Wallacisms
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The vast number of "verbal ticks" and structural elements that make Wallace's work instantly recognizable. These include:
- lengthy footnotes and/or endnotes
- repetition of certain words and phrases, as motifs or greater themes, e.g.
- howling fantods
- map and territory, map, demapping
- squeak
- IYI
- The Dow, a play on Tao and the Dow Jones
- creative misspellings, often resembling Freudian slips or revealing a characters' verbal limitations
- use of Latin phrases used primarily in mathematical proofs and philosophy