That made me think about the book "Ender's Shadow", which I read for my book quest. While this is not my book quest and I don't want to give the whole background of the book, the important point for this post is that 70 years before the book takes place, the Earth was almost destroyed by an alien race known as the Buggers. A key difference between the Buggers and humans, besides the insect resemblance of the buggers' bodies, are the styles of communication. Unlike humans, the buggers don't speak, they rather have a direct connection to what all the others are thinking, the thinking is controlled by the queen.
Before reading this book (well the prequel "Ender's Game"), I was always caught up simply on whether or not there was other life out there, not even considering the fact that if there in fact was, that their style of communication would be something completely different than ours. Now, the point of this post isn't to start up some debate over possibilities of alien life. I rather want to focus on asking the question, could they conclude anything from our language? They may not even the physical abilities to be capable of understanding our language, just like we may have no way of understanding them. Any thoughts?
Great post Kevin! First off, Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow are two of my favorite books and definitely integrate many of the concepts we've learned in this class-wargaming, the magic circle, spectators vs. players, and video games.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, alien life is a crazy thing to think about. I personally don't think alien life would be able to understand anything we do or say, mainly because they could have extremely different biological systems than us; in fact, this is highly probable. It is beyond our realm of thinking to contemplate how aliens look and act, so to think that they would be able to understand our language is farfetched. Even if aliens had the systems to listen to us, there is no way they would understand the grammar, syntax, and complexity of human speech. Also, vice versa, we would have no idea how to communicate and understand their language. It truly is a fascinating thing to think about!
Hey Kevin!
ReplyDeleteFirst I want to address your question. I think that although the aliens might not be able to understand our words, through our expressions and body language, I think that the aliens would pick up on at least the tone of the conversation. If the aliens were emerged in our society for a long enough time, I think they would be able to pick up key phrases and words, just as if one of us were thrown into France with no background on the language, we would be able to pick up on words and phrases to get us by.
Second, there was one part of your post that reminded me immediately of the Hunger Games, which is the book I read for the book quest. "Unlike humans, the buggers don't speak, they rather have a direct connection to what all the others are thinking, the thinking is controlled by the queen." This makes me think of the Capitol and the people who live there. People in the districts view these people as "aliens." With weirdly painted faces, extravagant lifestyles, and thick accents, these people are not the same species to those who live in the district and live on hardly anything. Along with these people of the capitol being foreign to the others, just like the aliens, they are under control of the capitol. While they may be able to speak, their thoughts and actions are controlled by the capitol, who penetrate their thoughts and control their minds by filling them with exactly what they want the people to be thinking.
Sounds like an interesting book to me!