Cognitive linguistics is not something many people think of when trying to come up with an interesting science fiction premise. In most sci-fi movies and shows, the problem of language and communication with alien lifeforms is conveniently sorted out by universal translators like in Star Trek or the translation circuit in Doctor Who. Although addressing the topic of translating in the alien language in these shows seems to take care of the narrative's verisimilitude, it distorts the phenomenon of language.
In philosophy, verisimilitude is the notion that some propositions are closer to being true than other propositions. Although this philosophical concept is widely criticized, it's still found a home in literature and other narrative arts. In narratives, like movies, verisimilitude is the appearance of reality or truth as it is established in the narrative's world. This doesn't mean that the world of the narrative has to abide by the rules of our reality.
It just means that it is true to the rules of the reality it establishes it for itself. Bulgarian philosopher Tzvetan Todorov describes two types of verisimilitude generic and cultural. Cultural verisimilitude is the normal in our reality. Generic verisimilitude is, in short, the normal of a specific world of a narrative. In Back to the Future, for example, the generic verisimilitude is the fact that time travel exists.
This fact doesn't break the generic verisimilitude of the narrative. However, if halfway through the movie, they suddenly changed how time travel works, it would break the generic verisimilitude. Language as an integral part of culture could be put in the category of cultural verisimilitude, of course. However, in shows like Star Trek and Doctor Who, we just accept the fact that language in these worlds behaves differently than in our world.
Language in these shows is part of the generic verisimilitude, and we accept that. Universal translators and the translator circuit are plausible. In Denis Villeneuve's 2016 movie Arrival, however, language stays a part of the cultural verisimilitude, at least for most of the movie. Louise Banks, a linguistic professor, is approached by the U.S. military with the task of deciphering, that is, translating the language of the aliens that have landed on Earth.
She immediately clears up the notion of translating an alien language as something that can be done by simply replacing one set of symbols with equivalent symbols in our own language, or one set of meanings with our own. Language is something much more complex than just a set of symbols, words, and meanings. It is something with which we conceptualize the reality we live in.
This explanation, Professor Banks gives, sets the theoretical framework of her approach to translating the alien language. That approach being partly cognitive linguistics. Cognitive linguistics views language not as being purely something that describes the world around us. It is a tool with which we ourselves conceptualize that same world. To understand what cognitive linguists mean by that, we have to understand language not as the sounds we speak or the symbols we write down and read, but rather as the all encompassing mode of thinking.
Thinking about language in that sense, it becomes clear to us how we construct abstract meanings about time, space, good, evil, friendship, love, and other concepts. We cannot simply point our fingers at and name them. Of course, language can be descriptive. If I point at the stone and I say the word "stone", and then someone who speaks German points at the same thing and calls it "Stein", that is a description.
However, as soon as we step into abstract planes of reality, we start with constructing reality and not just merely describing it. Let's take the phrase "to fall in love" as an example. In German, the same concept is understood through the phrase "sich verlieben". In English, the phrase conceptualizes the feeling of starting to develop intimate feelings towards someone as something spacial, as love being some kind of hole we can fall into.
In German, it is conceptualized as being some sort of state of body or mind you find yourself in. To illustrate to non-German speakers how the two phrases differ in conceptualizing falling in love, we will look at a few paradigms for the German expression. To catch a cold would be "sich erkälten". To get confused would "sich verwirren". To make a mistake would be "sich vertun". To bow would be "sich verbeugen". And so on.
When we look at all the English expressions, they have little in common with each other from a grammatical point of view. A German speaker, however, would have an easier time connecting the concept of falling in love (sich verlieben) with the concept of catching a cold (sich erkälten); just because of the way they conceptualize them in their language. On the other hand, if we were to use the phrase "to catch a break" for English speakers, it would have a more obvious connection to the phrase to "catch a cold" than the German translation "ein Pause machen" would have with "sich erkälten".
American linguist George Lakoff calls these models through which we conceptualize reality or parts of it, conceptual metaphors. The conceptual metaphor of an object that can be caught governs how we conceptualize getting sick with a cold. The conceptual metaphor of a physical hole we can fall into governs how we conceptualize love, and so on.
All of these examples are surface level conceptual metaphors which are easy to spot and to explain. Once we get into deeper and more complex territories of abstraction, like how we conceptualize time, infinity, future or past, however, it becomes more difficult to pinpoint what conceptual metaphor governs our understanding of these parts of reality. The U.S. Army is asking Professor Banks for a seemingly simple task.
They want her to ask the aliens what do they want? She then explains how the concept of a question is an exclusively linguistic concept that cannot be tied or referenced to a physical object, as it is the case with pointing at the stone and saying the words, for example. Before she can ask them this seemingly simple question, she has to find out if their language possesses the concept of a question.
If their language does not possess this concept, then questions as we know them are simply not part of their reality. Looking at languages in the real world, we can see that different languages have different features with which they describe and or construct our reality. Mandarin and Burmese, for example, are languages that don't express tenses in the grammatical form.
Of course, their speakers are absolutely able to talk about the past and the future, but it is hard to imagine how these kinds of language is function just by translating them into a language we know. Every new language we learn opens up an enormous set of ways of conceptualizing reality, of thinking in, until then, unimaginable ways. The movie Arrival imagines what kind of power a language that hasn't evolved on our world could possess.
Once Professor Banks finds out with what kind of power and abilities the aliens are equipped just by their language, she suddenly realizes that the things she was experiencing throughout the whole movie simply couldn't be conceptualized through any language we have here on Earth. Denis Villeneuve superimposes her search for understanding with the lack of understanding between leaders of governments on Earth.
Although they can seemingly understand each other through translation, it is not an understanding we all hope humanity to have. We may know all the words others utter. We may translate all the symbols and sounds into a system of symbols and sounds we know, but we still lack the ability to truly understand another person. Italian writer Umberto Eco described literature and art in the broader sense as being the search for a golden language, a language that could transcendence the boundaries of language.
When we read, hear or see something and know exactly the meaning, not just because we understand it, but because we feel it. The movie Arrival accomplishes exactly that, not by showing us the journey of Professor Banks transcribing and transliterated the alien language; not by the metaphor of humanity lacking the ability to understand each other. The movie touches on Eco's golden language by telling the story of Professor Banks's motherhood; by the way it conceptualizes love, not by making us understand the meaning of it, but by making us feel its inescapable intensity. If we are ready to accept it.