- How do aliens in the story using language and communication style different from the human language (oral, pictographic, phonetic, etc.)?
Aliens in this story use “logographic” script, which is phonetically written, and used in Chinese characters as opposed to English and other standard alphabetic script. Dr. Banks realizes that the heptapods’ written and spoken languages are unrelated to each other, different from the human language which are usually intertwined with each other in order to serve as a means of communication from a vocal and hearing standpoint. However, in contrast to logographic languages, the aliens’ script is composed of intricate graphic designs, yet not in any sort of linear fashion, which would make it hard to widely replicate and understand in the human language. The aliens’ “seismographic” language conveys meaning without reference to speech, meaning their visual syntax is unrelated to the syntax for their spoken language, rendering it much different to the human language as the two are connected.
2. How does the physical structure of our body inform the way we communicate? How about the aliens?
The physical structure of our body informs the way we communicate since our anatomy, specifically the larynx, is able to physically create the sounds that we dictate as our speech. Establishing vocal communications is only possible through reproducing sounds that our human vocal tract and hearing the sounds back through our ears. This difference in anatomy makes it interesting to point out that since the heptapods’ bodies have no distinct direction, their script can also be written and interpreted in any direction with ease. If this were translated into human language, all scripts would lose sense of meaning as there are logical directions behind each stroke and position of a word in a sentence.