Workshop: The role of language and culture in stories

I'm noticing as I look at the material here that I'm making a lot of comments about potential ways that language can influence the stories. In some cases I'm getting a reaction of "wow," and in others I'm getting "well, that doesn't work because my story has to do this."

Let me be clear: I don't expect you all to change your stories to make them about language and culture. On the other hand, language and culture can give some unexpected benefits to just about any story, and that's what I'm looking for here. Possibilities. Since language and culture are such broad areas, in many cases I'm having to feel around your descriptions of your stories, to get a better idea of where I can be of most help. So I appreciate all of your cooperation in answering questions on the workshop. Thank you.

Now I'd like to discuss some different kinds of places where language and culture can serve to enhance stories. If you read this and any element resonates with you - particularly if it's something I haven't detected or mentioned in your comments to this point - do let me know.

1. Premise
I think of premise as the basic set of assumptions that a reader needs to accept in order for a story to work. For any story (like mine, for example) that has aliens in it, the existence of some kind of alien language forms a critical part of the premise. The story itself may or may not depend on the nature of this language, but if the language sticks out as unrealistic or somehow physically or culturally impossible, that will make it difficult for readers to accept any kind of story placed in that context. The questions I've asked about channel (auditory versus visual) and about linguistic history in David's arcati world are premise-level questions.

2. Plot
This is "what happens" in the story. Language and culture influence the plot of a story if the story is specifically about language difficulty, or if language difficulty or cultural misunderstanding cause a distinct change in events at any point in the story. My own stories involve this stuff all the time. I know David has plans in this area, and I think this may also apply to K's story at certain points, with misunderstandings of the Terran versus Eyan cultures.

3. Setting
In this case I'm not talking about the physical setting, but the cultural and linguistic setting. This is something that I believe is applicable to every story. Quite often it's done well on gut feel alone, without any kind of analysis. Look for any way in which the people in your story are divided into types, and there you'll find a great opportunity to explore language and culture. This doesn't just mean how the different groups speak. It also means how they are described by others, and how they describe others; what expectations are held for them and how those expectations are explained; how their role and values are judged. This is something I've definitely seen in pyraxis' rsakk story, in K's story of Dalkans and Eyans and Terrans and how these groups perceive appropriate behavior, in Catreona's story of Plague Children and the respect with which they expect to be treated, and in wordjinn's families of djinn with their different values. I'm not sure how deeply David's gone into the divisions between the arcati, but I know the groups are there, with the guilds etc. So in this area everyone can dig in; one of the things that can help you to do that is character.

4. Character
A character is a wonderful tool for language and culture building in part because of point of view. If you want to learn about how some group of people regards the others around it, experiment with writing the answers to a set of questions from the point of view of one of the members of that group. Trying to take a point of view often makes it easier to explore the answers to language and culture questions, and value judgment questions. How does your character talk about people he or she respects? Hates? Every character has a personal history, and a personal culture (even aliens or fantasy characters without a known group from our world); these things influence character behavior and judgment in every circumstance.

5. Dialogue
By dialogue I mean how your characters talk. Do you want them to speak in British dialect? Should they speak with an accent that is indicated by alternate spellings of known words? Do they use a lot of slang? If you consider that they are speaking a foreign (usually their own) language, do you want to have that reflected at all in the way their English dialogue is written? If they're communicating on a channel that isn't auditory, such as empathic or telepathic or pheremonal signals, what information are they conveying by that means and how do you want to express that in English?

6. Voice
This one means narrator voice - the language of the voice telling the story. Whether you've got a story told in first or third person, the narrator has an identity, and that identity is indicated by the words you use to tell the story. The narrator can be an epic storyteller, or one of the characters considering his or life retrospectively, or one of the characters experiencing the story in the moment; as a character (invisible or no), the narrator has his or her own culture that is reflected in language. This element can be tricky to step back from and work with, but if you ever really want to go whole hog with an alien point of view, for example, it can be invaluable.

So for my workshop participants, please look through this list and give me your thoughts on which areas you find most promising for your own stories. Play around with the possibilities in your head, or even create an alternate story experiment file and see what kind of impact on the storyline may result from language and culture changes. You might decide you don't want to change the existing details - but you might gain a different kind of insight into the story events, and discover a change that can enhance the story's impact without detracting from your overall intent.

More soon...

A note for wordjinn: I have some comments for you after reading your blog posting (thanks for that!), but I haven't managed to put them together quite yet. I'll try to post them for you in the next day or so. Thank you for your patience.

Workshop: Initial Issues

The first thing I notice as I go through these language and world descriptions is that we have some humans involved, and a goodly number of humanoids. All cool. I note that Catreona has her humans speaking "British," which is the language represented by the English used for the story. This is a good way to organize a human language in this context. For example, Sheila Finch calls her human language "Inglis." This is an important thing to address if your world is divorced in space and time from our world. If you choose "English," that will mean the language is the direct descendant of modern English and will probably not be a uniform Human language but one spoken by a segment of the human population.

