How do aliens in the story using language and communication style different from the human language (oral, pictographic, phonetic, etc.)?
They communicate using “flutters” which are best interpreted on a spectrograph. In addition, they write using a logographic system which means they communicate using characters, like Chinese. One of the more interesting parts of the writing is that the grammar/syntax is two-dimensional, so the meaning changes based off the intersection of characters in two dimensions. Another aspect of the alien’s language is that there is no connection between the written versions of words and the spoken versions. A big difference between the alien language and the human language is the way each is designed to be perceived. Human language is meant to be perceived sequentially, while the alien language is supposed to be perceived simultaneously – that is, all at once.
How does the physical structure of our body inform the way we communicate? How about the aliens?
For the aliens, the orientation of their words doesn’t matter since their bodies can rotate in any orientation. This means that no matter which way a word/sentence is rotated, it still means the same thing. In a less physical sense – the aliens experience all of existence at once. This means that time is not linear for them, as it is to us. This means that their language, while purely performative, is meant to be experienced simultaneously. For humans, we function sequentially, which means our language does as well.