Captive Consciousness and the New Jabberwocky

Abstract

Citing semi-public jokes is not an enterprise for which one can easily find bibliographic support. One must, therefore, appeal to the memory of linguists who used to work or study at American universities in the 1970s for corroboration when one recalls a conference, held either in Chicago or in some other Midwestern university, which purported dealt with the languages of the Soviet Union but was informally called ‘the captive languages conference’.