Reading Response: Story of Your Life

1. How are the aliens’ language and communication style in the story different from human language (oral, pictographic, phonetic, etc.)?

Commnication between two humans come in a variety of methods, from oral/phonetic communication, pictographic/written communication, and bodily communication. So what happens when we are to encounter and attempt to communicate with an intelligent species not of Earth origin. That’s the question “Story of Your Life ” attempt to answer. Indeed the aliens called heptapods are very much alien from their appearance to their communication. But in a sense, they are also quite similar to that of human communication. For example, one of the first instances of heptapod communication is their so called speech, which consists of them making flutter noises from their top of their bodies. While at first this seems something we could never understand, the humans in the story are able make progress in understanding what these flutters mean despite knowing less about it than the heptapod’s pictographic communication. You can think of this as translating another language to English, which is exactly what is going on throughout the story with the humans learning the heptapod’s languages, translating and understanding it in English, and communicating back to the heptapods using the knowledge gained from the translations. 

Despite this, the story shows that it is the pictographic communication is the preferred communication method between the humans and the heptapods. As explained in the story, the heptapods’ so called written language is that of a semasio-graphic writing system in which a symbol represents a message. This is quite similar to human languages such as Chinese or Japanese where their writing system is a non-alphabetic system and more of semasio-graphic writing system. In fact, both human and heptapod writing do have the concepts of phonemics/graphemics, vocabulary, and syntax in common. However, unlike Chinese, Japanese, or any alphabeitc language system, which needs multiple characters to present a complex message, the heptapods’ convey the contents and meaning of their message in one single character. As is revealed in the story, it is because heptapods experience things in a simultaneous mode of awareness rather than a sequential mode of awareness like humans. Thus this is reflect in the heptapods’ writing with the purpose of minimizing their writing in order to maximize their message, unlike humans with their sequential mode of awareness, with of course human writing being reflected as such. In fact, it is revealed that concepts like physics and mathematics are elementary to heptapods. 

Last but not least is bodily communication, in which both humans and heptapods are capable of in their own ways, but both of which are understandable to one another. The following section after this one goes more in depth on how we’re able to understand bodily communication. 

 2. How does the physical structure of our body inform the way we communicate? How about the aliens?

Aside from verbal communication (which uses sounds and our ears to listen) and pictographic/written communication (which uses our hands to write and eyes to look at and understand), our bodies also allow for a form of communication to one another. We are able to use our bodies in different ways to communicate. For example, we can express our current feelings using our facial expressions and body actions, in which other people are able to recognize and response accordingly. Gestures such as shaking our heads or pointing is also a way to communicate for us, at we are usually able to understand what people mean by these gestures. Our bodies allow for the use of five sense as well, which we are use to understand the expressions of not only other people but the environment we currently are on. It is the familiarity of the structure of a human that allows us to understand one another, in that we all possess the same general body structure and thus are able to capable and understand almost all forms of bodily communication we perform. 

This differs when it comes to the aliens/heptapods, as in the story their bodies are described as a radially symmetric gray skinned barrel at the interaction of seven limbs. On the top of the so-called barrel possess seven lidless eyes and their ability to respirate and their form of speech. On the bottom possess their ability to eat and assumingly dispose of bodily wastes. Their bodies are indeed very alien to us humans and at first not  familiar to us. But once we analyze their bodies we can see that they share more in common with humans than we are lead to believe. The fact that they possess eyes, limbs, a so called mouth, and method for respiration and speech means that they also have sense and are able to be aware of their surroundings, much like how humans have different parts of their body that allows for their own senses. They are also very much capable of their own body communication, as seen when one uses their limbs to point at an object they wish to convey in their own language. Of course, the principle of how humans can understand the body language of other humans due to familiarity can applied to the heptapods as they would be familiar with their own bodies and capabilities and are able to communicate in ways we humans may not understand. However, just because we are not familiar the physical structure of their bodies doesn’t mean that we aren’t able to understand their body language.