⊑⊬⟊, ⎎⎅☌⊬⍜⍀: Alien Languages in Science Fiction
Maya Shaw
MA Thesis in Literature Spring 2021
Supervisor: Bo G. Ekelund
Language is a central concern of science fiction. From first contact to interstellar warfare, stories about aliens inevitably raise questions of communication. But how do we conceive of alien languages within the constraints of human language? And what do depictions of alien languages reveal about our own language use?
Several studies have established the significance and magnitude of the theme of language in (predominantly twentieth century western) science fiction. Building on these studies, I combine macro-analysis with close reading to argue that these alien languages fall on a spectrum of alterity.
Within this spectrum, I organise these languages into three distinct gradations of alterity: they help to define their speakers as alien people, creatures or inscrutable beings. The languages of alien
‘people’ are structurally similar to our own, and explore the socio-political relationship between language and culture. Those of ‘creatures’ are radically, physically unlike human languages and explore the boundary between humans, animals and aliens. Finally, the languages of ‘beings’ are incomprehensible and prone to spiritualisation. They bring to light the aspects of experience we deem beyond language.
This typology provides a framework through which to explore the major themes and questions regarding language, humanity and alterity in science fiction. By presenting these
categories in increasing degrees of alterity, I aim to demonstrate that language, like the figure of the alien, is a fundamentally anthropocentric concept. Each category identifies different facets of our language use that simultaneously alienate and define us.
Keywords: Science fiction; aliens; alterity; language; constructed languages
1. Introduction . . . 1
1.1. Thesis statement . . . 4
1.2. Methodology . . . 5
1.3. Literature review . . . 6
1.4. Structure . . . 8
2. Alien People and Humanoid Societies . . . 9
2.1. Aliens as people . . . 9
2.2. Language and society . . . 15
2.3. Language and humanity . . . 19
2.4. Summary . . . 24
3. Creatures, Beasts and Animals . . . 25
3.1. Aliens as animals . . . 25
3.2. Animals with language . . . 31
3.3. Humans without language . . . 34
3.4. Summary . . . 38
4. Trans-Dimensional Beings and Other Unknowable Entities . . . 40
4.1. Surrealist manifestations . . . 41
4.2. Spiritualised aliens . . . 45
4.3. The scientific unknown . . . 50
4.4. Summary . . . 55
5. Notable Exceptions . . . 56
6. Conclusion . . . 59
7. Works Cited . . . 61
8. Figures Cited . . . 70
1. More’s Utopian language . . . 2
2. The Pioneer plaque . . . 3
3. Elvish poem in The Fellowship of the Ring . . . 10
4. Klingon text . . . 10
5. ‘Welcome to America’ sticker . . . 13
6. ‘Code of Honour’ . . . 14
7. Ithkuil text . . . 22
8. Lojban diagram . . . 22
9. A Cardassian . . . 28
10. A Reptillian . . . 28
11. The Gorn . . . 28
12. Godzilla . . . 28
13. Xindi-Arboreal . . . 29
14. Xindi-Primate . . . 29
15. Xindi-Aquatic . . . 29
16. Xindi-Reptilian . . . 29
17. Xindi-Insectoid . . . 29
18. Nova from Planet of the Apes . . . 36
19. Roberto Matta, Morphology . . . 42
20. Cover of Expedition to Earth . . . 42
21. Cover of Davy . . . 42
22. Salvador Dalí, The Rotting Donkey . . . 43
23. Cover of Re-Birth . . . 43
24. Smith’s Martian language . . . 44
25. Martian alien . . . 44
27. André Masson, Automatic Drawing . . . 45
28. Cover of Whipping Star . . . 45
29. The Arecibo Message . . . 51
30. An angel in The Listeners . . . 52
31. The message from Capella in The Listeners . . . 52
32. An alien in The Listeners . . . 52
Introduction
In science fiction (sf), stories of first contact, spacefaring civilisations and alien invasions—in fact, any story that features an alien—must address the problem of interspecies communication. Some sf authors construct elaborate languages that embody the cultural values of their alien speakers. Others circumvent the problem of language altogether by using universal translators, telepathic implants and other magical devices. But the concept of an alien language is ultimately a paradox: aliens by nature defy humanity, while language is defined by it. So how do we imagine a language at odds with itself? What do literary representations of alien languages reveal about our own?
The relationship between sf and language goes back to the genre’s origins. One of the first constructed languages appears in Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), a proto-sf novel from which the term ‘utopia’ was coined. Utopia imagines a perfect society: all property is public, all food is free, 1 and its inhabitants speak ‘Utopian’, a fictional language based on Latin. Another prominent work of proto-sf, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver's Travels (1726), describes several fictional languages including Lilliputian, Blefuscudian, Brobdingnagian, Laputan, Luggnagg, and Houyhnhnm—the language of an intelligent horse race that sounds ‘nearest to the High Dutch or German … but is much more graceful and significant’. In these early examples language acts as a gateway to its speakers and 2 their world. Just as human languages are built on our morals and values, ‘alien’ languages represent ways of being that are fundamentally different to our own.
David W. Sisk, Transformations of Language in Modern Dystopias (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,
1
1997), 3.
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels and Other Writings, ed. Louis A. Landa (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
2
1960), 189.
Sf established itself as a genre in the 1920s. As short-form ‘pulp’ sf grew increasingly popular in the US, so too did the trope of alien languages. Ursula Le Guin notes that these pulp works gave rise to literary conventions of otherness that are built on our associations with language:
[W]hizzing through the distant galaxies in the thirtieth century, [heroes] were still Bob, and Buck, and Jack. Aliens were Xbfgg and Psglqkxxk, unless they were princesses, in which case they were Laweena or Zu-Zolla. If you’re creating a world out of words, and there are speaking creatures in it, you suggest a great deal—whether you mean to or not—by naming them. 3
Today, representations of alien languages are popular and diverse. Star Wars and Star Trek canonically feature hundreds of alien languages, whilst films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Contact (1997) and Arrival (2016) revolve entirely around achieving first
communicative contact between humans and aliens. Meanwhile, alien words, technobabble and other sf neologisms are increasingly being incorporated into contemporary discourse. The language
Ursula K. Le Guin, foreword to Encyclopedia of Fictional & Fantastic Languages by Tim Conley and
3
Stephen Cain (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006), xvii.
Fig. 1. More’s Utopian language.
of sf has regularly infiltrated spoken English—Jack Williamson coined the terms ‘terraform’,
‘android’, ‘psion’ and ‘genetic engineering’, while Isaac Asimov invented the word ‘robotics’. But 4 Istvan Csicsery-Ronay notes that beginning in the 1980s, ‘[w]ords rapidly crossed the science/
fiction boundary, with heavy traffic in both directions: cyberspace, wetware, bots, gene hacking, nanofog, memes, firewalls, virus programs, and so on.’ So alien languages are a cultural 5
phenomenon that extend beyond their sf niche.
