Language finds a way

my name is hannah

and i’m a lecturer in science

communication and that’s all about

teaching scientists and science

communication students how to

communicate

about science and technology and the

related concepts

um to put different publics who might

know less about those things

um but my background’s actually in

linguistics

and studying language and my phd was

actually about evolutionary linguistics

and thinking about how

um our human ancestors uh went from a

stage

when they didn’t have language um to a

stage

where they do have language right and

those kind of subjects seem

uh not people kind of struggle to see

how they’re related or how i kind of

went from one to the other but i think

this one key concept

um that really links them quite well and

that concept

is the concept of shared knowledge

um so to explain shared knowledge um i

usually like to use the example

of ted danson this is because one time i

did a talk

and somebody reviewed the talk and said

there was way more ted danson in it than

than he was expecting there to be and

that’s created this expectation

that ted dunstan has to be in every

single talk i give

but ted dunstan he’s just he’s a

friendly guy he likes to talk to people

he likes to have a chat

um but it’s easier for ted danson to

talk to some people

than to other people and the easiest

person for ted danson to have a

conversation with

uh is himself because he speaks the same

language as himself

he has exactly the same cultural

background as himself

and has exactly the same overlapping

knowledge as himself

and so it’s almost as if he doesn’t even

need to open his mouth to have that

conversation

right he is himself but if ted dunson

was to instead

go on a little world tour if he came to

newcastle

had a conversation with me um he’d

probably be quite um

successful in communicating with me we

both share the same language we both

speak

english but in order to have that

conversation

he has to make all sorts of assumptions

about what i know

and what references i’ll get um we have

a bit of a generational

difference and also a little bit of a

cultural difference

i live in the uk he lives in america

right so there might be some things

topics that he might avoid because he

thinks i won’t get it

and that’s fine but instead then if he

went to um somewhere

like japan and went and spoke to one of

the locals

who doesn’t necessarily speak english um

he would have a much more difficult time

having that conversation right because

he doesn’t have a shared

language um so then he needs to start

thinking about what his shared knowledge

is

in order to start trying to communicate

with

a specific person right and he might do

that by using kind of

a global conventions that human have

humans have he might start pointing to

things or gesturing things that he knows

that we have in common

it’s quite easy to kind of gesture

things like emotions because we know

that

all humans share emotions so you can

gesture laughing you can gesture crying

and people will get that let’s now

imagine instead that ted danson goes on

holiday to mars

and starts to try and have conversations

uh with aliens

all aliens come to earth and start

trying to have a conversation

with ted danson right this creates a

much more difficult problem

because not only did they not share a

shared

cultural background or a shared

knowledge but they also don’t have a

shared language or even a shared notion

of what language

might be and that’s why aliens come into

earth is

a lot more kind of comparable when we in

terms of situation where we think about

the the the problem that our ancestors

had to overcome

when they were kind of negotiating um

the first human

um language type communication systems

right there was no

existing notion of what language was or

what it looked like right

it’s very similar to the to the the

problem that they try and uh

solve in the film arrival um has anybody

seen a rival

yeah i have an arrival tattoo if anybody

wants to see it in the interval

um but so for the benefit of the people

in the room who haven’t seen

a rival and for the entertainment of

those who have i’m gonna um

enact a small scene from the beginning

of the film um

so the self is that aliens have landed

on earth um

that’s in the trailer so it’s not a

spoiler and amy

adams uh plays a linguistics professor

and she’s sat in her office

watching the news because aliens have

landed and who wouldn’t be watching the

news in that instance

and this helicopter lands outside um

and it’s forest whitaker uh who plays an

army general

and he comes charging at the off uh amy

adams’s office

um and and has this tape recorder and

puts the tape recorder down

and says um i need uh you to do a

translation for me

presses the play button on the the the

recorder

and there’s this sound that comes out of

this recorder which is it sounds a

little bit like this it goes

uh and and amy i’m just like oh my god

is that the

aliens and and forrest whitaker’s like

yeah

can you translate it i’m glad you’re

laughing right

because this is actually what happens in

the film and everybody’s like yeah okay

but it is ridiculous

and naomi is like no matt i don’t speak

alien

um and the first work is like uh

yeah but can you hear any phrases can

you hear any words and she’s like

no i don’t speak alien

um like you just you’ve got a recording

here but i’m not aware of the context in

which

the aliens are making these noises i’m

not aware of the environment

um i’m not able to interact with them

you know you’re making a huge assumption

here that it the aliens are even

communicating using

uh the medium of sound right which is an

enormous assumption

and forest whitaker is like oh you were

