The Linguistic Shape of Things to Come

Published in 1958, The Languages of Pao by Jack Vance is one of the earliest linguistic speculations in the science fiction genre. Directly inspired by the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, it describes a complex, linguistic engineering experiment set up to transform the essentially peaceful nature of the inhabitants of the planet Pao, so that they might stand up to invaders from another planet. It does so through the creation and implementation of three new languages, as opposed to the one they already speak, to create a merchant class, technical class, and warrior class. While Vance’s extrapolation is excessively schematic, and certainly leans heavily on a concept of linguistic relativism that now sounds rather dated, other science fiction writers have explored in different ways the idea that language influences thought and perception of the world, beginning with Babel 17 by Samuel Delany, and Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life (on which the film The Arrival by Denis Villeneuve is based). But of particular importance here is Mother Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin. Her novel is set in a dystopian, patriarchal future, where a group of linguists creates an artificial language, the Làadan, to better express women’s perception of life and as an act of resistance to the dominant male-centred culture, thus anticipating many themes in today’s debate on language and gender.