The search for communicative contact with aliens is not just a literary preoccupation. There have, since the late twentieth century, been several scientific initiatives designed to make contact with extraterrestrial life. In 1972, Carl Sagan and Frank Drake launched the Pioneer plaque on the Pioneer 10 spacecraft. This was the first message to leave our solar system. Since then SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has used radio telescopes and satellites to actively search for alien communications. The world’s largest SETI radio observatory was declared fully
operational in 2020. 6
Damon Knight, In Search of Wonder: Essays on Modern Science Fiction (Chicago: Advent, 1967), 58.
4
Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University
5
Press, 2008), 18.
‘World's largest radio telescope starts formal operation’, Xinhua Net, accessed April 1, 2021, http://
6
www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-01/11/c_138696939.htm.
Fig. 2. The Pioneer plaque, designed to be intelligible to extraterrestrials. This message makes many presumptions about alien cognition,
but nonetheless paved the way for modern attempts at interspecies communication.
Many sf authors have been influenced by SETI, and some novels treat alien languages as a
scientific possibility. Nevertheless, fictional alien languages primarily offer a mirror to the workings of our own. Alongside the ‘linguistic turn’ of the mid-twentieth century, when philosophers and social scientists began to focus on the relationship between language and the world, the
proliferation of alien languages in sf repeatedly raises the questions: how do we define language?
Do we control language or does it control us? How can language create or restrict meaning? What lies beyond language? In essence these sf works explore how language functions as a precursor and product of human reality.
Thesis statement
In this thesis I will conduct a large-scale analysis of alien languages in sf. From proto-sf to contemporary novels, films and tv shows, I believe that these languages have a specific function:
not only do they identify their speakers as alien, they also signify the alien’s ontological status. Just as aliens are defined by their difference from humans, alien languages are constructed in relation to the norms of our own systems of communication. Consequently, I will argue that alien languages fall on a spectrum of alterity—from those closely resembling human languages to indecipherable, inhuman forms of communication. Within this spectrum, I propose that there are three major gradations of alterity: most alien languages define their speakers as people, creatures or inscrutable beings.
There are relatively few existing publications on alien languages since sf studies is itself a fairly modern discipline. Myra Edwards Barnes’ Linguistics and Languages in Science Fiction- Fantasy (1975), Walter E. Meyers’ Aliens and Linguists: Language Study and Science Fiction (1980) and most recently Tim Conley and Stephen Cain’s Encyclopedia of Fictional & Fantastic Languages (2006) each offer a catalogue of alien languages with summative descriptions and thematic analyses. Quantitatively these studies are huge in scope. But as compendiums none of them focusses on the relationship between language and speaker in depth. So the purpose of this thesis is to organise these constructed languages into a typology of distinct alien identities.
I have formed this typology inductively by analysing alien languages en masse and identifying the recurring similarities between them. Within these different forms of language, several patterns have emerged. Aliens that speak languages similar to humans’ are primarily depicted as our equals and express socio-political concerns; aliens that speak less familiar, less
intelligible languages are often referred to as ‘animals’ or ‘creatures’ regardless of their level of intelligence; and aliens that speak incomprehensible languages are often described in metaphysical terms. From these narrative patterns, it is clear that alien languages invoke anthropocentric
conceptions of otherness.
My aims for this thesis are thus twofold. Firstly, by presenting these languages along a spectrum of alterity, I hope to shed light on the anthropocentric values that underlie their construction in sf. These values correspond with older existential taxonomies such as the Great Chain of Being which suggests that anthropocentric ideals may be culturally ingrained in western thinking and art. Secondly, I aim to investigate the way in which these works estrange us from the process of communication, and reveal the aspects of our own language use that we find most alien.
The questions they raise about language invite philosophical, sociological and psychoanalytic perspectives. Beyond hobbyist invented languages and religious mythical tongues (which I will address later) sf as a literary genre presents us with a unique opportunity to explore such constructed languages.
Methodology
Throughout this thesis I will utilise both macro-analysis and close reading. Franco Moretti’s theory of distant reading is applicable here—in 2000, he wrote that distance ‘allows you to focus on units that are much smaller or much larger than the text: devices, themes, tropes—or genres and systems.
And if, between the very small and the very large, the text itself disappears, well, it is one of those cases when one can justifiably say, Less is more.’ To mitigate the latter half of Moretti’s approach, 7 I will analyse more complex examples in greater depth. But the scope of my argument, within the length of this paper, lends itself toward distant reading as the optimal approach.
A few justifications regarding method and literature selection: to begin, I have chosen not to address the question of what is and is not sf. I agree with Walter Meyers’ assertion that ‘the
definition of science fiction is a bog of opinion into which the academic criticism of the field too often sinks; each party to the argument draws its limits and cites its examples to no one’s real satisfaction.’ I have thus left the classification of my examples in the capable hands of the critics. 8
Franco Moretti, ‘Conjectures on World Literature’, in Debating World Literature, ed. Christopher
7
Prendergast (London: Verso, 2004), 57.
Walter E. Meyers, Aliens and Linguists: Language Study and Science Fiction (Athens, Georgia: University
8
of Georgia Press, 1980), 3.
The decision to omit fantasy fiction was partly due to the need to narrow down my research and partly due to my unfamiliarity with the genre. But there are undoubtedly constructed languages in fantasy fiction (J. R. R. Tolkien’s Elvish languages being a celebrated example) which warrant further study in their own right.
The majority of works discussed are American. The rest, barring a few examples, are written in English. Considering that my object of study is language, it is clear that a wider international selection of works would have provided additional depth to my research. How are alien languages influenced by the native languages of their inventors? Do different literary traditions affect
conceptions of aliens? These questions will remain unanswered due to constraints of time, scope and linguistic competence. The (in)accessibility of non-English sf also reflects larger issues regarding the national divisions between sf canons.
Finally, I am using the term ‘alien’ in a broad sense to mean that which is other, rather than exclusively referring to extraterrestrial life forms. Between political, legal, scientific and poetic definitions, alien is a term with no single fixed meaning, and often in sf the boundary between human and alien is so fluid that language is the only thing that separates the two. Some of the examples I discuss include fictive human civilisations that are somehow different or separate from human beings today—I am grouping their languages together with extraterrestrial languages on the basis of their alterity.
Literature review
Practically all modern publications about sf theory and history are built on the work of the founding critics of sf studies: J. G. Ballard’s notion of inner space, Carl Freedman’s Critical Theory and Science Fiction (2000), Frederic Jameson’s Archaeologies of the Future (2005)—to name a few.
