This has thematic implications because of the side-plot relating to Dr. Of the three, the one that illustrates the idea best is the one that's always given: we go through the ceremony of a wedding, knowing full well that it's going to end with "I do," but we still have to go through the full performance in order to make the ceremony "effective." We go through the motions to make those motions a reality. Chiang basically lists the standard three examples that J.L. Louise Banks) posits that communication as such would be performative. So how do they communicate?Ĭhiang (or the character-narrator, Dr. Eventually, Banks realizes that the aliens experience time non-sequentially. Louise Banks is struck by the fact that, of all the math Earth has tried communicating with the aliens, they seem best able to communicate Fermat's principle of least time, which is, y'know, a pretty weird principle, because it means that light that hits water seems to "know" beforehand at which angle to travel in order to hit the water in just such a way that it travels in the least time.
Like, what would a language be like if it came from a culture that understood the time-space continuum in a manner completely different from our own? I.e., if it came from a culture that experienced all events simultaneously?ĭr. (Some spoilers about the scifi and linguistic theory in the story.) "Story of Your Life" deals a whole bunch with semiotics. "Darmok" is probably one of the best TNG episodes.Īnyways, the Ted Chiang story is even better.
(Credit to SA forums poster "Kirk," I think…?) The episode resulted in this neat-o t-shirt: In order to say, "You and I should fight together against a common enemy," the alien says, "Darmok and Jalad, at Tanagra!" which is also an actual historical event involving people called, presumably, Darmok and Jalad. In order to say, for example, something along the lines of, "Darn, this isn't working," the alien keeps saying, "Shaka, when the walls fell," referring to an historical event. It's reminded me (somewhat) of that Star Trek: The Next Generation Episode, " Darmok," where the universal translator doesn't work quite right because the alien language's referential function is kind of on a different wavelength than our own. You can find it here: Stories of Your Life and Others.
I just read "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang.
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