Year: 2022

This week, we watched Arrival and “Darmok” from Star Trek: The Next Generation: media that focuses heavily on cognitive linguistics, which views language as not separate from our way of thinking, but deeply embedded in our overall cognitive capabilities. I was really intrigued and entertained by watching these concepts play out; it made me think about how English approaches language compared to other languages.

I first watched Arrival, directed by Dennis Villeneuve and based off of the short story “The Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang. This story follows Louise, a linguist, who is sourced by the government to help translate the language of aliens who had landed on Earth. I read this novella earlier this month and am a big fan of Dennis Villeneuve’s work on Dune, so I was super excited going into this movie.

After watching, my thoughts are…that I really liked it! Though it differed considerably from the novella, the story is just as chilling and compelling. Both the soundtrack and visuals were beautiful and haunting – as I would expect from Villeneuve.

This story is a great way to explain cognitive linguistics, as I knew little about them before reading the novella, but came out understanding the concept fairly well. As Louise learns the language of the heptopods – her name for the aliens – she begins to experience time non-linearly as they do. This means that she begins to see flashes of the future, seeing her daughter who hasn’t been born yet, her husband, and her teaching a room of people the heptopod writing system. This illustrates the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, which states that the language you speaks influences the way you think. This hypothesis is even mentioned by name in the movie to help explain to the viewer Louise’s ability to see the future. In one scene, Louise explains that the heptopods can write complex sentences in one logogram – the symbols they use for writing – which would require them to know everything they have to communicate all at once. Comparing this to human speech, where one word comes after another and sentences can be changed in the middle of speaking them, heptopod writing requires a knowledge of the future. This begs the question – were the heptopods able to tell the future before they invented their method of writing, or did the writing give them this sense over time?

The next media I watched was the episode “Darmok” from the show Star Trek: The Next Generation. Though I have never seen any of the Star Trek shows before, I was excited to finally take a look at one of them, as I know they handle some really interesting sci-fi concepts.

This episode follows the Enterprise as they attempt to communicate with the Tamarians, a race of people whom nobody has been able to understand. After unsuccessfully trying to speak to the Tamarians, Captain Picard is teleported to the surface of the nearest planet – El-Adrel – along with the Tamarian Captain of their ship. At first, they are still unable to understand each other. The Tamarians speak in cryptic and repetitive clips of sentences, such as “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” and “Shaka, when the walls fell”. After spending time with the Tamarian Captain, Picard learns that these phrases refer to stories from Tamarian mythohistory that reflect their current situation – in other words, they use metaphors to explain what is happening. Because Picard does not have the cognitive frame of knowing what these stories are, he doesn’t understand what the Captain is trying to say. I really like the scene where Picard and the mortally wounded Tamarian Captain are sitting by the fire explaining their stories to each other. Though they cannot fully understand each other still, Picard has begun speaking in the same metaphors and even attempts to tell the story of Gilgamesh in this way. It was really heartwarming to see them finally begin to understand each other and made it even more devastating when the Tamarian Captain dies, Picard knowing that he sacrificed himself so that his race could finally be understood by others.

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.

Honestly this week really showed that lack of communication really causes so many unnecessary problems. I mean really misinterpret on thing and its all out war on humans.

Obviously this is precisely what happens in the film Arrival. One misinterpretation of a the actual meaning of a word leads into a full out declaration of war among. But should it really have lead to that? I feel like conclusions were jumped because of the skeptical nature of these extraterrestrial beings. You can definitely see that in the film because Dr. Banks goes out of her way to really try and figure out what they actually meant whereas all the nations are freaking out and prepare for some kind of war. It really does show how language can be shaped and molded by our environment and interactions. Dr. Banks had more interactions with the heptapods compared to everyone else which is why she couldn’t accept that this is actually what they meant which shows this concept of frame-shifting.

In this scene in particular Dr. Banks was able to really connect to the heptapods and from there slowly bring down their language barriers. It really shows how the body can connect us when our mind doesn’t. It shows an importance in the role of the body when it comes to understanding things. Something so simple can be a catalyst for greater knowledge which Dr. Banks and Ian were able to access because they connected using their bodies first. Which is also why they were able to shift their frames away from being skeptical and always on alert with the heptapods to really understanding the gift they were trying to bring.

Now for Star Trek…

I would just like to put it out there, I am not a huge Star Trek fan at all. So really after watching that really great movies this was kind of a let down. BUT IT’S OKAY!

