“Communication is a matter of patience and imagination”

This week, we were tasked to watch Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival and Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s Season 5, Episode 2 entitled “Darmok”. As a quick side note, I thoroughly enjoyed this week’s texts; Arrival falls right below Interstellar on my “Top 5 Favorite Sci-Fi Movies” list (Interstellar being first and Arrival being a close second) and Star Trek: The Next Generation is my favorite Star Trek show, although Strange New Worlds might knock TNG out of that spot. Anyways both texts show how language is communicated between a human mind and an alien mind. They also shows that our linguistic and conceptual systems are part of the same system.

At the beginning of Arrival, Ian reads a line from the preface of Louise’s novel: “Language is the foundation of civilization. It is the glue that holds a people to together. It is the first weapon drawn in a conflict.” I feel as if the quote holds true to the “foundation” of the film. Louise, along with Ian, is tasked to learn the Heptapods’ language and to teach them how to speak to us. As the film goes along, Louise and the Heptapods form a temporal telepathic connection (along with the Chinese military commander Shang who is of no importance to this analysis but this was just the first viewing where I realized he was telepathically linked with the Heptopods). This connection between Louise and the Heptopods reinforce the meaning of the scene, which starts at 01:01:50, where Ian discusses that “if you immerse yourself into a foreign language […] you can actually rewire your brain.” This is an example of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, which is, Louise explains: “[…] is the theory that the language you speak determines how you think [and everything you see].” In other words, if we change our lamguage, we essentially alter the frames through which we conceptualize things. After this scene and throughout the rest of the movie, we learn that the visions she has been seeing of her with her daughter aren’t memories but are premonitions, so to speak. Through their telepathic link, the Heptapods use their conception of time (which to them is non-linear but simultaneous) to help Louise (who conceptualizes time as linear) understand and learn their langauge. In terms of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, Louise learns their language and has her brain essentially rewired to conceive time how the Heptapods conceive it.

The Star Trek: TNG episode “Darmok” follows the same path as Arrival. The Tamarians speak in metaphors, which at first glance catches the crew of the Enterprise off guard, even Data. It isn’t until Picard and the Tamarian captain are beemed down to the surface of planet where they force themselve to try to understand each other. After the Tamarian captain’s fight against the Beast, him and Picard sit beside a campfire. In this moment, I feel that Picard’s brain has been rewired to understand the Tamarian captains language of metaphors. The Tamarians use stories from mythos to express what they are trying to say and so Picard uses a story to convey that he understands the Tamarian captain. In addition to this, the Tamarian langauge shows that the Tamarians are a unified species in a way. This is due to the fact that they speak collectively rather than just individually. The captains goal was to unite, not just himself with Picard, but the Tamarian species with the Federation.