Psychic links and channels of communication

Everybody knows that we communicate using language. Ask how humans communicate, and that's the first thing that pops into our minds. However, it's not the only way we communicate. Even if you don't count writing, there's a lot more going on in any conversation - particularly face to face conversation - than you might immediately realize.

Today I'm going to talk about both linguistic and non-linguistic communication in terms of sensory "channels," with one channel corresponding to each of our five senses. And then I'm going to talk abut the idea of a sixth, psychic channel - which was one of the things that I found simultaneously intriguing and disappointing about James Cameron's Avatar.

The auditory channel is typically the first one we think of when we consider communication. It's the channel where verbal linguistic information gets expressed and conveyed. It's where we find our phonemes and morphemes and syntax - the structure of language - being expressed most of the time. Science fiction and fantasy are full of examples of invented auditory languages.

We can also use auditory codes like Morse code to send linguistic information. But the auditory channel doesn't just convey language structure. Prosody, or tone of voice, also conveys a lot of information. Prosody is the use of volume and pitch to convey information about emotions and about emphasis on the words that we speak. If you look at written descriptions of verbal speech, you'll often see emotions associated with the way someone says something. Our judgment of that emotion comes in part from our interpretation of tone of voice. Tone of voice also conveys a lot about gender identity and attractiveness, but there's enough there for an entirely separate topic, so I'll leave it alone for now.

Emotional information also travels on the visual channel. The muscles in our faces pull and twitch and suddenly we can see information in another person's face - and even in the faces of non-human animals! The facial expressions of happiness, fear, anger, surprise, disgust, and sadness have for some time been considered universal to human cultures (though see this story which says that east Asian men and women concentrate more on the eye area than the mouth area, suggesting that some elements of expression are culturally based).

The visual channel can also be a primary channel for linguistic information, as in sign languages like ASL. I find it fascinating that ASL is able to use this single multidimensional channel to convey both linguistic structure and emotional information, by combining gestures (and the manner in which they are executed) with facial expressions. Codes can also be transmitted in the visual channel (immediate flash of Monty Python's skit including the semaphore version of Wuthering Heights and Julius Caesar on an Aldis lamp). There are numerous examples in science fiction and fantasy of languages using the visual channel, such as the light-language of Sheila Finch's octopus-like aliens in "No Brighter Glory" (The Guild of Xenolinguists).

My favorite example of using the tactile channel of communication is the language that Anne Sullivan used with Helen Keller - basically, English written with a finger on the palm of Keller's hand. There's clearly no barrier to communicating linguistic structure through a channel like this, even though we don't typically use it that way because we're focusing on other options. One could argue, though, that we communicate on this channel all the time, expressing non-linguistic messages about comfort, care, love and intimacy.

I've discussed the olfactory channel before, early in the history of this blog. For dogs and other animals, a great deal of information is channeled through the sense of smell - mood can be communicated through scent, and identity can be communicated through urine or musk even after quite a bit of time has passed (and in fact, smell allows animals to gauge how much time has passed since the message was left.). Taste isn't used quite as much as a communication tool, but one could argue that the culinary adventures of "Like Water for Chocolate" grew out of a keen sense of emotions being conveyed through cuisine!

So finally we've arrived at the question of psychic connections, which for this discussion it's actually quite useful to think of as a "sixth sense." Telepathy could be considered the transmission of linguistic information and structure through this channel, while empathy could be considered the transmission of emotional information, in much the same way that facial expressions transmit emotional information.

Let's play with this idea. You've got a great new sense available (by whatever means it might be actuated) for conveying information. Empathy makes the assumption that the psychic channel is being used to convey the kind of information that we pick up from the visual channel in ordinary conversation, while telepathy makes a stronger assumption, that the psychic channel can be used for linguistic structure (which is typically available in either the auditory or visual channels). Given this, I have two questions that pop up in my head:

1. Why would linguistic information on the psychic channel take an auditory or visual form?

2. How might the use of a psychic channel influence the use of language in other channels?

When I consider the first question, I'm not at all sure that information in a psychic channel would necessarily parallel the forms of language we're already familiar with. In cases like that of Ursula LeGuin's Hainish series, where humans had existing auditory language and learned thereafter to communicate in the psychic channel, I really have no problem with the idea that existing language forms would transfer over. Language is not easily re-invented. On the other hand, if you were to have a species that evolved with telepathy, the form it took would very likely have a lot to do with its means of actuation. Variations in the strength of an ongoing signal? Pulses of something? Direct perception, somehow, of the electrical signals going on in another person's brain? If we're talking about direct perception of electrical signals, then telepathy might be able to borrow sensations from the other senses - but if it is indeed a sense in and of itself, that communication might take an entirely different form. That form might be difficult to describe for those of us who don't possess such a sense, and in fact it would make communication with such a species quite challenging.