Literally this was me the whole time. I won’t lie the episode was hard for me to really grasp but I know it really had to do with the fact that there was a huge language barrier the crew faced with the Tamarians. Picard does believe they can get past this but it will take patience and a little imagination. 

In this scene we really see Picard putting that to use. As he has spent more time with the Tamarian he begins to start to put things together until finally in this scene he realize what he is saying. “Temba, his arms wide” and throws the fire. Picard is able to put together that he is giving him this fire out of generosity. Picard essentially was able to to adapt their conceptual metaphor into his own based on his interaction with him. I mean it really just shows how our interactions and experiences and really mold and adapt our language and understanding of other languages. But again as Picard said it best it takes patience and imagination to get there.

I really did find it incredible how our body and interactions can really push us to understand when our minds can’t.

This module discusses cognitive linguistics and the link/relationship language has to the mind, body, and communication. Language is not only verbal but can be communicated and understood through the body, such as sign language, communicating with the hands, or behavioral and emotional cues shown with the whole body like tenseness if uncomfortable, tears if sad, or doubled over if in pain. Communication and language can also be understood from text like words in a book or braille; for the visually impaired. We learn how language is spoken and understood through two science fiction works, the movie Arrival and the television show Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Darmok.”

In the movie Arrival, a linguist professor, Louise Banks, is in the process of teaching a class when the news about the 12 objects that arrived on earth is reported. These objects, it turns out, are spaceships that carry alien beings. The professor is drafted by the army to learn to communicate with the beings to prevent destruction and war. These 12 unidentified flying objects are placed sporadically throughout the world, yet, different cultures with different languages all cognitively understand the significance of these appearances, and everyone is fearful or worried. The aliens in this movie do not speak any verbal earthly or alien language and cannot or will not assimilate into any sort. However, Louise decides they might understand better if she wrote the language rather than spoke it, and she has success. Louise writes humans and aliens respond with a few circle symbols, giving us the understanding they understand. Unlike humans, these beings seem semiotic because they process information in isolation to make sense of the written word. This process is to find a relation between their language and the human language, so they (aliens) can respond. Context cognitive linguistics is how we understand or have shared meaning; however, for these creatures, that is not the case. These aliens imitate Ian and Louise’s bodily actions to connect with them through bodily communication rather than verbal communication. However, they have no meaningful connection or understanding of the action. According to Ian, the alien’s symbols and meaning do not correlate in the movie. Ian also says that, unlike written human language, the symbols convey meaning but do not convey sound. This statement would lead one to believe that the way they might communicate with one another may also lack context cognition and maybe even empathy and emotion.

                                                        “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra”

“In my experience, communication is a matter of patience and imagination; I would like to believe we have these qualities in sufficient measure.” – Captain Picard.

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation, episode “Darmok,” Captain Picard and the Tamarian captain have been beamed down and stranded on a planet. Neither crew can rescue their respective captains, and like in previous encounters with the Tamarians and other federation ships, there is a communication barrier with no one understanding the other. Unfortunately, the language barrier creates some static between the captains. Still, as the night turns to the day, they begin to pick up physical clues from each other as both captains realize they have an enemy they must fight together. However, from the Tamarian captain’s initial response and the demand for a second knife, he knew of the danger on this planet, a danger he tried to warn Captain Picard about. As they stand against this enemy, Captain Picard realizes that the Tamarians speak in metaphor. In this module, we learn that metaphor is one of the primary ways we understand the world. These metaphors are anchored in our physical and cultural experiences, like the Tamarians and how they communicate. The Tamarians use visualization and situations from their culture and history to communicate what is occurring in the present. From the conversation between Picard and the Tamarian captain, it seems he is speaking in ego-moving metaphors rather than time-moving metaphors.

Both of these works were very entertaining and embodied (see what I did there) the point and lesson of this module. They proved that two people or two beings do not have to speak the same language to understand each other. Language can be conveyed through bodily context, metaphors, or symbols. Other ways of commuting do not include verbal linguistics or even the standard ways of verbally communicating.

