Review of Word Factory
January 1, 2019
On the surface, Word Factory is the adventure Penelope Jenkins falls into when she reports for a job interview. However, below the surface there is a much more complicated situation unfolding. The company that Penelope is interviewing with, Social Construct, is an entity that dictates many of the currents the collective conscious of our society follows, unbeknownst. It appears that there is a challenge against the Department of Language, one of the many departments contained within Social Construct. The Department of Language, unofficially known as Word Factory, creates new words, discards the obsolete, and, most notably in this story, decides what enters slang terminology. As we follow Penelope, we are introduced to other forms of communication beyond our traditional ideas of the signs and symbols that comprise the words that make up our language. We start to recognize that there are other underestimated forms of language that are translated by our five senses. This communication does not need a composed form; it can stand up to fluxes, trends and corruption that our written language can often be susceptible to. We are challenged to re-evaluate our ideas of how powerful our associations are when we are confronted, for example, with a smell or a sound. These associations our mind makes when perceiving through one of our five senses are much less likely to be controlled or corrupted by outside influences, better freeing us to challenge social constructs. Does this revelation render the significance of Word Factory as less or more relevant? Or can words and the written language evolve?
Word Factory called into question my conventional ideas of communication with a sharp wit that spoke directly to my sense of humor. I enjoyed the combination of thought provoking concepts with fits of hysterical laughing in between. The tease of “Episode II” in the title of this book makes me hopeful that the story of Word Factory will continue.
Elizabeth Dewitte
Department of Art & Art History
University of Utah
