How did James Joyce experiment with language in Finnegans Wake?

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In Finnegans Wake, James Joyce moved beyond the stream-of-consciousness technique used in Ulysses to employ a highly experimental, polyglot linguistic style. To convey the relationship between the conscious and unconscious mind, Joyce utilized several distinct tactics:

  • Multilingual Fusion: Joyce merged numerous languages to create a unique idiom. For example, he incorporated Polish and Turkish terms alongside Irish language and mythology to weave together global cultural references.21
  • Puns and Portmanteaus: The prose is dense with wordplay, puns, and portmanteau words—blending multiple meanings into single terms—to create complex sonic implications and hidden layers of meaning.2
  • Thunder Words: Joyce famously created "thunder words," which are massive constructions of approximately one hundred letters that combine elements from many different languages.2
  • Cyclical Structure: Reflecting the theory of Giambattista Vico that history is cyclical, the novel’s structure is linguistically circular; the final sentence is left unfinished, connecting directly to the first sentence of the book.21