Text: Ted Chiang, Story of Your Life
Tag: Sci-fi; Aliens; Language; Memory;
Reading Reflection:
- Language
- How do aliens in the story language and communication style different from the human language (oral, pictographic, phonetic, etc.)?
- The alien language in the story differs from human language in multiple ways, and the first thing different is their writing style. In the story, the scripts written by heptapods aren’t word-divided like most human languages; a sentence is written by joining the logograms for the constituent words–in other words, they uses a nonlinear system of orthography that qualified as true writing.
- The relation between oral language and written langue is also different. As said in the text, most human written languages are in line with their oral forms as they represents speech; but the alien language in the text uses “semasiographic” writing, because it conveys meaning without reference to speech, which means that their oral language and written language can be seen as two separated systems.
- Human language and the alien language also sounds different. When heptapods speak, they “made a brief sputtering sound”.
- Language & Body
- How does the physical structure of our body inform the way we communicate? How about the aliens?
- To make this point clear, let’s take a look at the differences between the physical structure of humans and aliens. This is how the alien looks like in the story:
- It looked like a barrel suspended at the intersection of seven limbs. It was radially symmetric, and any of its limbs could serve as an arm or a leg. The one in ont of me was walking around on four legs, three non-adjacent arms curled up at its sides. Gary called them “heptapods.”
With eyes on all sides, any direction might as well be “forward” for heptapods. This is dramatically different from out humans: as human, we have a strong sense of space, physical location and direction.
- The same logic can be found in our languages: we use linear language systems that can tell a story base on a timeline or imply the physical location of items. And yet, as creatures that are “radially symmetric”, heptapods also use a language that’s symmetric and whole, without any linear sequences.
- It’s also interesting to think about how some common human expressions can be translated into the alien language, such as “falling” and “you’re always in my heart”. For us, the expression seems natural because our physical structure give us the sense of direction and location. But for heptapods, any location is the same because they are symmetric.
- Language & Body & Mind
- Free Notes
- For me, the most striking idea in the story is how language and our mind sets act upon each other. The story of Louis acquires the ability to foresee future by learning alien languages is inspiring, but what’s even more impressive is the non-linear writing style (and filming style, for the adapting film Arrival) of the story, as if we, as readers and audience, also acquire the ability to think in heptapods’ way as well–the sense that, we’ve already seen the end of the story, but now we still need to finish it since we’ve seen it…
- When I first read the story, I tried to imagine how the script of the alien language should look like. After the movie Arrival, adapting from the story, came out, I was amazed by the idea of using circles to represent the symmetric and non-linear language–a shape that has no start, nor ends.
