“Story of Your Life” suggests that language is not only a means of communicating our thoughts—language also determines the kind of thoughts we can think and constitutes a form of action in its own right. The story centers on Dr. Louise Banks, a linguist recruited by the U.S. government to learn the language of aliens called heptapods. The heptapods have deposited mysterious screens called “looking glasses” at various places on Earth, which Louise and other researchers use to see and communicate with the aliens. Louise is narrating the story of the heptapods to her unborn daughter. Strangely, Louise remembers events that she describes in the future tense—in other words, she seems able to “remember” the future. As the story progresses, it’s revealed that this ability is rooted in Louise becoming proficient in Heptapod B, the heptapods’ written language, meaning that this new language actually changes her perception of time. In Heptapod B, entire paragraphs can be expressed as a single drawing able to be understood instantaneously. By studying the heptapods’ written language, Louise realizes that the heptapods do not experience their lives from past to future, the way humans do. Instead, the heptapods experience their entire lives as a simultaneous instant. Learning the heptapods’ language fundamentally changes how Louise thinks: she becomes able, like the heptapods, to experience her entire life as a simultaneity and thus seemingly “remember” future events. The change in Louise’s thinking after learning Heptapod B implies that the languages we know determine the kind of thinking that we can do.
In “Story of Your Life,” language isn’t only a means of communication or a determinant of thought. It is also a kind of action. After Louise begins to remember the future, she repeatedly compares taking actions that she already knew she was going to take to acting in a play. She also compares it to telling a story to an audience that already knows the ending, to making a promise, and to officiating a wedding: all examples of language that does something rather than merely communicating about something. By showing how language is intimately tied to thought and action, “The Story of Your Life” suggests that language is about far more than just communicating: it fundamentally shapes how we perceive and move through the world.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Language ThemeTracker
Language Quotes in Story of Your Life
Colonel Weber frowned. “You seem to be implying that no alien could have learned human languages by monitoring our broadcasts.”
“I doubt it. They’d need instructional material specifically designed to teach human languages to nonhumans. Either that, or interaction with a human. If they had either of those, they could learn a lot from TV, but otherwise, they wouldn’t have a starting point.”
The colonel clearly found this interesting; evidently his philosophy was, the less the aliens knew, the better. Gary Donnelly read the colonel’s expression too and rolled his eyes. I suppressed a smile.
“Their script isn’t word divided; a sentence is written by joining the logograms for the constituent words. They join the logograms by rotating and modifying them. Take a look.” I showed him how the logograms were rotated.
“So they can read a word with equal ease no matter how it’s rotated,” Gary said. He turned to look at the heptapods, impressed. “I wonder if it’s a consequence of their body’s radial symmetry: their bodies have no ‘forward’ direction, so maybe their writing doesn’t either. Highly neat.”
As I grew more fluent, semagraphic designs would appear fully formed, articulating even complex ideas all at once. My thought processes weren’t moving any faster as a result, though. Instead of racing forward, my mind hung balanced on the symmetry underlying the semagrams. The semagrams seemed to be something more than language; they were almost like mandalas. I found myself in a meditative state, contemplating the way in which premises and conclusions were interchangeable. There was no direction inherent in the way propositions were connected, no “train of thought” moving along a particular route; all the components in an act of reasoning were equally powerful, all having identical precedence.
The existence of free will meant that we couldn’t know the future. And we knew free will existed because we had direct experience of it. Volition was an intrinsic part of consciousness.
Or was it? What if the experience of knowing the future changed a person? What if it evoked a sense of urgency, a sense of obligation to act precisely as she knew she would?
NOW is the only moment you’ll perceive; you’ll live in the present tense. In many ways, it’s an enviable state.
“Well if you already know how the story goes, why do you need me to read it to you?”
“Cause I wanna hear it!”
