Brief summary:
This Story talks about the linguist Louise’s experience of working for government to communicating with the aliens, the heptapods, and trying to learn their language, mingled with flashbacks about her memories with her daughter.
- How do aliens in the story language and communication style different from the human language (oral, pictographic, phonetic, etc.)?
I noticed in the story that the heptapods communicate and think very different from human. The heptapods vibrates the orifice at the top of their body to speak. Their oral language almost has no grammar; it is free of order. Their written language has no punctuation and it is pictographic, with each element connected to one another. Thus, the heptapods know how the whole sentence/paragraph looks like before they start. Unlike human language system where speaking and writing usually connected with each other, alien’s writing and speaking have no obvious correlations. While human speak to inform, heptapods speak to perform.
2. How does the physical structure of our body inform the way we communicate? How about the aliens?
Humans have straight, linear bodies, which may result in our linear chain of thinking: we tend to think in the way of causal relationships, and we write our thoughts line by line.
The heptapods’ bodies are radially symmetrical( four limbs attached to the body); they don’t have so-called “forward” direction. Their communicating style features the same way. There are no grammar or order of words about expressing thoughts. Their writing is centered with each semagram connected to one another.
After thoughts:
- On page 15-16, it mentioned that aliens’ sentence is just semagrams combined and they joined together, which reminds me of our recent assignments and gestalt theory, which is to look at our picture as a whole and it is full of continuity).