To say I love language and words and all that mumbo-jumbo would be a massive understatement. I still remember the days staying up later than I was supposed to, reading by the light of my princess nightlight (That probably messed up my eyes more than I would like to admit, but all good I guess, glasses here I come!). Those were the days, they were also the days where I could function with all the energy in the world on like 3 hours of sleep, but I’m no longer at that point. If I were to operate on three hours of sleep nowadays I would need an energy drink and 4 times the recommended dose of Advil. But, those nights lying awake in bed, squinting to make out the words in my Magic Treehouse Book was some of the fondest memories I cherish, and it set in motion my love, drive and desire to study English. And although when I decided to do that my immigrant parents looked at me in horror and proclaimed that I was going to live in a box, I knew that this was my passion and understood just how important language is.
Now after that long ass intro (Don’t come at me for cursing, it is a valid part of our language goddamn it) we finally get into this analysis of one very stupid (sorry professor) and one amazing piece of media
OK, if I could insert an audible sigh right now I would. And I mean this with my heart in the right place, I really do, but the aliens in Star Trek: The Next Generation are beyond infuriating, actually, it’s mind-boggling how infuriating they truly are. THEY DO NOT HAVE VERBS, let me repeat, NO VERBS. Their language is based upon metaphors, interesting at first (or so I thought before it became infuriating!). Like how do they even communicate? Metaphors, especially metaphors that relate to very specific pop culture or culture-specific things IS NOT A WAY TO COMMUNICATE. Ok, I got that out of my system.
Just to visualize how impossible this would be, I’m going to make our own example. Imagine if I wanted to convey that I was sad and longing for something I would say Gatsby on the dock. But here’s the issue, you misconstrued what I said and interpret it as how he was hopeful and dedicated to trying to get Dasiy back. Or even how Gatsby was living through a pipedream and was detached from reality. The issue is the broad sentences meant to convey extremely specific things lead to multiple interpretations. Not to mention that if you hadn’t even heard about The Great Gatsby, you would have no freaking clue what I was talking about because it’s a conceptual metaphor with no previous context. To communicate with us everyone must know every single story or cultural impactful event in our culture. AND AGAIN NO VERBS!
Metaphors are fantastic, they help us convey very complex feelings into very limited space (Your hardheaded, I’m bent out of shape) but it can not be the crux of an entire language. I would wager that it would be impossible for a language to develop just by using metaphors because I feel as though with almost 8,000 languages on Earth, we would have seen at least ONE example of this occurring. But no, because it is stupid and impossible (sorry professor lol).
Now, after that rant, if you haven’t moved on yet, I’m quite shocked actually, but happy nonetheless, and on we go to talk about the good part of this week’s viewings. Arrival has been on my list to watch for a while, and I was glad to finally cross it off! I’m not usually a fan of those slow-burn movies that tone everything down a notch to keep this element of realism in effect, but I found myself enthralled and glued to the screen. Louise saying whose child is that literally caught me off guard so much I audibly gasped, let me tell ya.
The way they approach language is quite fascinating. We never actually see a verbal communication format for Abbott or Costello, it’s all through visual media. Essentially only writing and no talking, is this because they have no mouth? Hard to say because they lived in the densest freaking fog I’ve ever seen so I have no clue if they had mouths even. But the way they present the language in a circular fashion is fascinating. It’s a sentence no doubt just rounded. The blotches represent certain words, and it actually ties into how they perceive time and space, everything is cyclic and follows one after the other. Everything is a circle. This shows just how important the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is when trying to break down language. These creatures see language in these circle blotches, they never thought about language as just an individual blotch, it was always a circle. As compared to how Americans typically look at language as individual words strung together in a straight line, this is a drastic difference just based on how our language developed over time.
This difference in linguistic relativity can even be found on our own planet. Many languages on earth cause certain people to think quite differently from others. For example in Spanish, every person who speaks it sees objects as feminine or masculine. Now compare that with Mandarin where there are no gendered pronouns unless it’s in writing, both he and she is Ta, (With a little bar over the a) and it sounds exactly the same with speaking. This difference causes a huge difference in how these drastically different languages affect the thoughts and views of the world, seeing everything as gendered vs. nothing as gendered.
Language is always something that is going to affect how we view and interpret things. I for one only know some words in Portuguese even though I’m a native English speaker and that makes me look at the world differently than my fellow peers. But even humans who fluently speak the same language can have drastically different interpretations based on their own experiences which causes them to look at the world in slightly differing ways. And so when people tell me, psssshhhh English isn’t that hard I look at them and ask how the hell this is a grammatically correct sentence, “He couldn’t explain that that thing he created wasn’t working.” God, I hate when I’m writing and I have to write a sentence like that. Anyway, English is messy and language is something that I will always cherish, it’s the only difference between us and animals. They may be able to communicate but can they say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious? I think not!