Though I do not mention their work in this thesis, their theories have nonetheless informed my arguments. Of these major critics two have been invaluable. Donna Haraway’s ‘A Cyborg
Manifesto’ (1985) addresses the boundaries between humans, animals and machines, and proposes the figure of the cyborg as a transgressive fusion of these categories. Haraway’s concept of the cyborg draws attention to the changing nature of alterity, and is helpful in understanding aliens as hybrids between humans and the other. Darko Suvin’s Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (1979) has also been indispensable. Suvin asserts that sf is the ‘literature of cognitive estrangement’,
whereby new ideas, ‘novums’, estrange us from our everyday realities. The theory of cognitive 9 estrangement is inherent to depictions of alien languages, which explore aspects of our own languages by reframing them as alien.
Walter Meyers’ anthology of alien languages, Aliens and Linguists: Language Study and Science Fiction (1980), is arguably the seminal work on alien languages to date. I am yet to find an article on the subject written since that does not refer back to this book. Meyers analyses hundreds of constructed languages in sf (384 by my count) and compiles them by theme, breaking down the historical trends behind them. He also discusses several influential linguistic theories, as well as the linguistic accuracy of more complex languages like Klingon and Elvish. In doing so he paints a comprehensive picture of the development of constructed languages in twentieth century sf.
Because it is such a broad study, Meyers focusses on how and why each language was constructed rather than how we as readers interpret them. So while the book does not address the philosophical implications of constructed languages, it does establish the cultural relevance of linguistics in sf. For this reason—and its massive range of examples—this book has been fundamental to my research.
As for sf theory, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay’s The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction (2008) provided the major critical assumptions throughout this paper. For Csicsery-Ronay, sf is not a single body of literature but represents a mode of thinking about social reality. His ‘seven beauties’—the seven major themes, or narratives, of sf literature—each address different philosophical and cultural questions surrounding sf. In his own words, he delineates sf ‘as a product of the convergence of social-historical forces that has led to the current global hegemony of technoscience’ and ‘as a ludic framework … in which that hegemony is entertained, absorbed, and resisted.’ 10
Csicsery-Ronay does not discuss alien languages, but in contrast to Meyers’ Aliens and Linguists, our expectations of, and responses to sf motifs are analysed in depth. Of the seven beauties, three have been germane to my research: ‘fictive neology’ addresses the relationship between language, newness and unfamiliarity in sf, while the ‘science-fictional sublime’ and
‘science-fictional grotesque’ examine our reactions to alien bodies both celestial and visceral. These categories helped shape my own typology of alien languages. Many of the social issues Csicsery-
Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre (New
9
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), 4.
Csicsery-Ronay, The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction, 10.
10
Ronay brings up (modernisation, technologisation, culture vs subculture) are the major driving conflicts behind constructed languages in fiction.
For the history of language construction in general, I have found Marina Yaguello’s Lunatic Lovers of Language: Imaginary Languages and Their Inventors (1991) to be both informative and provocative. The lunatic lovers of language in question are mystics, mediums and obsessive amateurs who are driven to invent new languages. Yaguello studies several prominent language inventors throughout history, and closely observes the structure and semiotics of each language, as well the motivations behind such laborious, idiosyncratic work. Her most ambitious claims are the most persuasive—by connecting imaginary languages with religious languages, myths, dreams and utopia, Yaguello draws attention to the unconscious fantasies that private languages bring into being. This book provided rare, archived resources on artificial religious languages; more
importantly, it helped me situate alien languages within a larger tradition of language construction.
Structure
This thesis is divided into three main sections presented in increasing gradations of alterity. In the first section I discuss the languages of ‘Alien People and Humanoid Societies’. These languages closely resemble our own: they are structurally, grammatically, semantically similar to existing languages, and are spoken by intelligent members of humanoid civilisations. They are often used to explore socio-political arrangements analogous to those of historical and present Terran societies.
These languages are typically presented alongside a human (in these cases English) translation.
The second degree of alterity is found in the languages of ‘Creatures, Beasts and Animals’.
These forms of communication are distinctly unlike human languages—they might be ‘spoken’
through different senses or alien limbs—and their speakers are closer to animals, raising the question of the human-animal boundary. These languages are simultaneously more alien and more instinctual, being closer to the body. They often remain partially or entirely untranslated.
The third alterity focusses on ‘Trans-Dimensional Beings and Other Unknowable Entities’.
The languages of such entities are incomprehensible, and their speakers are often depicted as metaphysical, spiritual beings. These languages reflect the ways in which we apprehend the unknown, and resonate with innate, unconscious experiences. They cannot be translated.
Along this spectrum of alterity, there are some languages that lie between these three categories. After these main sections I discuss a few such ‘Notable Exceptions’.
Alien People and Humanoid Societies
‘Cignoro hrobosa sukares hin mange la pchagavas doi me kamavas na beslas lele pal hrobas’.
Translation: perhaps these are the strangers that we seek. So says a warrior in Frank Herbert’s 11 Dune (1965) in the constructed alien language Chakobsa. In terms of syntax, phonology and meaning, Chakobsa is indistinguishable from any human language. So beyond its semantics or sentiment, what does this language tell us about its speaker?
Like Chakobsa, the majority of alien languages in sf closely resemble our own. They can be spoken, written, and have some form of grammar and vocabulary. In turn, their speakers are usually of comparable intelligence to humans and are generally depicted as our equals. Aliens frequently allegorise human affairs—as scientist Loren Eiseley somewhat conservatively argues, ‘[i]n the modern literature on space travel I have read about cabbage men and bird men; I have investigated the loves of lizard men and the tree men, but in each case I have labored under no illusion. I have been reading about man’. In the same allegorical tradition, aliens that speak humanoid languages 12 reframe the social issues that arise from our own language use. Between individual, societal and universal discourses, a critical issue that runs through these fictions is how language functions as an instrument of power.
Aliens as people
The most well known and highly developed fictional languages are arguably Elvish from The Lord of the Rings and Klingon from Star Trek. Built around the fictional traditions of their speakers, both of these languages have greater cultural depth and linguistic complexity than many other
constructed languages. J. R. R. Tolkien spent over 60 years rigorously detailing and revising his Elvish languages, the most famous of which are Quenya (High-elven) and Sindarin (Grey-elven).
Besides the technical rules of Elvish, Tolkien also developed various dialects, cultural histories and diachronic evolutions for each language. Fans and linguists alike regard Tolkien’s work as the absolute apex of conlanging —Walter Meyers writes that ‘Tolkien’s great trilogy, together with 13
Frank Herbert, Dune (New York: Berkely, 1965), 278.
11
Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey (New York: Random House, 1946), 158.
12
Conlanging: the creation of constructed languages. Conlangers can range from amateur hobbyists to
13
internationally renowned philologists.
