Arrival and the Traversable Limits of Language
"We live through a language and, thus, a mode of knowledge that is informed by experience. "
In this piece, Nico Morales looks at what Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival teaches us about language and its limits…
Ludwig Wittgenstein once said, "the limits of my language are the limits of my world." As one of the foremost modern thinkers of language, Wittgenstein had an interesting theory about how language operates. While his most famous work offers the picture theory of language—the idea that communicative acts serve to evoke mental images that relate to the linguistic concepts put forth—there’s so much more to be taken from the musings of the man who boiled every philosophical issue in human history down to miscommunication.
And yet it’s in this seemingly outlandish claim that we can understand the brilliance of Wittgenstein’s work: it wasn't that he had such faith in language that he believed miscommunication to be the fault of the individual; rather he ascribed such complexity to language and its practice that he thought it to be ill-fated in the hands and mouths of us mere mortals.
Though he would go on to offer the arguably impractical suggestion of simplifying language so that we might not confuse ourselves, what Wittgenstein’s idealistic solution underlines is the power of our most basic aid. As he was at pains to point out, the very landscape with which we construct our world lies within the concepts we use to codify it. At first glance, this idea may seem a bit insane. If there's a mountain in front of you, it’s not as if you won't be able to comprehend what it is, right? But if we really think about it, how would you describe a mountain without the words to do it? If you couldn’t tell your friend about the mountain in front of them and then couldn't use synonyms or seemingly interchangeable words to describe the object, the concept starts to deteriorate altogether. Without language, then, we lose our sense of reality experienced at a step apart, only able to conceive of the immediate and nothing more.
This world without language, one that cannot trespass beyond the intimacies of our conscious experience, is something Georg Hegel touched on. The ‘necessary alienation’ we must experience to be temporally separated from the objects that we encounter within the world so as to offer an explanation of them ‘outside themselves’, to use Hegel’s phrase, is a crucial part of self-conscious existence according to the late, infamously incomprehensible philosopher. More than anything else, then, what language allows is something akin to a representation of experience: literally re-presenting things in another way—in words themselves. It allows us to playback reality through concepts. Without it, we are simply simians—living our lives subject to the immediate, personal experiences of the moment, unable to free ourselves from the endless, unrelenting tread of time.
Of course, this relationship between time, experience, and language isn’t fully transcended through the act of communication. The relationship simply changes. It goes from a primary sensory experience to a removed one but one that nonetheless has to exist if we are ever to come to terms with the original stimulus. It’s in this relationship between the two modes of reality—the one analog and the one representational —that Wittgenstein based his pictorial understanding of the world on. He believed that the metaphysical world—the one that we experience through our senses—was made up of facts or ‘states of affairs’. Language was said to share some structural relationship with this reality; because language can sensibly represent a reality that maintains a discernable form or structure, so too do the pictures language evokes. This isn’t to say the two structures holding up the parallel realities are the same; rather, they offer evidence towards an existent structure. We know the structures of the world, therefore, through the structure of our language.
But for all the cosmic powers inherent to the concept and use of language, there are elements that falter in its function—ones specific to our language.
So much of what a film like Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival speaks to is the shortcomings of human communication. The understanding that the conception of linear temporality bounds our linguistic practice sits at the crux of the plot. The circularity with which the story is presented offers up a perfect object of representation. Not only does it present the experience of experience as closely as one might in concept, but it works in action as well as it does in concept.
The first viewing withholds information in the same way life does—the seemingly-unrelated plot points that link together a cogent idea are perceivable but changed upon revisitation. The element of salience experienced once all of the ideas have washed over time and time again allows you to delve into the well-trodden cave of understood experience, finding something new each time. Tertiary thoughts become central and the initial stimulus, while unchanged in its emanation, is different in experience.
