Sunday, March 25, 2012

The House of Grammar Part 6: Darmok and Jalad at The House of Grammar

Almost any piece of science fiction or fantasy you can name, or imagine, is going to include non-human species. As a writer, you're going to have to make a decision: Do they speak English? (I'm assuming anyone reading this is doing so in English, because I'm fairly sure I can't write in German, and if I can, holy crap) If they speak English, why? (not the people reading the blog; the non-human species to whom I previously referred) And if not, how far down into the rabbit hole do I go to craft their particular language? Do I pull a Tolkien? Do I actually build the language from syntax up? Or do I whip out some funny sounding words and hope no one cares?
Frankly, it doesn't matter to me. As long as you can get me to suspend my disbelief, I'll take it served up however you dish it. I'll buy universal translators. I'll buy a race that only says "yoto". I'll take clicks, pops, glottal stops, creatures that communicate via pheremones, a race that writes with yarn, etc... I would even be willing to accept a race that communicated through the trading of candy hearts (though that implies a base written language that in and of itself would have to be quite complex to effectively take over for all verbal communication, and I would love to see the Gettysburg Address given via this method.)
I have an issue, however, with the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode entitled "Darmok."
I'm sure anyone reading this is thinking to themselves, "Why would you be bringing that up now? That episode aired twenty one years ago!"
It's probably because I was ten when it aired and only recently have people been bringing it up again, on facebook, etc (though for what reason I have no idea) and all of a sudden my hind brain kicked my forebrain and said "Dude! Wake up! That episode was stupid!"
For those who don't remember, I'll give you a brief synopsis. "Darkmok" was an episode about an encounter with a species who can only communicate through the use of metaphor.  I'll spare you the details and the minutiae, but effectively this would be like communicating by only using pop culture references: "Buffy and Angel at the Christmas Tree Lot" or "Sting aboard the airplane." would be phrases that carry a weight and significance that supposedly would communicate the speaker's intent.
This is stupid. I can't say it enough times.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Let's examine this in more detail, using a simple test phrase. For the purposes of argument the phrase we will use is "Sheila and Paul in the bedroom."

Point One: Every single member of this species would have to have a perfect eidetic memory and the ability to absorb contextual meaning from nonsensical stories their parents tell them: In order to communicate at all, any species that communicated via this method would have to be able to remember every single saga or story told by anyone, about anyone, at any point in history, because these events take the place of words. They would also have to be able to dredge their memory instantly for the appropriate saga or story to fit the context of whatever conversation they were having with another person. This means that not only would they have to be able to absorb however many thousands of years of history their species has experienced but would also have to be able to do so by having their parents TELL THEM STORIES. That's like trying to teach my son theoretical physics by the time he is three by reading him "The Hungry Caterpillar" over and over again. So for either of us to be successful, I would quite literally have to know everything that had ever happened to my species ever, be able to draw this knowledge up at will and tell it to my son, who not only would have to be able to absorb it with equal immediacy and perfect retention but also be able to immediately grasp how the information should be used contextually. There is no room for mistake.  There is no word for "um" in this language (unless um itself is a story, but we'll get into the complexities of that in a moment) so saying "Um... shit...  Sheila and Paul in the bedroom" would mean something completely different than "Sheila and Paul in the bedroom." given that this story is now about Um Shit Sheila and Paul, rather than Sheila and Paul.


Point Two: No one's name could ever be repeated, ever, even phonetically, throughout the entire history of this species: For a language like this to work every story or saga must be contextually precise, which would also mean that in order to remain a valid method of communication, names could never be repeated. A simple example is all that's needed here. Let's say my kids are named Sheila and Paul, and your wife and brother are named Sheila and Paul. If I say "Sheila and Paul in the bedroom" I'm probably talking about having put my kids to sleep. But if I say this phrase to you, you're probably going to run home and shoot Paul in the kidneys for sleeping with your wife.

Point Three: No member of this species could ever disagree: This is because disagreement changes context, and in this language, a change in context changes meaning. Either everyone agrees all the time about what each phrase means, or you end up splintering your language into infinite dialects that simply can no longer communicate with each other. If you think "Sheila and Paul in the Bedroom" means something different than what I mean when I say it, we've stopped communicating. Effectively this is like me saying "I'm going for a walk" and you hearing "I've just purchased a banana for the low low price of three kidneys." because you disagree with the meaning of "I'm going for a walk." Everything I say becomes gibberish to you because we are not communicating with words, we're communicating with concepts, and those concepts mean completely different things to the two of us.