The Hobbit and The Silmarillion, is a full embodiment of historical linguistics’ highest aims.’ 14 Klingon, created by American linguist Marc Okrand, is a much younger but equally formidable language. Although Klingon was deliberately designed to be difficult for English speakers, its popularity exceeds its pretensions. Duolingo offers a course in Klingon but not in Bengali, the fifth most spoken language in the world; meanwhile organisations like the Klingon Language Institute are actively translating works of Shakespeare and the Bible. 15
These languages have been adopted by the mainstream because they are, in fact, so un-alien. They can be learned and used in real life and allow fans to immerse themselves in fictional cultures; to sing Klingon opera, to read Elvish poetry. But functional languages are extremely rare in sf given how much time and expertise it takes to construct them. So, short of inventing an entire lexicon, how do authors use language to represent culture?
This question has been central to sf since its conception. In the early days of sf, when the majority of stories were published in magazines like Amazing Stories and Astounding Science Fiction, alien cultures were rarely depicted in great detail. Most aliens were just like humans who happened to be born on Mars, or Jupiter, or the planet Xrtppfg; and if they did speak alien
languages, they would often exaggerate specific human traits or values. There are several narrative
Meyers, Aliens and Linguists, 156.
14
‘KLI Projects’, The Klingon Language Institute, accessed April 1, 2021, https://www.kli.org/activities/kli-
15
projects/.
Fig. 4. Klingon text. ‘Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam’: it is a good day to die.
Fig. 3. Opening lines of the Elvish poem ‘Namárië’ in The Fellowship of the Ring:
‘Ah! like gold fall the leaves in the wind / long years numberless as the wings of trees!’
tropes in early sf that use language to anthropomorphise aliens this way—but each conveys different philosophies depending on which human traits are represented.
One such trope is wholly positive. Humans encounter an alien language which seems unintelligible at first, but once they decipher the language they uncover the (humanoid) culture of its speakers. One of the earliest first contact stories, ‘Old Faithful’ (1934) by Raymond Z. Gallun, actually reverses this trope: a Martian discovers an intergalactic broadcast in morse code. From simple mathematics to basic greetings, the Martian decrypts the code and eventually communicates with humans on Earth. H. Beam Piper’s ‘Omnilingual’ (1957) follows a similar narrative: 16
archeologists on Mars are attempting, with little success, to decipher the Martian language. That is until they discover a table of elements: ‘if davas is the word for metal, and sornhulva is chemistry and/or physics, I'll bet Tadavas Sornhulva is literally translated as: Of-Metal Matter-Knowledge.
Metallurgy, in other words.’ And while cryptographic alien languages are most commonly found 17 in early sf, they occasionally feature in modern works as well. In the episode ‘Darmok’ of Star Trek:
The Next Generation (1991), Captain Picard must learn to communicate with an alien whose
language consists entirely of folkloric allegories such as ‘Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra’ and ‘Shaka, when the walls fell’. 18
These languages may be cryptic in form, but once deciphered they reveal how similar human and alien civilisations could be. It is not entirely unrealistic to imagine that aliens might share certain human ideals—according to sf writer Justin Lieber, interspecies communication could not take place without ‘a shared scientific grasp of the basic character of the universe and of the logic and mathematics required in understanding it.’ But these stories indulge in a fantasy of universal 19
This summary may sound fanciful, but Gallun’s depiction of interspecies communication has a scientific
16
basis. In 1960 the constructed language ‘Lincos’ was designed to be understood by aliens with no knowledge of human languages. Lincos would broadcast repeated pulses via radio transmissions, ‘teaching’ aliens numerical values, then propositional calculus, then questions and finally concepts—just as the Martian learns morse code in ‘Old Faithful’. A message in Lincos dubbed the ‘Cosmic Call’ was broadcasted from Ukraine in 1999. Daniel Oberhaus, Extraterrestrial Languages (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2019), 96-98.
H. Beam Piper, ‘Omnilingual’, in Where Do We Go from Here?, ed. Isaac Asimov (Garden City, NY:
17
Doubleday, 1971), 393-394.
Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 5, episode 2, ‘Darmok’, directed by Winrich Kolbe, aired
18
September 30, 1991.
Justin Lieber, ‘Extraterrestrial Translation’, Galileo: Magazine of Science and Fiction Vol. 7 (1978): 20.
19
humanism. The aliens are rational, ethical and personable. As Yvonne says upon meeting the Martian in ‘Old Faithful’, ‘[h]e’s human, Jack—human in everything but form.’ 20
Other tropes are more pessimistic. Aliens are depicted as unsympathetic characters or crude antagonists. As products of early twentieth century xenophobia, their use of language reflects contemporaneous stereotypes of race, culture and humanity. In order to recognise the scope of these stereotypes, it is worth revisiting the socio-political context surrounding early sf. The legal term
‘alien’ emerged out of nativist foreign policies—so how did this influence alien characters in sf?
As a genre built on utopian and dystopian fiction—which, in the first volume of the first sf magazine, was christened ‘educational literature’ —sfnal social commentary is often heavy-21
handed. During the late 1800s colonialism and immigration were pressing social issues, and in early sf many depictions of aliens and their languages either criticise or perpetuate colonialist narratives.
Some critics have argued that sf is literarily tied to imperialist interests: John Rieder points out that early sf was largely inspired by travel writing and lost-world fictions in which European travellers encounter non-European civilisations. Istvan Csiceray-Ronay writes that today, ‘[t]he dominant sf 22 nations’, those that have produced the most sf over the past century, ‘are precisely those that
attempted to expand beyond their national borders in imperialist projects: Britain, France, Germany, Soviet Russia, Japan, and US’. 23
So sf narratives cannot be isolated from the political contexts that birthed them—and in the west ideas about race and language foreshadowed sf narratives before the genre existed. During the nineteenth century many social scientists sought to ‘prove’ the biological inferiority of non-white races, adopting Darwinist theories to legitimise racial hierarchies and eugenics. Meanwhile, the 24 idea of ethnic purity was popularised by Arthur de Gobineau’s Essay on the Inequality of Human Races (1853) which warned against the dangers of miscegenation, asserting that Aryans—hitherto a linguistic category of Indo-European language speakers—were the superior race.
Raymond Z. Gallun, ‘Old Faithful’, Astounding Stories, December 1934, 128. Then again, Yvonne may be
20
particularly liberal—she also opines that ‘[h]uman or not, I hope the Martians are handsome’. Ibid., 124.
Hugo Gernsback, ‘A New Art of Magazine’, Amazing Stories, April 1926, 3.
21
John Rieder, Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction (Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University
22
Press, 2008), 2.
Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, ‘Science Fiction and Empire’, Science Fiction Studies Vol. 30, No. 2 (2003): 231.
23
See: Isiah Lavender III, Race in American Science Fiction (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2011),
24
41-52.