Before I end, I want to say that Arrival, the movie reminds me of Independence Day because UFOs appeared in many locations worldwide without warning. In the scene where Captain Hiller (Will Smith) takes the alien that he knocked out to area 51, the scientist’s body is inhabited. The alien tells the president and those around cognitively through the scientist that they did not want peace, only destruction, and then this alien enters the president’s mind, and the president sees the destruction that takes place from planet to planet, with earth being next. This example is not really about this module it is more along the line with module 2 and the embedded cognition, but the aliens did not verbally communicate with one another they communicated telepathically and through signals; however, to communicate directly with the president, he used the cognitive linguistics of another human being.

Arrival

In the movie Arrival, Dr. Banks gets the idea to use a white board for visual communication, in order to find some understanding of the alien’s language. The aliens responded to this by providing their own visual aid, using their own system of symbols. 

Dr.  Banks explains the breakdown of language and finding out if the aliens are capable of understanding a question but how it’s important to learn what they understand before they can ask questions and understand their answers. 

My particular favorite interaction is when they’re learning the names of the different aliens based on what they showed them. They assigned them the names Abbott and Costello. During this scene, Dr. Louise Banks also takes off her hazmat gear stating the importance of showing her face when communicating. 

They’re called heptapods, and learn they are able to communicate many meanings through symbols with certain curves to them. 

A miscommunication in the words they chose to use, leads to the militaries across the globe to want to attack. This is also in part to the lens they’re using in the situation, to take everything as a threat.The heptapods said weapon when they meant tool, which connects back to the lecture where different cultures and languages use different words to communicate the same idea. 

I love and hate the moment (just because it’s so sad) where she gives her daughter a new meaning the word unstoppable, knowing she’d be getting this unstoppable disease and calling her daughter unstoppable and making it positive. 

I was shocked when I learned all the flashbacks were actually her seeing into the future and despite it all, despite knowing her daughter will one day die, her husband and her will separate, after adopting and teaching this language, she was able to operate the same way as the heptapods, who don’t see time as linear. 

“Darmok”

In the Star Trek Episode, “Darmok” they are going to encounter the Children of Tama. They continuously try to communicate with each other but neither is taking the time to see what the other’s language means. Similar to the film, there is the assumption that their words are meant to be aggressive but their body language doesn’t read as that at all. Troi points out that one misunderstanding could be detrimental. 

I was questioning the smarts of the captain for not figuring out the offer of the knife was not him trying to start a fight but he redeemed himself when he figured out the Tamarians speak in metaphors, but metaphors different from the metaphors referenced in the lecture. Dathon exclaims “…his eyes uncovered!” Which can be understood as meaning, he finally understands! 

We also learn that they use imagery from their experiences to speak about certain instances but with that, their ability to communicate using their language seems impossible since they don’t know the imagery being used since they haven’t experienced the thing itself which connects back to the lecture when discussing meaning. 

I enjoyed watching both Arrival and “Darmok.” Both demonstrated clear displays of the lecture material from concept of meaning, to conceptual metaphors, and frame shifting but were also entertaining. I wasn’t expecting to enjoy Arrival as much as I did!

Language is argued to be the key to thought.  The theory is that linguistics and  maybe an alien language, can think differently than us. Language comes from what we are taught and know.  If aliens speak differently and derived from elsewhere then maybe they think differently as well. “Arrival” makes you question this theory.  They hire Louise who studied languages and symbols dating back to Mayans.  The Heptapods we learn, the written and spoken do not correlate to each other the same way as human language.  Throughout the film she is trying to communicate with these Heptapods.  The scene where Louise is placed in this army tent just piecing together this language.  Although she is intelligent and it is a movie I have an argument. I feel that it would be needed to be solved within maybe months or years and not so quickly.  Her knowledge in the movie makes her the protagonist. We can determine that there can be consequences without having clear communication.  What I found interesting as well was when we see the bird used by scientists to test the shells.  Humans will often use an animal for testing to see if there are harmful gasses inside to explore it.  If the bird dies then there was probably toxins inside.  We can assume that we believe aliens are more intelligent than humans.  Our brains as humans are curious about the unknown and cautious. Overall great Scifi film!

In the episode entitled “Darmok,” the Enterprise is on-route to the El-Adrel system to make contact with a race called the Children of Tama. They realize the do not know the language making it difficult to communicate.  On the bridge Picard asks the offices “But are they truly incomprehensible? In my experience, communication is a matter of patience, imagination. I would like to believe that these are qualities that we have in sufficient measure.” The constant struggle leads them to almost destroying eachother because they cannot understand eachother. They come to a moment of clarity when the Tamarian captain see Picard cold that night on El-Adrel  surface. Seeing him struggle he gives Picard a branch and lights it for warmth. As a peace offering he says “Temba, his arms wide.” figuring out that it can be give and take and there is no war.