But for all that can be perceived by Villeneuve’s cinematic genius, it’s difficult to imagine, even without our contemporary conception of language, that we might ever be able to experience time in the way that it operates. Louise is gifted the solution of unbound linguistic experience. It might be clear to theoretical physicists that time is simply a conceptual prison with which we understand the world to abide by, but if language and its practice stem from our biological makeup, namely, how the self-aware body corresponds to the exterior world, then whatever linguistic practice comes to be would likely be bound by the same, genetic, taxonomic, and material limitations we are subject to.
As Evan Puschak’s revelatory video suggests, communication is limited by perspective. The drama that looms over Louise and the temporal limit imposed on her by the tension between states is a perfect example of the problem inherent to our concept of language. Language is a communally-based reference defined and changed by individual experience. What is clear to her is foreign to another. The specificity needed to push across a point, regardless of how saliently it’s expressed, sits beyond the boundary of spoken or written communication. Wittgenstein spoke to this, almost in riddles, by saying that in order for the limits of language to be understood, one must conceive of both sides.
This seeming impossibility of superposition is one that can be difficult to reconcile. Knowing the limit of what is possible and conceiving of what is not is easier said than done. Equally, it’s necessary to utilize communication in a way that doesn’t just express the speaker's viewpoint, but also creates a fertile environment for those listening.
We all implicitly understand that our individual experience of the world is precisely that. The object doesn’t change, rather the experience of it changes. The difficulty that arises is communicating across these shifting experiences of the world to arrive at a common viewpoint. Again, in the film, this is underlined in importance by the global implications therein. The manner in which we allow ourselves to communicate, or the basis of the linguistic practices we employ, decide our interactions with those around us. “If all they ever gave you was a hammer, everything becomes a nail.”
We don't have the benefit of Louise’s solution. Aliens with a more sophisticated understanding of time and language aren't here to imbue us with the tools to access a higher plane. We’re left to our own devices and modes of conception. And though it may be a bit myopic for me to suggest that the primary issue in Arrival could only be solved by the presence of an intergalactic miracle—a perfect exposition of what happens when one lacks the tools of conception—the issue of communication between those who can understand one another seems like a better start.
Wittgenstein’s initial solution—the simplification of language so to avoid an overload or misinterpretation of mental images—seems to not only underestimate the capacity for human understanding but also what kind of information human language can posit. Performative, artistic, definitive communication, amongst other avenues, are all well within the realm of what can be achieved. What needs to be elaborated upon is the concept Wittgenstein emphasized in his posthumous work.
The context with which language is employed, or as Wittgenstein put it, the ‘language games’ one plays when attempting to communicate is an essential part of how something is understood. Because so much of what we’re looking to evoke in the minds of those listening is dependent on experience, the context with which a message exists in creation needs to be understood to have the best chance at being received in a similar light.
Equally, the informative context with which the idea is conceived is also helpful in understanding any concept in its entirety. Trying to convince someone of anything, or let alone, posit an idea, is often more complicated than we imagine. The results of a misunderstood or misinterpreted concept only seen after they are regurgitated or otherwise redirected.
This isn’t to suggest that communication was, at one point, easier. Instead, that there was an analog, a naive simplicity with which we arrived at a perspective. Armed with digital perpetuators of our own curated perspective, it’s easy to get caught up in the things we either consciously or algorithmically come to believe without ever examining why we want to believe it. In a time where the response to a global pandemic has largely underserved those who need the greatest protection, here in the states, we find that one of the most dangerous conditions exposing people to coronavirus is ideological- not material. So, when asking the all-important question as to how one gets these seeming reality refuters onside, we must first consider how they got there in the first place.
We live through a language and, thus, a mode of knowledge that is informed by experience. We often have to make a mistake before we can grasp the logic that would have allowed us to avoid it. But when the consequences of miscommunication are so dire, we have to try to maximize the potential of a system that allows us so much freedom to begin with. Not only are we tasked with communicating that which is beneficial to those around us, but we must also arrive in the world they live in so that the message isn't lost in the spaces that lie between.
You can follow Nico Morales on Twitter @Nico_OMorales.
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