to go wrong. We see another example of the tension (both literal and linguistic) between
society and Nadsat anti-society here: as they grapple with each other, the old woman says to
Alex, “Wretched little slummy bedbug, breaking into real people’s houses” (68). Then, we see
Alex shift his word choice in real time as the situation changes and he is no longer completely in
control: “So then I got real bezoomny [mad/crazy] myself, brothers, and hit out at them, but this
baboochka said: ‘Toad, don’t touch my kitties,’ and like scratched my litso. So then I creeched:
‘You filthy old soomka’...” (69). It is unlikely that the old woman would know what “soomka”
means, and readers themselves might not even know (this is the only time the word appears in
the text). To speakers of Nadsat, though, using the word “soomka” over “baboochka”
communicates a certain attitude, just as using “old whore” instead of “old woman” would to
speakers of standard English. For everyone else, Alex’s Nadsat is little more than bizarre
gibberish, as unintelligible as his way of life. This is quite on purpose, though: Nadsat is
(largely) not in the business of being understood by those outside of its anti-society, as it is
actively resistant and hostile to the overtures of that society. Halliday writes that this is typical of
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anti-language: “The modes of expression of the anti-language, when seen from the standpoint of
the established language, appear oblique, diffuse, metaphorical; and so they are, from that angle.
But seen in their own terms, they appear directed, as powerful manifestations of the linguistic
system in the service of the construction of reality” (582).
In ACO, Nadsat functions as an anti-language to exclude everyone who does not “speak”
it, whether that manifests in the form of the adults of the story whom Alex rebels against (like
Drs. Brodsky and Branom or his parents, his “pee and em”) or readers of the novella who do not
“buy into” Burgess’s unique, reality-generating conlang. This latter idea follows Jonathan
Culler’s “hyper-protected cooperative principle”:
We can put up with many obscurities and apparent irrelevancies [while reading], without
assuming that this makes no sense. Readers assume that in literature complications of
language ultimately have a communicative purpose and, instead of imagining that the
speaker or writer is being uncooperative, as they might in other speech contexts, they
struggle to interpret elements that flout principles of efficient communication in the
interests of some further communicative goal. (27)
Readers who stick with ACO after the first few pages “cooperate” with Nadsat’s strange words
and phrases, trusting (whether consciously or unconsciously) that things will get easier and make
more sense as they read. Consequently, by excluding those who do not share in Alex’s anti-
reality, Burgess moves cooperative readers one step closer to it, and thus to Alex.
Nadsat’s standing as an anti-language means that it excludes those who cannot or will not
speak it. Something that goes hand in hand with this exclusion is Nadsat’s ability to obfuscate.
To examine Burgess’s use of obfuscation in ACO, it is important to first understand obfuscation
as a concept. According to the OED, to “obfuscate” is to “render something unclear, obscure, or
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confused; to use obscure or impenetrable language.” The latter half of this definition certainly
applies to Nadsat: obscure and impenetrable language abounds, and a common complaint from
readers is that Burgess’s use of Nadsat makes it too difficult to stick with the book beyond its
first few pages. Even when glossed by Alex, sentences such as the following can present
significant obstacles to reader comprehension: “In the trousers of this starry veck there was only
a malenky bit of cutter (money, that is)—not more than three gollies…” (10). Burgess surrounds
Nadsat terms with standard English words and phrases that provide helpful context for parsing
meaning, though, which can be seen in the above example: “In the trousers” suggests that a
“starry veck” is wearing the trousers, and who wears trousers? People do, hinting that a “starry
veck” refers to a person of some sort (in this case, an old man: “starry” = old, “veck” = man).
The phrase “not more than three gollies” shows that the money in these trousers is a small
amount, and this ultimately helps readers deduce that the word “malenky” means something like
the standard English word “little” (a probable definition reinforced by subsequent occurrences in
the text). But this raises the question: with Burgess taking such care to provide readers with
context clues, why even use Nadsat in the first place? One answer comes from Burgess himself,
in his introduction to ACO’s 1986 re-release: “Nadsat, a Russified version of English, was meant
to muffle the raw response we expect from pornography. It turns the book into a linguistic
adventure” (XIV). Reading ACO certainly becomes a “linguistic adventure” thanks to Nadsat,
with Burgess offering readers the opportunity to explore this strange, new realm of (anti-)
language with Alex and his droogs. Similarly, it also “muffles”; that is, by couching the novella’s
violence in unfamiliar language, Nadsat takes the “sting” out of the horrific nature of the acts
themselves.
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This effect is something that researchers Kristen Lucas and Jeremy P. Fyke examine in
their article discussing the (un)ethics of euphemism. They explore how euphemism, defined as
“a word or phrase that is considered a more polite manner of referring to a topic than its literal
designation,” contributed to Penn State leadership’s willful mishandling of reports of adolescent
sexual abuse by former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky (McGlone et al., qtd. in Lucas
and Fyke 553). Lucas and Fyke write that euphemism “is more than just a face-saving way to
broach an unpleasant act, but a way to make the act itself less unpleasant …. Through
euphemism, distasteful activities can lose their repugnancy, harmful conduct can be made
respectable, and that which is socially unacceptable can be transformed into something socially
approved ….” (554). They explore how euphemism was used to “muffle” Sandusky’s abuse so
that leadership figures would not have to fully reckon with its consequences.