The important lesson I learned was how important understanding others and language really are.  Maybe we can stop and actually listen and understand what others say before jumping to conclusions.  Maybe there would be more peace in the world!

I was super excited for this weeks assigned “texts” as our professor puts it. Arrival has been on my “to watch” list for quite some time (more on that later) and as the child of an old-school trekkie, I was eager to finally watch some next gen.

As an English major, writer, and avid reader, language has been a huge part of my academic career as well as my hobbies. One of my major requirements was actually a History of the English Language class and though it was one of my least favorite classes in practice, learning about the linguistic growth of a language I worked so closely with was fascinating.

This was probably why I loved Story of Your Life so much when I read it during my first year at Stony Brook. For those of you who don’t know, Story of Your Life is the book that Arrival was based on. and in my opinion, the movie was a fair interpretation of the text ! Though I will say, non-linear plotlines read a lot easier on paper, which I think connects to the way Heptapod is read rather than spoken (though I think I remember it being spoken in the short story but that was two years ago and my memory is fuzzy.) The non-linear way the story was told mirrored the non-linear way the Heptapods communicated and thought. What I loved about the Heptapod language was that it was written in a circular form. The Heptapod’s non-linear way of perceiving time directly connects to the shape of their language. If time is being viewed as a circle, or a more three-dimensional shape in the case of the “gift,” it would make sense that language would be written in that way as well.

On the other side of things, in Darmok, the Tamarians express language through imagery and metaphor, connecting their situation and current state to a story or part of their history. It’s as if I decided to communicate only in references from one of my favorite television shows despite the fact that not everyone has seen it. Has anyone even heard of Pushing Daisies ? Anyway, the metaphorical way the Tamarians speak suggest a more abstract outlook on life. While the episode focuses mostly on the two captains learning to understand one another, if we take a step back and pull from the information we learned in Arrival we can infer that the Tamarians have a specific perception of the world.

The main argument of Arrival is explained using the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. This theory states that a persons language influences their perception of the world and their thought process. We can see this in the way the Heptapods view time. While we learn very little of the Tamarians, we’re told that “imagery is everything to them.” What must the world look like to someone who experiences life as one extended metaphor ?

The concept of language is very interesting. While one group of people understand words and sentences from a certain language, other groups might not understand the language and it can take us time to work together in order to understand each other. The act of understanding each other is expressed creatively in the movie “The Arrival” and the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Darmok”.

The first thing that I watched was “Arrival”, a film that was released in 2016, and was based on the 1998 novella “Story of Your Life”, and after watching the movie, I have to say that is an appropriate title. This movie was an experience to say the least. When I first started watching the film, I thought this was gonna be a simple alien invasion story, akin to “Independence Day”. But, as the movie continued, I realized that the flashbacks and the current story unfolding are being more interconnected, such as with “The Universal Language” book, and Ian being Louise’s husband.

Also, quick nerd fact before I continue, Ian is played by Jeremy Renner who played Hawkeye in “The Avengers”, and Colonel Weber is played by Forest Whitaker, who played Saw Gerrera from “Rouge One: A Star Wars Story”. I love how I first picked that up when I saw them on screen.

Anyway, back to the point, the film does a good job expressing the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. They even mentioned it by name in the movie. To sum it up, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is a hypothesis created back in 1929 by Edward Sapir and later endorsed by Benjamin Whorf. It is defined as “language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories”. This is shown well in the movie, especially near the end where Louise has Agent Halpern’s phone and is trying to call General Shang in China. Thanks to the Heptapods, they tell Louise that she has a weapon that can save their people, with that weapon being her and her memories. She used her mind to remember a future moment of her talking to General Shang and telling him his wife’s dying words, stopping him and his army from firing at the Heptapods. Their language determined Louise’s thoughts and actions.