The term ‘alien’ was first used in an official capacity in 1798 when the American Alien Act was passed, making it easier to detain and deport immigrants. But ‘alien’ quickly became a catch-all for ‘foreign’; around the fin de siècle, American politicians proposed national literacy tests to expose the races ‘most alien to the great body of the people of the United States.’ Marina Yaguello 25 notes that during this time, ‘[h]ybrid languages, pidgins and creoles were … seen as outstanding examples of impure languages’. And the English-only movement, which also originated in the 26 1800s, is still an active organisation—Donald Trump insisted just five years ago that in America
‘we speak English, not Spanish.’ 27
Most early sf novels used the power of allegory to condemn racist politics—H. G. Wells in particular is known for his anti-imperialism. But some sf tropes clearly carried colonialist undertones, with primitive aliens speaking inferior languages. John Rieder discusses two prime examples. In The Red One (1918) by Jack London, an explorer discovers a civilisation that
Henry Cabot Lodge, ‘The Restriction of Immigration’, in Speeches and Addresses, 1884-1909 (Boston:
25
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1909), 247.
Marina Yaguello, Lunatic Lovers of Language: Imaginary Languages and Their Inventors, trans. Catherine
26
Slater (London: The Athlone Press, 1991), 50.
Shane Goldmacher, ‘Trump’s English-only campaign’, Politico, accessed April 1, 2021, https://
27
www.politico.com/story/2016/09/donald-trumps-english-only-campaign-228559.
Fig. 5. ‘Welcome to America’ sticker sold in Colorado.
worships a giant red orb in the sky. The sound of the orb is likened to ‘the trump of an archangel’. 28 As for the natives, ‘he had not understood their language, if by language might be dignified the uncouth sounds they made to represent ideas’. Another example, Stanley Weinbaum’s ‘A Martian 29 Odyssey’ (1934) was so popular that Isaac Asimov declared that ‘[w]ith this single story, Weinbaum was instantly recognized as the world's best living science fiction writer’. A human explorer and 30 his English-speaking Martian companion discover an alien species that possesses magical healing crystals. They try, but fail to communicate with these aliens who cannot understand the English language. This naturally leaves the explorers no choice but to plunder the crystals. According to Rieder, ‘the plot's resolution ultimately turns not on recognizing otherness or even gathering knowledge but rather on the narrator's transgressively reaping a kind of windfall profit, valorizing the colonial investment in the venture of exploration’. 31
Today, colonialist motifs in sf are outdated—but not, as the image above shows, completely obsolete. In the aforementioned stories the figure of the alien is inevitably tied to nativist politics;
and their languages, essentially resembling foreign languages, reflect a political history of
Jack London, The Red One (New York: Macmillan, 1918), 1.
28
Ibid., 16.
29
Isaac Asimov, Introduction to The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum (New York, Ballantine Books, 1974), 7.
30
Rieder, Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction, 58.
31
Fig. 6. A modern take on a timeworn trope. In the episode
‘Code of Honour’ of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987), Picard encounters some savage extraterrestrials.
Image withheld for copyright reasons.
dehumanisation. Whether an alien is imbued with the ideals of humanity or reduced to a racial stereotype, these early sf tropes demonstrate that language is an instrument of power. The question is, who wields it?
Language and society
By the 1950s sf had outgrown its Astounding origins. Authors were no longer restricted to writing magazine stories and could now publish novels with more ambitious, complex narratives. Alien languages began to be used to question, rather than reinforce assumptions about language and civilisation. What if we were not the masters of language but were in fact controlled by it?
Dystopian fictions were the first to critically examine the power that language has over society. David Sisk writes that during the twentieth century, dystopian narratives ‘universally reveal a central emphasis on language as the primary weapon with which to resist oppression, and the corresponding desire of repressive government structures to stifle dissent by controlling
language.’ Take Yevgency Zamayatin's We (1924), in which a totalitarian state replaces people’s 32 names with designated numbers, or George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), in which the official language Newspeak renders ‘all other modes of thought impossible.’ If freedom cannot be 33 described, it no longer exists; as Walter Meyers agues, ‘if a society promotes the control of thought or language, we judge the society, on those grounds, to be a dystopia.’ 34
But is linguistic control always oppressive? In the wake of these dystopian novels many sf works questioned how, and to what end a language might influence an alien society. Many of these novels were strongly influenced by the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, a linguistic theory of the 1950s.
The theory, in essence, argues that language shapes perception—that we are limited to the thoughts our language allows us. Viewed globally, the corollary is that different cultural worldviews actually stem from the structure and grammar of their languages. By the 1980s, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis had largely fallen out of favour. But for sf writers, this remained one of the most influential theories of the twentieth century. 35
Sisk, Transformations of Language in Modern Dystopias, 2.
32
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (London: Penguin, 1989), 312.
33
Meyers, Aliens and Linguists, 198.
34
Myra Edwards Barnes, Linguistics and Languages in Science Fiction-Fantasy (New York: Arno Press,
35
1975), 143-144.
Dystopian assumptions about social engineering and mental programming were now passé.
Instead, several sf works from this era depict linguistic control as the manipulation of an innate process. For example, in The Languages of Pao (1958) by Jack Vance, a scientist, Lord Palafox, seeks to control the planet Pao. He does so by creating several different languages that segregate Paonese society into utilitarian sects: the military are taught Valiant, where ‘pleasure’ and
‘overcoming a resistance’ are synonymous, as are ‘relaxation’ and ‘shame’; industrialists are 36 taught Technicant, and scientists Cogitant. ‘Think of a language as the contour of a watershed’, Palafox says, ‘stopping flow in certain directions, channeling it into others. … When people speak different languages, their minds work differently and they act differently.’ Similarly, in Ursula Le 37 Guin’s The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974) the anarcho-syndicalist Odonians construct the politicised language Pravic, which uses the same word for ‘work’ and ‘play’ and lacks 38
personal pronouns. Both novels imagine how easily language might shape identity—but more 39 fundamentally, they draw attention to the fact that language can never be neutral. Personal identity and public ideology reinvent one another through the construction of discourse.
Who then does language really belong to? And what if certain groups are excluded from this discursive system? These questions are central to Suzette Haden Elgin’s dystopian novel Native Tongue (1984), which details the process of language construction and thus merits extended discussion. In Native Tongue, Earth is an intergalactic power and all alien trade deals and political negotiations are conducted by interspecies linguists. But scientific progression is countered by societal regression, and women have been reduced to second-class citizens due to their ‘natural limitations’. Life is particularly hard for female linguists who must learn and translate hundreds of 40 alien languages whilst homemaking and childrearing. When they can no longer have children they are sent away to ‘Barren House’. It is here that the women develop the constructed language, Láadan.
Jack Vance, The Languages of Pao (St Albans: Mayflower, 1974), 58.
36
Ibid., 47-48.
37
Ursula Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (New York: HarperCollins, 1974), 92.