But not necessarily impossible. Just because a species uses a psychic channel, that doesn't mean it wouldn't communicate in other channels too. The communication we use is highly redundant, both linguistically and between channels. We often speak in auditory linguistic form about emotions which can simultaneously be read on our faces and in our body movements, and likely perceived in our scent as well. In just such a way, a psychic species might make certain kinds of information redundantly available - it's easy to imagine them backing up their psychic communication with facial expressions and body language, for example. For them, adapting to an entirely auditory language form would not be easy, I don't imagine, much in the same way that adaptation to sign language can be difficult for people accustomed to dealing with auditory language.

This has brought us around to my second question, of how psychic communication might influence language. I have no doubt whatsoever that it would.

In Ursula LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness, the use of the psychic channel is redundant with the auditory channel, but it is different. Because it's impossible to lie psychically, use of the psychic channel lends a sense of frankness and/or intimacy to communication.

I always wondered about the Na'vi in James Cameron's Avatar, who seemed to "link up" regularly with animals and plants, but somehow never with one another. Was that a lost opportunity for the storytellers? Possibly so - but that wasn't really a part of the story they chose to tell (which I thought was very effective for its audience). I would guess if the Na'vi were to communicate with one another that way, the need for direct physical contact would have a similar effect to the honesty requirement in LeGuin's case, making for a sense of intimacy associated with communicating in that way (what precisely is communicated in the Na'vi case is unclear, but it seems to be non-linguistic information). Might communication without that added channel then make for a sense of lack of intimacy? Rather than what we'd automatically assume, normality?

I'm sure you would also see direct influence of the psychic channel on the forms of auditory language. Vocabulary and expressions would reflect the influence of the channel's existence. Perhaps you'd see a proliferation of language used to describe the sensations and meanings associated with the psychic channel. Or perhaps you would see areas of auditory language that became impoverished because they were redundant with a more effectively communicated psychic equivalent. Quite likely in a species with a complex auditory language, you would see both forms of influence, in different areas of the language.

Whenever you are working with an extra sensory channel beyond the auditory, whether that be visual, olfactory, tactile, taste-based, or psychic, it's worth spending some time to consider how the increased importance of that channel would influence the forms of linguistic communication. Think about how we talk about what we perceive with our senses, and then ponder the impact of a significant change in the importance of any one of those additional channels. You might come up with some fascinating results.

Another link about Avatar and alien language

For those of you who have found the discussion of alien languages interesting, you might also be interested in this discussion of the Na'vi language of Avatar from another linguistic and cultural perspective, at a UC Berkeley language blog:

Found in Translation

Alien Languages - how foreign would they really be?

This post was requested by CWJ, my friend from the forum over at Analog - thanks so much for the question, CWJ! It also strikes me that this may be a timely topic for people who are considering the Na'vi language that was used in Avatar.

CWJ asked:

Juliette, I'd like to hear more about (constructing) non-human languages. In particular, if Chomsky's idea of universal innate grammars is correct, does that mean there are only certain avenues down which humans can go, which might be different from aliens? That is, maybe there are some concepts or constructs that would be difficult for humans to truly conceptualize. Or the other way around. In short, I am interested in the possibility that communication may be very difficult.

This is a complex question, so I'll take it a bit at a time.

First, the Chomsky question. Chomsky proposed the idea that there was some basic sense of grammar universal to all humans, that was passed on as an instinct.

Now, human languages are very diverse. The most thorough article I've seen on this topic was recently published in the Economist, and you can check it out here.

