![]() ![]() After learning and conducting conversations with the aliens, their grammatical infinitude translates into metaphysical infinitude as Louise starts perceiving time holistically, now able to see into her future, and, in turn, act upon it if she so chooses. In this sense, language is used to transcend temporality the story hints at the possibility of humanity actually ascending into some higher awareness, with time as a malleable, mappable fourth dimension.Ĭhiang extends this convergence of language and time to the Sapir-Whorf linguistic relativity hypothesis: the principle that active participation of a certain language influences one’s surrounding culture and perceptions. ![]() ![]() The heptapods need to know how the entire sentence would be laid out before initiating the first stroke, obviating the need for directions or measurements of time.ĭeviating from our human construction of time into three tenses (past, present, and future), the heptapods’ consciousness exists at all manifold levels simultaneously, meaning they can experience all three “tenses” synchronously. But because sentences manifest as organically continuous strokes rather than spaced-out graphical units, nothing can be removed without redesigning the entire sentence. “Forward” does not exist in their syntactic construction. ![]()
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