K, if you don't yet have a name for your human language, I'd suggest you pick one. If you're calling your humans Terrans, maybe "Terran" should be what you use.

I don't see much on human language in David's piece. David, have you got your human language worked out in some basic way?


More individual questions (please everyone read):

For pyraxis: You say that rsakk are one of several races of "human," but that they shift into lizard form and others shift into other forms. While I can see how fire could be important to these people (especially if they breathe it, it might be seen as an essence of their spirit), it seems to me that the main distinction between them and others is that they take the lizard form, and that this would figure hugely in their cultural identity and language. Are there any special characteristics of rsakki that make it pronounceable by or otherwise appropriate for lizards (rather than others)? Do the rsakk feel that their lizard form is purer or otherwise better than their human form? What is the role of human form in their lives as opposed to lizard form? In what contexts do they want to differentiate themselves from the other types of people?

For wordjinn: You say the three houses, Az, Uz, and Ua, are separate and concerned with different things, and they have dialectal differences but not major language differences. I wonder how, and how often, the three houses interact with one another. This would be a factor in evening out language differences. Since they've obviously been around for a long time, I could see that there might be dialectal distinctions between the groups. Can you think of a way to make the language use reflect the main concern of the house? I should remark that dialectal differences can be rather large, and if you want there to be dialect differences, you should probably think of how you'd like to mark them in your English text. Also, if Ua is a "newer" house, then its dialect might resemble one of the others (say, Az) more closely than the two others do (making Uz and Ua dialects more similar to each other than to Az).Do you have any immediate thoughts on this?

For K: can you clarify the psychic powers of the Dalkans vs. Eyans? What kind of psychic behavior is expected in social contexts? Is there a principled way in which the provision of empathic cues fits in with the Eyan (or Dalkan) language? I imagine there could be, if these people are accustomed to having an emotional overcurrent surrounding them. Your excerpt from the worldbuilding workshop said things about the ability to block emotional projection. Does this have degrees? What kind of empathic behavior is expected in different social situations?

For Catreona: I need to know more about the interaction of your people. Based on your excerpt from the worldbuilding workshop, I have the impression that they conform to the social rules of the British, at least roughly. I would expect, though, that the nature of the task of surviving and making society work on this foreign planet would alter some things about it. What might those things be? I would also encourage you to think through the situation of the Plague Children, since it seems to factor significantly in your story. You say that the Plague Children are well-integrated (and so are the indigenes). I would expect that the society as a whole would then hold an ideal for such integration, as well as maintaining expectations about how such people are to be treated, addressed, etc. Once you've figured out what this is, you'll then be able to get a better sense of what unwanted discrimination means. People will not all hold these ideals to the same degree. If you're interested, you might want to check out my entry entitled "Don't make them all the same." I'd like to hear your thoughts on these topics.

For David: It sounds to me like you're looking to create a language with a distinct system of formality. The parameters for your formality and informality are not clear. "Respectful" informal language can be as simple as speaking informally when the situation calls for it. Are you looking for something that is spoken asymmetrically based on rank, or something that is spoken symmetrically based on the formality of the situation, where having a person of high rank involved would cause both parties to speak formally? Next, here's an issue that's been bothering me since the last workshop. Have you worked out the precise circumstances of the change from land to water habitation? This will have a huge influence on the language solution that was pursued by these people. I tend to think that they would be likely to have a sign language. This would lend itself well to your semi-translated words. Water as a language medium is very limiting because of the type of sounds that travel - think about dolphin and whale communication. If you want humans to try to speak a vocal language of this type, it will be a challenge. You can pick a vocal language that sounds different above and below water, but I would think that the sounds that are inaudible or indistinguishable underwater would regularize and disappear rather quickly under those conditions. The pheromone discharge strikes me (at first glance) as totally unnecessary. There will be lots of opportunities for communication difficulty already, and I'm not sure how they would evolve naturally. Again, please tell me more about the history of the inundation. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.


Everyone please feel welcome to read each other's material and comment on your own initial impressions. I will continue to make comments as I find new things to comment about. Your written responses to these questions will help me a lot.

More soon...

Workshop: Update

Hello to my five participants. I have had some significant internet outages yesterday and today, which is the reason for my delay. My thought is this: I have some general questions that have been piqued by the different entries, and I'm hoping we can all weigh in on them even though they don't all apply to every person's language. I'm going to post this now while my link is up, and the questions will be forthcoming.

Thanks for your patience.

Workshop: Final Participants

It looks like I have five participants for the workshop. I was hoping for more, but maybe the people who were daunted by my linguistics entries this month will come out of the woodwork later when they discover I'm not going to bite - or require grammatical completeness for a created language.

The participants are:

1. Catreona
2. David Marshall
3. Pyraxis
4. Wordjinn
5. K

I'm going to go off and dig into the material you've provided. More soon...