38
When authors depict alien languages, they often simply omit first person pronouns. Such languages are
39
frequently dystopian—in David Karp’s One (1953), people refer to themselves in the third person, and likewise in Ayn Rand’s Anthem (1938) there is no word for ‘I’. Elsewhere it’s done to exaggerate the
‘alienness’ of a language, as in Samuel R. Delaney’s Babel-17 (1966) which I discuss further on. Considering that languages like Japanese rarely use personal pronouns, it could be argued that these conceptions of alterity reflect westernised philosophies: humanity is equated with individualism, freedom and other neoliberal ideals.
Suzette Haden Elgin, Native Tongue (New York: The Feminist Press, 2019), chap. 1, Kindle.
40
Láadan was a real linguistic experiment—Elgin, a linguist, devised the language in order to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. In A First Dictionary and Grammar of Láadan (1988) she
describes the project as ‘a language constructed by a woman, for women, for the specific purpose of expressing the perceptions of women’. How does one go about doing this? In Native Tongue, we 41 learn that Láadan is made up of ‘encodings’, ‘a name for a chunk of the world that so far as we know has never been chosen for naming before in any human language’. Listed in the appendix 42 are words like ‘radama: to non-touch, to actively refrain from touching’; ‘radamalh: to non-touch with evil intent’; ‘óothanúthul: spiritual orphanhood’ and so on. This language was not the first of 43 its kind—Brian Aldiss’ short story ‘Confluence’ (1967) features words like ‘CANO LEE MIN:
Things sensed out-of-sight that will return’ and ‘MAL: A feeling of being watched from within’. 44 But Láadan is explicitly political, and the women of Barren House hope that by speaking a language
‘that expresses the perceptions of women rather than those of men, reality will begin to change.’ 45 Láadan as a language raises far more problems than solutions. There is clearly no end to chunks that have not yet been named. But Láadan does suggest that something is missing from ordinary language; that language accommodates certain kinds of expression over others. David Sisk argues that ‘Elgin takes the Whorfian hypothesis to its logical, if grim, conclusion: forcing women to use languages totally unsuited to communicating their perceptions is an act of oppression’. But 46 is language so inexorably masculine that it excludes ‘women’s perceptions’? Why else might someone feel that a language is not their own?
Language is inevitably tied up with discourse, and several social theorists have questioned who discourse is constructed by, and whom it benefits. Michel Foucault argues that discourse dictates our values, morals and social reality; but discourse itself has been generated by people in power at certain points in history, despite their attempts to disguise the fact. Jean-François Lyotard 47 similarly theorises that reality is understood through ‘grand narratives’. These narratives make
Suzette Haden Elgin, A First Dictionary and Grammar of Láadan, ed. Diane Martin (Madison, WI:
41
Society for the Furtherance and Study of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1988), 1.
Elgin, Native Tongue, chap. 2.
42
Ibid., appendix.
43
Brian Aldiss, ‘Confluence’, Punch, August 30, 1967, 297.
44
Elgin, Native Tongue, chap. 20.
45
Sisk, Transformations of Language in Modern Dystopias, 119.
46
Michael Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge and The Discourse on Language, trans. A. M. Sheridan
47
Smith (New York: Pantheon, 1972), 128.
history more coherent, but subsequently legitimise particular kinds of knowledge over others. 48 According to these theories, ruling discourses claim to be objective truths whilst carrying an agenda
—this is the guiding principle behind all social engineering sf novels. But in Native Tongue, and for Elgin constructing Láadan, this (misogynistic) agenda permeates every aspect of English. Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of language explains, in concrete terms, how discourses of power impact individual, everyday language use. He argues that language operates on specific markets of linguistic exchange:
Linguistic exchange … is also an economic exchange which is established within a
particular symbolic relation of power between a producer, endowed with a certain linguistic capital, and a consumer (or a market), and which is capable of procuring a certain material or symbolic profit. In other words, utterances are not only (save in exceptional
circumstances) signs to be understood and deciphered; they are also signs of wealth,
intended to be evaluated and appreciated, and signs of authority, intended to be believed and obeyed. 49
Different elements of linguistic practice—pronunciation, accent, vocabulary, clothing, posture—
have different symbolic values. People with the most symbolic capital uphold the notion of a
‘legitimate’ linguistic competence, so that they can control and ultimately exclude others from the profits available on the dominant linguistic markets. In this view, there is no single language but a 50 hierarchy of linguistic practices that reinforce one another—and this, I think, sheds light on the appeal of constructed languages like Láadan. Out of all human and alien languages in Native
Tongue, those spoken by women have the least social capital; women’s languages such as ‘Langlish’
are presumed to be frivolous imitations of English. Though Elgin herself would perhaps disagree, the fact that Láadan is comprised entirely of words with no English equivalent seems to point to a desire to escape the linguistic market and the ruling discourses within it, rather than a need for femininity.
Láadan is decidedly political compared to many other constructed languages in sf. But outside of fiction, constructed languages have traditionally been associated with subcultures and liberation.
Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and
48
Brian Massumi, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), xxiii–xxiv.
Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, trans. Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson (Oxford:
49
Polity Press, 1991), 66.
Ibid., 68-70.
50
In Britain, sociolects like cockney rhyming slang and Polari were specifically designed to elude authorities, whilst today, memes, neopronouns and identity markers form a new kind of social currency. Istvan Csicsery-Ronay argues that these new, independent discourses have the potential to transform the way we measure power through language:
Subcultures strive to keep pace with transformations in society at large by absorbing them into their alternative universes of discourse, and revaluing them … the terms that might once have been used to establish playful and distinctive shibboleths of particular groups may attain currency across dissolving subcultural boundaries. With each transformation, political power is redistributed, dissipated, and reconsolidated. The creation of language is a source of power. 51
Csicsery-Ronay describes dominant and peripheral discourses as though they form a dynamic ecosystem. But is power so readily redistributed? Just as capitalist frameworks and emerging subcultures are yoked in a cycle of resistance and re-assimilation, oppositional languages like Láadan are ultimately limited to the lacunae defined by English. Bourdieu writes that the official state language ‘becomes the theoretical norm against which all linguistic practices are objectively measured.’ Similarly, it seems that any language constructed in relation to an authorised standard 52 will inevitably carry some aspects of the discourse, and the complex social currencies, within it.
Language and humanity
The novels discussed above imagine how the construction of language might affect the construction of society. But what if an alien language could rewrite the nature of human cognition itself? Further along the spectrum of alterity are languages closer to those of robots and machines. These
languages are used to explore post-human forms of cognition, and thus present a distinct form of alterity that lies on the border between human and inhuman. Nevertheless, they are typically situated in humanoid societies, and their speakers are depicted as our optimised counterparts.
Alongside philosophical and logical constructed languages outside of fiction, these works raise the question: how can language change the form, rather than content of human experience?
Mechanisation has long been a theme in sf, and in many works advanced alien beings are so cerebral that they resemble machines (Vulcans from Star Trek are a famed example). Several sf
Csicsery-Ronay, The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction, 18.