In fact, it's hard to say how much of human language is innate and how much is learned. Humans are oriented towards language from birth or even earlier; this is well known, as newborn infants prefer to listen to language sounds over non-language sounds, and their mother's native language over other languages (studies measured strength of sucking response!). They also go through a number of language development stages, like early babbling, even if they don't have any auditory language input (say, with non-hearing babies). Non-hearing babies are also known to babble with their fingers. People have also looked at pidgin languages, which tend to take on grammatical structure - and very similar grammar structure - when they're passed on to the second generation, and used this as evidence for a more extensive innate language faculty.

On the other hand...

I've been quite impressed by research which looks at language acquisition from a neural-network point of view. Neural net computers have been shown to learn language patterns like English past tense -ed in much the same progress trajectory as human kids. I've also heard about research that says re-occurrence of phrases may play a larger role than we thought in language acquisition. Certainly human brains are very good at tracking the frequency of occurrence of things (sounds, words, etc.) - a critical skill for language learning. So in the end I'm not personally convinced that grammar is really what's innate and at the root of the drive for language acquisition.

I suppose if there were some kind of universal grammar beneath all human language, then it might be restrictive for the learning of alien tongues. Since I'm not really in the innate grammar camp, I don't think that the primary restriction on learning alien tongues would come from that department.

I think it would come from perception problems. More on this below.

The evolution of language is not simply a matter of brain evolution, but of the co-evolution of the brain, the ear, and the vocal tract as language developed. As a result, they are all well-suited to one another, and babies can hear any language sound from any language in the world, and learn it natively, given the opportunity and a normal course of development. We listen for audible building blocks from the vocal tract that are put together sequentially. Our brains are excellently tuned to process them, and we associate them with physical, temporal and social context in lots of complex ways. But alter these very basic prerequisites, and the problem becomes much harder (even if we assume maximum language-learning ability like that of a child). Sign language shows that the language stream need not be auditory. But what if the language stream is not sequential but simultaneous? Or what if the language producing organs of the alien create a language stream that our eyes and ears are unable, or only partially able, to perceive?

Sheila Finch's stories about the Guild of Xenolinguists speak more directly to the kind of language problems that CWJ mentions - basic problems of auditory vs. visual, processing in the brain and such - than my own. In fact, CWJ, if you haven't read them, you might find them very interesting, because she takes a very Chomskyan approach to her concept of language. She has humans being able to understand all sorts of things, but requiring special drugs to make them forget their existing categorizations of perception, for example. Speak with her in person, though, and she'll tell you - as I will - that any communication with aliens would be next to impossible.

In the realm of animal communication on Earth, we're still discovering things, like the super-low sounds produced by giraffes. We're working hard on the communication of dolphins, too (see a very interesting article on dolphin intelligence, here). We've taught some creatures how to interpret basic signals on a behavioral basis (I remember Mike Flynn having an interesting post on the nature of communication - I'll see if I can find the link). But we haven't really cracked any codes. One of the things that can cause misunderstandings between humans is differences in categorization of concepts - places where the two languages file things differently, as when the Dutch say a picture is "up the wall" instead of "on the wall." A creature that lives underwater and perceives its world through sonar signals will have a totally different way of perceiving the world. It may not even conceptualize the separation of objects as we do. What does it do to language concepts when the means of producing language (sound) is the same as the means for perceiving one's surroundings?

So effectively I think it would be hard to recognize alien language as language at all, and probably harder to try to "break it down," especially in a situation where the physiology of the aliens in question, and their environmental context (not to mention social context) were unknown.

This doesn't stop me from designing alien languages, obviously! As far as constructing the languages goes, I think it really depends on the author's intent with the story, and the nature of the primary language problem in the story. If decipherment is your primary problem, then you can really embrace problems of channel (auditory/visual etc.) and the identification of structure. If your primary problem is one of first contact and code cracking, then you can do some channel stuff, or you can focus on grammar or phonetic dificulties, pronunciation difficulties, etc. If your primary problem has to do with cultural issues and misunderstanding, then it's helpful to create a language and assume that humans have already cracked the code, which allows you to place the focus where it really belongs.

Wow, that became a long post! I hope you find it helpful. I welcome any questions, followup, "what-the-heck-did-that-mean-can-you-explain-this-bit-again-please," etc.