‘Cloning Words’: Euphemism, Neologism and Dysphemism as Literary Devices in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go

Abstract

This essay examines the theme and trope of ‘copies’ in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go. Whatever one’s final reading of the novel, the theme and thread of copy, copies, copying and copied is never far off. In a semantic sense then, the act of ‘copying’, both as a verb and the indexing of ‘copies’ as a noun, pervades every element of the literary landscape of Never Let Me Go and demands closer linguistic rather than mere literary inspection. Kazuo Ishiguro innovatively replicates this dual strategy of thematic and lexical inscription of the trope of ‘copying’ via a creative use of lexical semantics. Like Ishiguro’s clones whose organ parts have to be viewed as wholes, the lexical parts of Never Let Me Go make sense only as a whole.

Keywords:

• Kazuo Ishiguro
• Never Let Me Go
• lexical semantics
• linguistics
• euphemism
• neologism
• dysphemism
• transnational literature