4 thoughts on “Analysis #3: Damn, Language is Complicated – And This is Coming from an English Major”
Hi Stephanie,
I think your example of Jay in the Great Gatsby highlighted how interpretation is unpredictable especially when everyone has their own way of thinking. Meaning can become misconstrued, leading to conflict/ increased disconnect as we saw in the film Arrival, when the message “offer weapon” was written by the Heptapods. Also, when citing metaphors with specific cultural backgrounds, you are limiting the audience in which you are communicating with. I think in the Star Trek episode when the Tamarians spoke, it felt as though I was listening to toddlers trying to speak to one another. It’s interesting though because even though it might not make sense to us, somehow they are still able to decode what the other is saying.
Sarah Murphy
Hi Stephanie! Cursing is definitely a valid part of our language, and who the (hell) decided it wasn’t? I’m personally all for normalizing it as a form of greater expression for adults. Might be disturbing to watch a 5-year-old on the playground drop the f bomb… or maybe it would be amusing…
Anyway, yes, the Tamarian way of language is kind of stupid. The problem is that their language is like a form of jargon. It excludes those outside of their circle because only they themselves know the meaning and context of their phrases. Gatsby on the dock is an excellent example. If I used that as a means of communication, then only those who have seen The Great Gatsby would get it. Even then it could be misconstrued. Very funny caption on the photo by the way.
I think it’s really cool how the heptapod language is in a circle. It connects to how Louise ends up viewing life after the events that occur- there’s no beginning or end, just certain moments that are more defined than others. Kind of like how in the circle there’s flat parts and other parts that branch off.
I think that those that claim English isn’t that hard literally can’t put themselves in others’ shoes. English is messy, you’re correct. It is hard for someone that doesn’t speak English natively to learn it, and I applaud those who do. Language is hard but rewarding!
Sara Giarnieri
Hello there!
You know, now that you say it, yeah, the circles do look like “Rorschach Inkblot tests”. But I feel like they are also eerily familiar to the Alien symbol from the Alien movie franchise. Maybe it’s a nod to an old classic? Not sure. I hope it is.
References and speculation aside, I enjoyed how you analyzed the Heptapod “writing” system. I found it fascinating how they could contain so many words in such compact circles, since the circles themselves hold meaning, represent ideas, and they cannot be read in the typical sense. They’re slightly similar to Kanji, where the symbols aren’t words but instead represent words.
I had a fun ass time reading your post. Keep up the good work.
gkhidasheli
Hi Steph,
First off, my apologies! When I was doing my first read through of everyone’s blogs, I somehow skipped over yours. So I’m very sorry to be responding to your work so late.
Also, I’m certainly not going to come at you for cursing. I agree that it’s an important form of expression! Also, an interesting use of figurative language.
I think that you make a very fair critique of the Tamarian language. They do have verbs (like in the phrases “Bazminti when he pulled back the viel” and “Shaka, when the walls fell,” but they don’t use the verbs the way that most Earth languages do. And you make a really valid point about different interpretations of cultural artifacts. Your example of Gatsby works well in illustrating this. And I might use Romeo and Juliet, for example, as an image of teenagers in love being reckless and dumb.
There are, though, some cultural references that have been codified into our linguistic system. For example, the phrase “Faustian bargain” or the word “Quixotic.” These, of course, are references to Faust and Don Quixote based on a shared interpretation of the story or character. But, of course, that doesn’t mean that it a sound basis for an entire linguistic system.
But that doesn’t mean that our language is not deeply metaphoric. It is! But we don’t recognize many of the metaphors that we are using as metaphors. For example, if I say “I am in love,” I am using a STATES ARE A CONTAINER metaphor. If I said, “I wasted time on Tumblr when I should have been grading,” I am using the TIME IS MONEY metaphor. If I say, “I see what you did there,” I am using the UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING metaphor. Now, again, we don’t think of these phrases as metaphors because they are so common and we’re just kinda used to them. But they are metaphors. The way we speak and the way we think is very much a matter of metaphor.
After all that, though, it’s perfectly fine not to enjoy the media we’re watching. Ideally, I don’t want you to hate everything we’re watching for the class (that’s not fun for anyone), but you never have to apologize to me for not liking something. I promise I won’t be personally offended.
Jessica Hautsch