51
Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 45.
52
novels use constructed mechanised languages to bridge the gap between human and superhuman intelligence. In Robert A. Heinlein’s ‘Gulf’ (1949) the language Speedtalk is so compact that ‘one phonetic symbol was equivalent to an entire word in a “normal” language; one Speedtalk word was equal to an entire sentence.’ In Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson’s novel Starchild (1965) 53 humans learn Mechanese, an economic language spoken by machines. And in Iain M. Banks’ The Player of Games (1988) and other novels of the Culture series, the Culture speak Marain, a binary language created by sentient AIs called Minds.
These languages imply that the faster you can convey information, the faster you can think it;
the more precise the statement, the more truthful its meaning. It is clear that mechanised languages are ideally suited towards logical assertions. But how might such a language fit in or change human culture? One of the earliest and most well-known sf novels about language, cognition and culture is Samuel R. Delaney’s Babel-17 (1966), which like Native Tongue is highly conceptual and warrants more detailed discussion. Babel-17 begins during an interstellar war between the Alliance and the Invaders. Rydra Wong, an intergalactically renowned poet, commands an intelligence operation to decode the Invaders’ alien language, Babel-17. But the language itself is a weapon—it induces an unemotional, tactical state of mind—which ultimately reprograms Rydra into a militarised pawn.
Babel-17 is ‘the most analytically exact language imaginable.’ When thinking in Babel-17 54 time slows down and any given situation can be broken down into its possible causes and effects.
Delaney was ‘a die-hard believer in the Sapir-Whorf’ at the time of writing, and Rydra often 55 echoes this philosophy in the novel: ‘[i]f you don’t have the words, you can’t know the ideas.’ If 56 we accept the basic premise that language constitutes reality, it is not unreasonable to assume that a language like Babel-17 could reprogram Rydra’s neural pathways. At one point Rydra is trapped in a giant web, but is able to escape by thinking in Babel-17:
She looked down at the—not ‘webbing’ but rather a three particle vowel differential, each part of which defined one stress of the three-way tie, so that the weakest points in the mesh
Robert A. Heinlein, ‘Gulf’, Astounding Science Fiction, December 1949, 66.
53
Samuel R. Delaney, Babel-17 (New York: Vintage Books, 2001), 210.
54
Samuel R. Delaney, ‘The Art of Fiction No. 210’, interview by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, The Paris Review
55
Issue 197 (Summer 2011): https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6088/the-art-of-fiction-no-210-samuel- r-delany.
Delaney, Babel-17, 150.
56
were identified when the total sound of the differential reached its lowest point. By breaking the threads at these points, she realized, the whole web would unravel. 57
Unlike politically constructed languages such as Pravic and Láadan, Babel-17 is devoid of any cultural identity. In fact, it prevents the expression of personal subjectivity—Babel-17 has no word for ‘I’ (which in the novel makes subjective thought impossible). Nonetheless, some see this language as a form of liberation. Carl Malmgren argues that Babel-17 is a unifying force, ‘a language with which to heal the breaches between alienated and isolated human beings’: 58
In every key episode of the novel … the formula is the same: Rydra moves from a language frame in which reality is constrictive or uncertain or exigent through the language frame of Babel-17 to a new reality in which obstacles are overcome, dangers neutralized, conflicts resolved. At the global level of macro plot … ultimate mastery of Babel-17 means an end to the devastating intergalactic war. 59
It might seem odd that such an inhuman language is associated with human unity. But Babel-17 and other mechanised, logical languages in sf reflect an older tradition of universal language
construction. David J. Peterson, the inventor of Dothraki and Valyrian from Game of Thrones, among other languages, notes that as early as 1657 Cave Beck proposed an international, numerical language in his book The Universal Character. Peterson sums up Beck’s language system: ‘if 60 q317 is bold, then qq317 is bolder and qqq317 is boldest, but there it stops. I think he really missed out here, as it would be incredible to describe a mighty warrior as qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq- q317’. 61
More recently, several conlangers have designed logical languages that are not only universal, but like the languages of sf, aim to shape the thoughts of their speakers. In 1955 sociologist James
Ibid., 113.
57
Carl Malmgren, ‘The Languages of Science Fiction: Samuel Delaney’s Babel-17’, Extrapolation Vol. 34,
58
No. 1 (1993): 11.
Ibid., 10.
59
Beck’s concise language has undeniable advantages. The book’s full title reads: The Universal Character,
60
by which all Nations in the World may understand one another's Conceptions, Reading out of one Common Writing their own Mother Tongues. An Invention of General Use, the Practise whereof may be Attained in two Hours’ space, Observing the Grammatical Directions. Which Character is so contrived, that it may be Spoken as well as Written.
David J. Peterson, The Art of Language Invention (New York: Penguin, 2015), introduction, Kindle.
61
Cooke Brown (who went on to write the sf novel The Troika Incident in 1970) created the logical conlang Loglan. It has since been developed into Lojban, a complete, speakable language.
Similarly, John Quijada (who also wrote his first sf novel Beyond Antimony in 2011) developed the conlang Ithkuil in 1978. Ithkuil is designed to facilitate logical thinking; it conveys philosophical concepts concisely and precisely.
Both Loglan and Ithkuil are intended as international tools for philosophical thought. But sf works use logical languages to envision the evolutionary potential of human cognition. The paradox of these languages is that they are simultaneously universal and incompatible with ordinary human
Fig. 8. A diagram representing grammar in Lojban.
A ‘luvjo’ is a verb made of affixes.
Fig. 7. Ithkuil. Pronunciation: Tram-mļöi hhâsmařpţuktôx.
Translation: ‘on the contrary, I think it may turn out that this rugged mountain range trails off at some point.’
experiences. Like sf stories about androids, robots, AI and the singularity, technologisation is often used as a metaphor for depersonalisation; at the same time, cybernetic humanoids like the Borg from Star Trek claim that ‘by assimilating other races into our collective, we are bringing them closer to perfection’. In this way, these efficient languages speak to the ambivalent myth of the 62 perfectibility of humankind.
Today this is a corporate myth as much as it is an ideological one. Sf is often considered a prescient genre, and while novels like Babel-17 were written over 50 years ago they foreshadow a larger societal transformation towards automation and efficiency. Jean-François Lyotard argues that in the postmodern age, efficiency is considered more valuable than truth:
The decision makers … allocate our lives for the growth of power. In matters of social justice and of scientific truth alike, the legitimation of that power is based on its optimizing the system's performance—efficiency. The application of this criterion to all of our games necessarily entails a certain level of terror, whether soft or hard: be operational (that is, commensurable) or disappear. 63
These sf novels literalise the tension between post-humanity and inhumanity by imagining alien languages that transform the culture of its speakers. Like Speedtalk and Babel-17, human languages (and arguably cognition) are continually changing shape as we consume data at an increasingly greater speed, rate, distance, scope. Meanwhile, conlangs like Loglan predate modern programming languages, but essentially approach cognition the same way. As mediators between unintelligible logic and narrativised meaning, programming languages bring logical systems into everyday
practice. And yet as Lyotard argues, the systematic demand for efficiency in modern culture invokes
‘terror’—it alienates us from our organic, fallible bodies. In the 1990s, Marshall McLuhan wrote that ‘[i]n the electric age we wear all mankind as our skin’. In the same way, these alien languages 64 draw attention to distinct forms of alterity that are at once pan-human, inhuman, and increasingly powerful in human culture.
