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Abstract: The article deals with the language of demythologization of the Austrian woman-writer Elfriede Jelinek which she uses to describe the mythologized reality of the late 20th century. The research is carried out on the material of the novel “The Children of the Dead” (1997), well-known for its most daring language experiments. The aim of the study is to identify the specific features of the language of Jelinek, aimed at deconstructing socio-cultural myths. As an “apocalyptic critic”, Jelinek harshly and mercilessly demolishes the modern myths of public consciousness, relying on the theoretical constructions of French philosophers (R. Barthes, J. Baudrillard). Implementing the procedure of deconstruction – i.e. relieving the mythological structures of their deadening linguistic shell – Jelinek uses in her creative practice the mechanisms of estrangement, thus exposing the false ideological nature of the word. Jelinek destroys the word, breaks and distorts it, builds bizarre word formations and creates complex semantic patterns. The themes of the Holocaust, Nazism, and totalitarianism of modern visual strategies of power, vividly presented in the language of the novel, are included in many discourses, accompanied by new media perspectives. The deconstruction of mythologized structures in the novel is carried out in the field of language games and in new unexpected contexts. The favorite linguistic means of Jelinek include metabola, grotesque, oxymoron, occasionalisms, simile, conceptual metaphors, metaphorical experiments with the text and others. All this multitude of stylistic figures in the novel is used to perform the super-task of demythologization. The “emotional cleansing”, as in the perception of high culture, is replaced by Jelinek with a more effective “critical catharsis”, which allows the reader to take a sobering position in relation to the demystified reality. The specific language of the novel is aimed at destroying the stereotypical language structures, at resuscitating the receptive acuity of man in the new iconic reality of the late 20th century.