“Story of Your Life” Notes
Story of Your Life is a fiction about a linguist managing to see through her future by studying and practicing aliens’ languages. Louise, the linguist, learned the languages of heptapods, the aliens, with the help of several media. She found that heptapods’ spoken language is completely irrelevant to their written language. As she practiced the two language systems, Louise found that the differences in communications between humans and heptapods were caused by the difference in modes of thinking/perception (heptapods possess a “simultaneous mode of consciousness”, while humans’ are sequential). What’s more, by understanding and using the heptapods’ languages, Louise started to think in their way and saw her future.
In the following tables, I note down the physical differences between humans and heptapod that affect communications, as well as media that make communication between humans and heptapods possible.
| Differences in Physical Structures | Influences on communications |
| Eyes:Human: only have two eyes and spread on one plane in the same direction.
Heptapod: The eyes “ringed the top of the heptapod’s body” (Chiang 5). |
Visual communications: Heptapods perceive their surroundings all at the same time. Their visions may affect their written language and perceptions, which are also conceived at one time rather than sequentially.
Body Language: Heptapods don’t have a sense of direction. They don’t have to turn to change the direction of movements. Therefore, heptapods cannot or need not to perform some of the body languages that are common among humans (e.g. turning to go to another direction). |
| Torso:
Human: Axial symmetric, with two arms aside and two legs below. Heptapod: Radically symmetric, with seven identical limbs that move fluidly. |
Body Language: All limbs are identical to heptapods while humans’ arms and legs serve different purposes. Therefore, heptapods’ movements are different from humans when it comes to running, jumping, etc. Here I wonder how can heptapods understood Gary’s movements when Louise was studying their verbs. |
|
Digits: Human: Five digits. Heptapod: Four digits. |
Body Language: Heptapods press four digits together to point to themselves, while humans only use one. |
| Vocal tract and ear | Speech: Humans cannot distinguish heptapods’ sound because of different ways of sound-producing and receiving.
(Louise failed to mimic the speeches of heptapods at their first meeting, and they have to use spectrographs to distinguish heptapods’ speeches) |
Media
| Media | Functions |
|
Looking glasses |
Two-way communication devices that prevent direct contact between heptapods and humans. Gary proposed that heptapods might not be able to read monitors in the humans’ world because “their looking glasses are based on a completely different technology than our video screens” (Chiang 8). |
|
Spectrograph |
Help humans distinguish the spoken words of heptapods. |
| Digital camera |
Record the words heptapods write. |
| video screen | Display humans’ words and graphs. |
|
“Flat circular screen mounted on a small pedestal” (Chiang 9) |
Heptapods display their scripts on the screen by “inserting a limb into a large socket in the pedestal” (Chiang 9) |
Differences between heptapods and humans:
| Category | Heptapods | Humans |
| Language | Spoken language and written language are irrelevant to each other. The former is made up of sequential words, but the sequence of words doesn’t affect the meaning of a sentence. The latter is | Spoken language is highly relative to written language. Both are conceived in a sequential way. |
| Perception |
Have a “simultaneous mode of awareness” and “experienced all events at once, perceiving a purpose underlying them all” (Chiang 31). |
Have a “sequential mode of awareness” and “experienced events in an order, perceiving their relationship as cause and effect” (Chiang 31). |
| Thinking mode | Heptapods think in a non-phonological way. | Most humans without disabilities think in a phonological way that is in accord with their written language. |