Star Trek: First Contact, dir. Jonathan Frakes (California: Paramount Pictures, 1996).
62
Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, xxiv.
63
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1994), 47.
64
Summary
We frequently take it for granted that alien characters speak human languages. If we cannot
understand aliens, we remove their capacity to carry allegorical meanings or reflect human concerns
—and it is far easier to use a universal translator than to construct, or even describe an alien language. As Walter Meyers notes:
Writers of science fiction seldom spare their characters: they may slam their heroes’ ships into planets or send the heroines to kill tigers with knives; they may freeze them into statues on Pluto or shoot them through exploding suns. Hardly any degradation or suffering is spared—with the exception of exposing them to the rigours of learning a foreign language. 65
So when authors make the effort to depict an alien language, it immediately draws attention to the relationship between language, culture and cognition. The works in this first degree of alterity use constructed languages to reframe different aspects of human society—they examine how one’s morals, values and political beliefs can be reflected in, and influenced by language. In some cases, alien beings speak languages that are as different from human languages as foreign languages are to nativists. Other novels approach language as a process, focussing on how it is built and how it functions. From individual perspectives to collective doctrines, they demonstrate that language can shape societal structures whilst upholding hegemonic standards that stratify its speakers. These constructed languages all carry some form of social discourse on a structural or even grammatical level, which suggests that any language developed in conjunction with a human culture will inevitably propagate specific narratives and ideologies.
The broader inquiry of these novels is how language defines human thought. Mechanised languages present us with a greater degree of alterity at the limits of human cognition as we know it. They draw attention to the ambivalence between natural and artificial, human and post-human modes of being, whilst reflecting the alienating effects of technological domination in culture. All of these works suggest that language forms reality, and simultaneously, that language is subject to change. So the overarching question of these novels is not how language shapes meaning, but rather how its speakers can shape language.
Meyers, Aliens and Linguists, 117.
65
Creatures, Beasts and Animals
So far I have discussed the languages of alien peoples and civilisations. For the most part these constructed languages have had grammatical structures similar to existing languages, and their speakers have reflected human, socio-political concerns. But aliens are in principle creatures of difference, and many aliens in sf are nothing like humans. The second degree of alterity focusses on such aliens, who are invariably thought of as creatures rather than people. How might their
languages differ from our own? And how do authors depict completely alien forms of communication, given the constraints of human language?
Non-humanoid alien languages are uncommon in sf; they are difficult to imagine, and to convey. More fundamentally the harder it is to communicate with an alien, the harder it is to develop them as a character. In fact, the point of many such languages is to render their speakers unfamiliar, and from frightening predators to strange companions, aliens without humanoid
languages are often relegated to one-dimensional subsidiary roles. These languages are indicators of otherness, and as a result they often condense—and help to construct—the traits we consider least human.
It is both natural and telling that these languages frequently resemble animal forms of
communication. As Walter Meyers writes, ‘we need not leave Earth to speak with aliens … animals are resident aliens, so to speak, and if we assume a fictional intelligence for them, then in speaking to them we are communicating with aliens.’ Since both aliens and animals are concepts 66
traditionally measured in relation to humans, animalistic aliens question the relationship between language and humanity. How do sf authors define human and inhuman ways of being? Where do they draw the line between the two?
Aliens as animals
How can one conceive of a non-human language? While there are no set rules, there are some general parameters. Grammar and vocabulary are usually the first to go. If they have syntactic structures they are unrecognisable to humans. They may be verbal but unintelligible, as with the aliens in one of the earliest proto-sf works The Man in the Moon (1638) whose language ‘consisteth
Meyers, Aliens and Linguists, 38.
66
not so much of words and Letters, as of tunes and uncouth sounds that no letters can expresse’. 67 But in many cases they are non-verbal—the alien may not have a tongue, or mouth, or lungs—and are instead ‘spoken’ through different organs, motions or senses. For example, both Issac Asimov’s
‘What Is This Thing Called Love’ (1961) and James Blish’s VOR (1958) feature aliens that communicate by changing the colour of their cranial appendages, whilst Walter Meyers discusses another Asimov story, ‘In a Good Cause—’ (1951), where six-legged aliens have ‘skin between their horns [that could] vibrate rapidly. The tiny waves … were too rapid to be heard by the human ear’. 68
Any non-humanoid alien will inevitably draw comparisons to animals. Istvan Csicsery-Ronay notes that animals frequently form the basis for alien designs:
Larry Niven’s feline Kzin, saurians, Leviathans, Le Guin’s sea turtles from outer space, Dick’s Ganymedian slime-molds, Octavia Butler’s gigantic tentacled Oankali slugs, Hal Clement’s Mesklinite centipedes, the ichthyoids, arachnoids, nautiloids, and echinoderms of Star Maker … Any animal form known to exist on Earth can eventually become an entry in sf’s xenomorphological catalogue. 69
The same can be said for language. Many aliens’ languages, as well as their characters, are
modelled on specific animals. There are a great deal of examples, of which I will mention a few: in A Fire Upon the Deep (1992) by Vernor Vinge, dog-like aliens only become sentient in packs large enough to form a hive mind. In Amy Thomson’s The Color of Distance (1995) the tree-dwelling amphibian Tendus’ language is based on the shifting colour of their skin. In Stephen Leigh’s Alien Tongue (1991) birdlike aliens speak Avian, which is described as ‘a burst of high-pitched syllables that sounded half song and half warble’ and often remains untranslated—‘every Avia remembers 70 the K●ai●k●●ai from the egg’. Insectoid languages are prevalent, being naturally distant from 71 human languages. In ‘Friend to Man’ (1951) by C. M. Kornbluth, an alien attempts to speak
English: ‘[t]he thing rubbed two appendages together … he heard a whining, vibrating cricket-voice Francis Godwin, The Man in the Moon, ed. John Anthony Butler (Ottowa: Dovehouse Editions, 1995),
67
103.
Isaac Asimov, ‘In a Good Cause—’, in Nightfall and Other Stories (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969)
68
177.
Csicsery-Ronay, The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction, 201.
69
Stephen Leigh, Alien Tongue (New York: Bantam Books, 1991), 62.
70
Ibid., 143.
71
