In both pieces that we watched, alien species come into contact with human civilization. The Heptapods and Tamarians use their own language majority of each film is spent trying to dissect and interpret their language that can be made sense from our perspective.
In “The Arrival“, the government along with Banks and Donnelly are attempting to understand the language of the heptapods. We see that they use frame shifting to and what they understand from the human language to transfer it over to the language of the aliens. Even before contact, this occurs between human like in the beginning when Banks is first shown the tape recording. She listens and asks, “How many?”. To this Colonial Weber asks “How many what?”. I think this can be viewed as frame shifting because within conversation there is a certain frame that it settles in. With continuing dialogue new pieces of information are usually given and in this sense we can see that Weber tries to piece together what Banks is asking, which is a form of frame shifting. This happens once more when the scientists are discussing how oxygen runs out rather quickly in the pod and it takes hours to regenerate. Donnelly responds with “Atmosphere”. We see the frame of the conversation shifting as Donnelly is introduced within and with the new information that is presented, they try to make sense of what he means by atmosphere. In the scene of initial contact, shifting of framework is once again seen when Banks holds up a white board that reads “human” on it towards the aliens. They respond with their own symbol of what is interpreted as humans. Another day, she goes in writing her own name on the board. The heptapods respond with a similar symbol, but it has a curve at the end. This puzzles Banks and her team and they start questioning what it could be. This is frameshifting as Banks assumes, “It might be a question based on the curve at the end”.
Frame shifting is seen once more in “Darmok” as the Enterprise makes contact with the Tamarians. The difference between conveying of the languages between the Enterprise crew and Tamarians show multiple frame shifting. They take new information from each other to try to fit in slots from their own perspective; one that makes sense to their own experience. The Tamarians form of conversation which is more allusions clash with the direct language of English. While our language is full of metaphors, their language is metaphors turned to reality as it can be literally seen and interpreted. This highlights the different meanings which can be prone to be lost in translation. At the end, the Tamarians mark the whole experience with a new allusion that they keep as history, which sets a new frame and forms a new phrase.
3 thoughts on “Interpreting Alien Language”
Hi April,
I love that you are thinking about how frame shifting operates in both of these texts. We constantly make sense of situations through the use of cognitive frames. When we receive new information, we sometimes have to reassess the frames that we are using and shift them to make sense of the novel stimuli. In your post, you reference the moment in the film where Louise suggests that the aliens might be asking a question, because of the additional curl (which seems to be based on the question mark in our linguistic system). She is slotting that flourish into a question frame—but as she learns more about their language, her understanding of what that marking means might shift.
In your discussion of “Darmok,” I love that you are thinking about what is lost in translation—or what cannot be translated. I would say, though, that it’s not that the metaphors that the Tamarians use are more literal; they are still deeply metaphoric. Their linguistic system is just different from ours, so it might seem that way. But it is likely just as conventionalized for them as ours is for us. I love your point, though, about how we see the development of a phrase and a new phrase by the end of the episode.
Jessica Hautsch
Hi April,
I agree that, like our language, the Tamarians speak in metaphor; the only difference is that they only speak metaphorically compared to using a metaphor for dramatic effect or to emphasize a meaning to give it imagery as people do. I like how you noted that the use of frameshifting was to take the language of each captain and break it down in a way that they can understand based on their cognitive linguistics. It was cool to see the phrase Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra make sense by the end of the episode.
cstiglianese
Hi April,
I really liked how you explained frame shifting in both the movie and the episode. When you were talking about the “Darmok” episode I feel like you really gave a clear picture on what frame-shifting is. They were certainly trying to take in the new information and fit it inn their slots as we saw Picard do in the fire scene when the Tamarian was holding his arms open. You also pointed out how different meanings can get lost in translation. I totally agree with that because I do feel we try to fit the new information into old frames.
Alesha Gutierrez