Afterwards, I watched the Star Trek” The Next Generation episode called “Darmok”. After watching the original series episode and the next generation episode, I can see why people have debates on who’s better: Captain Kirk or Captain Picard. In this episode, captain Kirk and a Tamarian captain, who we later learn is named Dathon, and not Darmok like I thought, are stuck on the planet El-Adrel IV. Picard is unable to understand Captain Dathon, because even though he is speaking English, he’s speaking in phrases such as “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” and “Temba, his arms wide”. The one scene I want to focus on is the scene where Picard is speaking to the dying Dathon, finally understanding his language. Dathon and the other Tamarians show the best examples of Conceptual Metaphors. Conceptual Metaphors are defined as “anchored in our physical and cultural experience, which functions as the source domain for the the metaphors”. So, they use metaphors of previous events in their species’ history in order to explain what they want and mean. So, when Dathon states “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra”, its basically a metaphor for him and Picard becoming friends by fighting a common enemy, being the invisible monster on El-Adrel IV.

In this weeks films, cognitive linguistics was very much apparent. We noticed it because we had to for the assignment otherwise, we would have just watched the movie and episode without thinking about the relationship between mind, language, body, and communication.

Something that stood out to me a lot in this weeks VoiceThread was the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. In Arrival Louise explained the hypothesis as a theory that states “[the] language you speak determines how you think… it affects how you see everything” (Arrival 1.02). I really liked how the film explicitly used something we learned. I also really liked the hypothesis in general because it’s something that is true, but nobody thinks about because it’s such a normal thing. One only thinks about it when they come into contact with something different that isn’t like they’re used to.

In the film, the heptapods communicate using strange figures that the humans know nothing about. Louise is there helping to translate the symbols, but it’s difficult for her too. At one point the heptapods create a symbol that Louise translated to say “offer weapon.” Because of the cognitive linguistics and the cognitive frame that humans have, the scientists believed the heptapods were giving a warning and basically trying to accentuate danger. Louise was able to explain to the scientists that they don’t truly know if the heptapods know the difference between a weapon and a tool. Louise was objective and didn’t want to assume Abbott and Costello wanted to fight. She was aware that the creatures and humans obviously didn’t communicate in the same way.

 

 

 

 

 

In the Star Trek episode, it took me a little while to realize that the aliens that they encountered spoke in metaphors and not exactly English which is why the crew had trouble understanding. The captain Dathon told the captain of the crew “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” and this is actually a metaphor which means working together. They use events that have happened in Tamarian history to communicate how they feel and what they believe is happening.

In a similar way to Arrival, the strange beings didn’t use weapons in the same way humans, or Star Trek aliens, see weapons as. Dathon holding up two knives didn’t mean he wanted to fight, he was just trying to communicate.

In both films, strange beings are interacting with the “normal” characters. Communication played a huge role because both parties communicated differently. They had to figure out how to understand each other and to know the needs of the strange beings. Both respective parties and even readers saw just how important meaning in languages is embedded in the context of a person, or thing for the heptapods. Language is truly a remarkable form of communication that is so different, yet so similar depending on where it’s coming from.

“Meaning is not a deposit in a concept-container. It is alive and active, dynamic and distributed, constructed for local purposes of knowing and acting” (Mark Turner). We learned this week that the meaning of different words in languages are completely subjective. They are words that are created through social interactions, physical environments, and all the problems and solutions that follow each specific one. “Arrival” and Star Trek The Next Generation’s “Darmok” realize that language is not something that can be immediately understood by an outsider. There are many different factors that go into the creation and understanding of words in a new language.

The crew in Start Trek find themselves at a loss when trying to communicate with an alien race known as The Children of Tama. After failing to communicate as a group, the alien race would transport Picard and their captain to the planet’s surface in order to talk face to face. After continuously failing, Picard becomes cold after trying to start a fire for himself. Knowing that he would not sleep if Picard was cold, the alien takes a lit branch from his own fire and throws it at Picard while saying “Temba, his arms wide”. Even though Picard had no idea what the alien said, he knew that with his tone and politeness that the alien was only trying to help and become friends with him.

“Arrival” was a very interesting movie to watch for the first time. An alien race has landed in multiple different countries across the world and no one on Earth has the means to communicate with them. Top scientists and linguists from around the world are being summoned in order to understand why the aliens are on Earth and what their end goal is. After speaking in shrills and moans, linguist Louise Banks realizes that the best way for us to communicate with them is through written language. Showing the word “Human” to the aliens allowed them to realize that we were trying to communicate and they responded accordingly. When linguistics fail, simply touching or being in close proximity of another person displays trust and a want to be friendly. This is seen by Louise taking off her hazmat suit and placing her hand on the divider between her and the aliens. She wanted to show the aliens who they were really communicating with and that they only desired to learn about them.