A similar idea is at work in ACO: by “muffling” Alex’s violence behind the euphemism
of Nadsat, readers do not have to fully face up to the implications of his antisocial behavior;
violence becomes vague, which makes it easier for readers to look beyond Alex’s objectively
horrific actions and sympathize with him as a narrator. This can be seen in the following
passage:
Our pockets were full of deng, so there was no real need from the point of view of
crasting any more pretty polly to tolchock some old veck in an alley and viddy him swim
in his blood while we counted the takings and divided by four, nor to do the ultra-violent
on some shivering starry grey-haired ptitsa in a shop and go smecking off with the till’s
guts. But, as they say, money isn’t everything. (4)
While contextual anchors help readers make sense of what is going on in this scene (pockets are
where money often goes, providing a potential meaning to the word “deng,” which is reinforced
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by the phrases “counted the takings,” “the till’s guts,” and “money isn’t everything”), they also
obscure the exact nature of it. Take the same passage, but this time “translated” into standard
English, the dominant language of ACO’s society:
Our pockets were full of money, so there was no real need from the point of view
of stealing any more cash to beat up some old man in an alley and watch him
swim in his blood while we counted the takings and divided by four, nor to attack
some shivering old grey-haired woman in a shop and go laughing off with the
cash from the till. But, as they say, money isn’t everything.
This “translation” paints the scene much clearer, and its bluntness serves to highlight the
shocking nature of Alex’s words. Replaced by accessible language, gone are the childlike, silly-
sounding euphemisms that obfuscate meaning, and the sinister truth behind them is laid bare.
The obfuscation engendered by Alex’s use of Nadsat serves as a powerful weapon in ACO, just
as it does when language is used to obscure facts in the real world. Linguistic obfuscation is
ubiquitous in modern life, and it can be seen everywhere from interpersonal relationships to
advertisements to news reports.
Nowhere is this obfuscation arguably more present, though—and, indeed, more
consequential—than in the political sphere. Slogans and buzzwords are bandied about by
politicians to justify their decisions, often without ever coming out and saying what it is they are
actually talking about. Why? Because if they did, they would have to reckon with the
consequences of their actions. In the words of George Orwell:
…[P]olitical speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like
the continuance of British rule in India, … the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can
indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face...
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Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer
cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants
driven out into the countryside…: this is called pacification.… Such phraseology is
needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. (“Politics
and the English Language”)
Euphemism is a powerful tool, and by “reframing meaning in more favorable terms or by
rendering the ethics of the act invisible, [it can] function as an ‘ethical bleach’ that washes out
ethical implications” (Lucas and Fyke 555). This “ethical bleach” protects the speaker, shielding
them “from the motives for and consequences of their own actions,” but it can also do the same
for listeners (Lucas and Fyke 555). By mindlessly accepting the narrative given to them, listeners
do not have to wrestle with the moral and ethical implications of what may lie behind said
narrative. Lucas and Fyke cite MacKenzie’s example of top Nazi official Adolph Eichmann, who
was firmly entrenched in the Third Reich’s euphemistic “Language Rules” (“final solution,”
“special treatment,” “resettlement,” and “change of residence”) and claimed during the
Nuremberg Trials that he was “just following orders” during the Holocaust: “This example
points to the utility of euphemism for recasting a narrative that is voided of ethical concerns and,
once a narrative is neutralized, for distancing oneself psychologically from the consequences of
actions and decisions” (555). This same idea (albeit on a far less consequential scale) can be seen
in A Clockwork Orange: not only does Alex use Nadsat to “name things without calling up
mental pictures of them,” but by reading his “neutralized” narration and engaging with this
obfuscation, readers distance themselves from the horror of his actions. In doing so, the reader
takes the first step to becoming one of Alex’s “droogs”—thereby implicating themselves in his
crimes.
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The idea of “brainwashing” plays a key role in the plot of A Clockwork Orange: while
imprisoned, Alex is subjected to the “Ludovico technique,” a treatment which effectively
“brainwashes” (or, more accurately, conditions) him to become sick at the sight or thought of
violence. It is also important on a metatextual level, with Burgess stating in his autobiography
You’ve Had Your Time that the text is meant to “brainwash” its readers: “As the book was about
brainwashing, it was appropriate that the text itself should be a brainwashing device. The reader
would be brainwashed into learning minimal Russian. The novel was to be an exercise in
linguistic programming,” (38).
As mentioned previously, Nadsat is largely derived from a Russian vocabulary: “droog”
from the Russian drug for “friend”; “chelloveck” from the Russian čelovek for “human/man”;
“horrorshow” from the Russian xorošo for “well/good”; etc. Readers will naturally pick up some
Russian over the course of the novella (even if they do not realize it), just as they will naturally
begin to see the world through “Your Humble Narrator” Alex’s eyes. Vincent and Clarke discuss
how Nadsat was “originally intended to be learned, in the process of which, in line with the
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, readers would theoretically be brought round to the viewpoint of the
thuggish protagonists” (“The Colours of the Real World…,” 102-3). The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
refers to a term coined by American linguist and anthropologist Harry Hoijer, and in his words,
“The central idea of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is that language functions, not simply as a
device for reporting experience, but also, and more significantly, as a way of defining
experience for its speakers” (“Philosophy of Linguistics”). This “hypothesis” has been the
subject of much debate in linguistics circles, but one can certainly see how it applies to ACO:
Nadsat “creates” Alex’s world, a world in which doing harm is not a sin but a pleasure. “In
learning that horrorshow—a word based on the Russian khorosho [good, well]—means ‘good,
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