really good at translating the farsi

that i brought you before

and jeremy adams is like i already spoke

farsi

this is a really really difficult

problem i need to be in front of the

aliens right in order to do this

and for the rest of the film like she

does that she gets taken to the aliens

and

she has this very long negotiation to

kind of work out a communication system

that they can share

but i think that this really really

highlights how difficult this problem is

um how difficult the problem of trying

to communicate when you have very very

little

in terms of shared knowledge and in

terms of

um a shared language it’s really really

difficult

when you’re talking to aliens it’s

really really difficult um

when your our human ancestor negotiates

a language and it’s also um difficult

for science communicators

trying to communicate with people about

science when they’ve been thinking about

something really really really specific

for a long time and a completely lost

um track of kind of what normal people

know right

so this is why everything’s kind of

connected um

and uh this notion of communicating to

aliens i mean it rivals fiction right

aliens haven’t actually landed on earth

but um

humans have in reality um previously um

tried to communicate

with aliens so this um object here is

known as the golden record

um so the golden record was a plaque

that they mounted

on the voyager space probe and people

sometimes get this confused

with the plaques that they put on the

pioneer

space probes the plaques on the pioneer

space robes had um two

naked humans on them a man and a woman

the the golden record

came three years after um those ones um

and the reason why there’s no naked

humans on this one

is because a lot of people rang nasa and

complained that we were sending nudes

into space

um i guess assuming that like aliens

have the same kind of

cultural hang-ups about our naked bodies

as we do

um but

so yeah so when carl sagan came to

design the golden record like nasa

literally

wouldn’t let him put naked humans on

because of the kind of

public backlash that they got after the

um

after the pioneer ones so the thing

about these space probes is that we sent

them

all the way out to the very very edges

of our solar system

and and they were communicating with us

the whole time and sending pictures back

um if anybody’s seen the pill blue dot

picture of earth from

you know uh really far away

that’s uh where that picture comes from

but all of these space probes have now

left the solar system they’ve gone

beyond the solar system

we’ve lost communication with them um we

don’t know where they are anymore and

the idea is that in about

a thousand million years and we’ll all

be dead

probably um aliens might come across one

of these space probes

um and try and work out what these

strange symbols mean right

and be like oh um you know there right

there is intelligent life out there

and we found evidence of it because

these are clearly communicative

images um and sounds because it’s also a

record

even though the the golden record

doesn’t have nudes on it and one thing

there’s two things that it does have on

it that it shares with the pioneer

plaque so there’s two things on this

image that are also on the pioneer

plaques one of them is this little guy

in the bottom right sorry i don’t have a

laser of the west side point to it but

these two little circle things

um and they represent the um two states

of

of hydrogen and the reason why that’s on

there

is because hydrogen is the most abundant

chemical

um uh the most abundant element in the

universe right so it’s likely that if

there is intelligent life out there

um they’ve probably worked out that

hydrogen exists because there’s so much

of it all over the universe right

so this is a really really good thing to

try and communicate because we know that

it shared knowledge

between us and between the aliens right

um so it’s like

just a kind of indicator to say yet

we’re aware that this exists

um so you know that we are also

intelligent life forms trying to have

this conversation with you the other

thing that is shared between

both um the the pioneer plaques and the

voyager

golden record is um the big spiky thing

which is on the on the bottom left and

that is a pulsar map

um of where our solar system is in

relationship to

um all of the different pulsar stars

that we’ve detected

right so it’s basically a map to say

where we are

in the universe has anybody ever kind of

downloaded an app on their phone and the

app has asked

are you okay with sharing your location

data with me

and every now and then at least i do

pause and think i don’t know if i am

okay with you knowing my location there

but some guys including carl sagan back

in the 1970s

um all sat down and made this decision

on behalf of all of humanity

that in thousands of millions of years

um

some aliens are gonna find this plaque

um

and and they’re gonna know exactly where

we are in the universe

and they haven’t ticked the consent box

for that

and i’m not sure i’m okay with that

there’s nothing i can do about it now

um i’m not sure i’m okay with that um

especially

because like three years earlier uh we

sent them our nudes

yeah so i think that um this is a really

really nice example of why share

knowledge is so important when we don’t

have

a shared language um and i also think

it’s an absolute

successful bits of science communication

that’s happened in the past

uh few decades it inspired a whole

generation to really think really really

deeply about some of these topics

and so this is one of my favorite

objects but yeah that’s why

aliens language and science

communication are all connected

thank you