Point 4: Every single word used as part of a phrase to communicate an idea would also have to be its own metaphor for a saga or event: This is like watching fractal art take shape. Given that information is transmitted entirely via metaphor, each individual component of any given metaphor would itself have to be a metaphor for another, because for the more complex metaphor to have developed there must be a root meaning behind each word. You cannot jump from "Thog like water" to "I, Thog, have decided that water is intrinsically good, given its scarcity and our dependence upon it for our continued survival as a species." without the language evolving. And for this language to evolve, every word is a metaphor which speaks to an event, and arguably speaking, every larger metaphorical phrase is effectively grouped metaphors that have their own intrinsic meanings that if separated and recombined would mean something else because of how they are contextually reassigned. Given this, saying "Sheila and Paul in the bedroom" would mean something completely different than "In the bedroom, Paul and Sheila."

Point 5: What about nouns? There aren't any. Or at least, not in the way we think of them. "Bedroom" means nothing conceptually, except for the metaphorical concept that it communicates. It does not mean bedroom, but itself could stand for, let's say "Sheila and Paul, in the place of sleep." and because of the significance of that particular story to this species is then used to always communicate the room in which people sleep, but it does not describe a thing, but rather an event. This also means that in situations of discovery you run the risk of disagreement (see point three). Columbus, for example, thought when he discovered (arguable) the Americas that it was India. Given this, if he coined the newfound continents "Columbus on the shores of India" to stand as the noun "India" then there would effectively be two nouns "India" meaning completely separate things. If however he simply decided he had reached India and used whatever nonsensical metaphorical phrase currently in use to say "India" to indicate what he had discovered, he would have been wrong, and would effectively be in disagreement because his concept of India and that of someone who had actually been there would be contextually different.

Part 6: Counterpoint. The crew explains that the Universal translator is able to translate the words the Tamarians were using very easily but it's the meaning of those words that is being communicated as metaphor, which means they have their own language, blah blah blah, I hate you and you make me cry: If we are to believe the science behind the Universal Translator (and if I've invested enough time in Star Trek to write this, you better believe I'm willing to accept it, otherwise I'd be a MADMAN) then we have to accept that its entire job is to communicate the meaning behind the words that are actually being spoken by the species being interpreted. That means, effectively, that regardless of the spelling, grammar, syntax, etc that the Tamarians were using, what they were ACTUALLY SAYING TO EACH OTHER and correspondingly to the crew of the enterprise was "Darmok and Jalad at Tenagra." The whole point of language is to communicate meaning. It's the Universal Translator's job to pick up meaning from the words spoken. So if it can make the Klingon phrase "Baklavah, borscht chow" sound like "Today is a good day to dine." then it could certainly make "Sheila and Paul in the bedroom" actually mean whatever it is the Tamarians intend, if in fact the meaning was effectively anything but "Sheila and Paul in the bedroom."Nothing in your argument invalidates my points, it just means that a team of Federation Linguistics officers need to spend about four hundred years locked in a room with a bunch of Tamarians like caged video game testers plugging gobbledegook into the Universal Translator program so that it filters out for us conceptually what the Tamarians mean contextually with every single one of their stupid phrases.

I'm not even going to bookend this, or conclude. I'm just going to reiterate:  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

6 comments:

cdnkaro said...

I have a feeling you'd be a giant pain in the ass to watch TV/movies with, Jeremy. I drive Ian nuts because I always pick things apart (aloud) as I watch them. But you've taken this type of analysis to a whole new level. That being said, I agree with you- stupid, stupid, stupid.

Jeremy said...

I just realized I use the word "Effectively" a lot. What I wonder is if I do so effectively?

cdnkaro said...

Blogger needs a "like" button for comments

alittlebitograce said...

That it does, Karo, that it does!

And Jeremy, I agree although I don't remember that particular episode.

Anonymous said...

I don't understand your problem in point one. "They would also have to be able to dredge their memory instantly for the appropriate saga or story to fit the context of whatever conversation they were having with another person" -- is this not the sum of all human experience, and do we not all do it? Is this not what you as children and now as adults do with Simpson's episodes -- your secret conversations that no one who has not memorized every Simpson's episode from the dawn of time can comprehend? And yes, my dirty grammar secret is that I use dashes and parentheses [and also brackets] to a fault as I have become a lazy writer in my dotage. And I start sentences with And. LFYM

Jeremy said...

The problem being, mom, that not only would you have to be able to do this with for example, the Simpsons, but also 3rd Rock From the Sun, I Love Lucy, The Collected Works of Shakespeare, Survivor, Plato's Republic, etc, etc, etc. It's one thing having a meme or pop culture reference drilled into your head, it's another to know by heart and contextually every single line from every historical, cultural, and theological reference ever created.