Infofiche

The State of Language in the Twenty-Fifth Century (Worldbuilding)

First, some brief background for those of you who haven't had the pleasure of reading this book. Too Like the Lightning is set on Earth in the year 2454. Technological advancements and an ambiguous 'church war' have produced a world absent of nation-states and where gender and religion are seemingly censured out of existence. Those who pass an adulthood competency exam can join one of seven 'Hives' (or choose Hivelessness); global governments which oversee all the laws and lives of their members. It is with these hives that we are primarily concerned.

The absence of traditional nation-states is not to say that national identities don't exist, except they are now formalised as 'nation strats' - efectively fanclubs - for a particular nation. Additionally, it is taboo for someone to speak the language of a hive or strat to which they don't belong. We see this when Mycroft (our unreliable narrator) is uncomfortable conversing in Japanese, or the various other languages he knows, and when certain dialogue with Cornel MASON is censored and kept in its original Latin.

Each of the seven hives have an official language, or none:

• Mitsubushi: None (English)

• European Union: French.

• Humanists: Spanish

• Cousins: English

• Utopians: English/U-speak

• Masons: Latin

• Gordian: German.

The most obvious thing here is that no less than three hives list English as their official language. This is because, in 2454, English has somehow become a diplomatically neutral language used as common ground and appears to be the language of international printed work. Its use is also for political reasons like within the pan-Asian Mitsubishi, to prevent a particular nation-strat from appearing to be more important. Within the Cousins, its use is probably to facilitate international cooperation. The third, the Utopians, are mysterious and I cannot work out why they would speak English, at least from book one.

Something else which stands out from this list is that these are all European languages. No reason for this is apparent to me, other than the setting's (internal) fetishization of 18th century and its enlightenment philosophy as the foundation for its political philosophy. It seems outlandish to me that European languages are so dominant. I suspect there is a deeper reason, unrevealed in book one.

So, the languages of the hives imply a certain geopolitical realities. What else does the setting of Too Like the Lightning imply about these languages?

Firstly, it's set 400 years in the future. Language will have changed a bit. We're talking Shakespeare's prose kind of different, but I'll talk more about how visible this is in part 2. The geopolitical system of 2454 implies a radically different relationship to language aquisition, where the language children grow up speaking may be significantly different to the language of the hive they choose in adulthood. This means that most languages are spoken non-natively (perhaps this contributes to why the hives have closely related languages). This in turn strengthens the position of any language, but in this case English, as a neutral interlang and also suggests that we will see a much higher frequency of loanwords and loan grammar as children bring their birth-tongues along with them into adulthood, whilst also trying to supress them so as not to break taboo [1].

Many of the languages show sign of reform. U-speak appears to be a partial conlang, or at least heavy with neologisms though I don't see any examples. J.E.D.D. Mason's latin is described as classical and difficult to parse, in contrast to a presumably reformed and simpler 'Masonic' Latin standard for the hive. Finally, French has been modified to remove its grammatical gender, taboo for the new, modern 25th century [3] .

Language reform poses interesting possibilites, especially depending on how the 25th century views the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in relation to its nurturist debate. We know that there was (is?) a 'nurturist' movement who oppose the more extreme child-rearing methods that exist in this future, anything which conditions them in a limiting their opportunites - including gender as we understand it, or set-set training. If the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis were believed, then conlangs would be a divisive issue for nurturists because choosing to teach a child one would be training them in one sort of cognition over another. It is fortunate, then, that the hypothesis is false but belief in the twenty-fifth is a different matter to truth. (I have a vague memory of language being used as part of an argument in the novel 'such and such a practice is no different to raising your children on a particular language', but cannot coroborate).

Invisible Multilingualsm (Textual)

All of the above would make it seem like the novel is packed full of polyglossia, with dialogue conducted in different languages and forcing us to confront the multilingual nature of international politics, but this isn't the case. The novel is almost entirely in Modern English (with a touch of Latin) and 18th century afectations. The multilingualism is communicated, in English, in two ways: typography and speech.

Typographically, a non-English language is introduced - normally by Mycroft telling us that they are speaking it and why - and then the dialogue proceeds. Translated speech is enclosed in «guillemets» or ⸢quines⸣, depending on the language, mirroring real-world punctuation use in different languages. This typography ensures that the dialogue is always easily readable - we are not that alienated - but that we are also constantly aware of the fact that it is in translation. More subtly, Palmer writes character's speech to be reflective of how she imagines them putting their thoughts into a particular language, for example a character might favour one meter in one language and another in a second [3] . or, a character's speech might be slightly awkward, because they are really translating from classical Latin on the fly.

One particular example I like is Eureka Weeksbooth's 'speech' (really text broadcast to an eyepiece), combining the two methods above. They write in something very near to early 21st century text speech and makes increasing use of cntractions & mispeling wn anxious - possibly deliberately. This stands out visually and when you are reading the prose and is very effective at communicating their set-set-hood.

This puts the novel in a middle space between polyglossia, where multiple langauges are present embedded in the source, and monolingualism - because we never actually encounter these other languages. Becuase of the monolingualism, certain dynamics are not present. For example; we cannot learn the power dynamics between languages by watching which words are left untranslated from which language and by whom, and there are no absent paradigms (what normally occurs in a SF when it uses a neologism unexplained) to be filled. Nonetheless, Palmer goes out of her way to have the narrator remind us of the political consequences of using one language or another in a situation and we are further reminded of this due to the typography. It is like she is trying to communicate the things polyglossia does, whilst only using a single language.

This is why I describe the text as invisibly multilingual, because its multilingualism is definitely present, but its also invisible because the novel is written exclusively in English. This is an interesting technique that I hadn't thought about before and means the text does not contain any linguistic absent paradigms [2] ; we are never forced to guess at what a word means (Mycroft makes sure to tell us what a Bash' is and what a sensayer is). The entirety of the text being in English means there is never any paradigm absent for us to reconstruct, making this a strangely non-linguistic piece of SF. This is even though the politics of language is constantly pointed out to us. This makes it especially jarring when we are eventually faced with untranslated Latin text, and it heightens the tension in those scenes where it happens.

Translation also plays a role in the novel's larger project of its unreliable narrator. Mycroft intrudes regularly with his opinions and implores the reader to be kind, and the fact that most dialogue is translated from what was actually said to what we read introduces an additional layer for him to do his work of communicating his view of these events. I wonder if the extremely metered speech of some characters is natural, or is really Mycroft inserting his own preferences for the dramatic and Ancient Greek epic.

In conclusion, Terra Ignota's language project is definitely there, but more in service to its other goals than as a feature of its own. Its use is limited to demonstrating the geopolitical tensions of the setting, characterising the multiple cultures present and reminding us of the narrator's hand. I was surprised by the near complete lack of absent paradigms in language, which I feel was a missed opportunity for immersing us in the setting through alienation, though perhaps the lack of this particular sort of alienation makes the cultural differences stand out more - we can perfectly understand the language of these people, yet their norms and standards are forever alien to us.

(Thanks for reading! I had a busy April bogged down with exams and other boring things so missed the post. Hopefully this makes up for it. I'm planning to be back next month with a review of Aliens and Linguists, by Walter E. Myers. Take care!)