According to Collins English Dictionary, language is a system of communication that consists of a set of sounds and written symbols that are used by the people of a particular country or region for talking or writing.
According to Britannica, language is a system of conventional spoken, manual (signed), or written symbols using which human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its culture, express themselves.
According to Wikipedia, language is a structured system of communication used by humans consisting of speech (spoken language) and gestures (sign language).
All these definitions are correct and highlight the meaning of language in different ways, but according to me, language has another very significant role in the human world. It is the bridge between the said and the unsaid. It is the essence of human life. The movie, Arrival(2016) directed by Denis Villeneuve is a sci-fi exploring the depth of communication in the human and the alien world. This movie has received numerous awards and is one of its kind.
The movie revolves around comprehending the language of the aliens. The movie starts with the scorching pain of a mother losing her daughter, Hannah. This pain remains in Louise Banks’s heart forever who was the first to make contact with aliens and unravel the mystery of alien language.
Now the plot takes a subtle change which leads to the arrival of aliens in the human world. The protagonists, linguistic expert, Louise Banks, and physicist Ian Donnelly are recruited by the US Army Colonel, Weber at Montana for understanding the language of the aliens. Ian Donnelly continuously supports Louise in her decisions, gets married to Louise after the Aliens leave the earth and they together have a daughter named Hannah, but their marriage ended after Louise told him about the foresight given by the heptapod.
Language in the world of living humans is a complex but extremely beautiful phenomenon. It makes communication between human beings possible through cognitive sounds. In the whole movie, the director has attempted to glorify the hidden importance of language. Language can destroy us or make us. Language is the most powerful weapon. The problems while comprehending the language of the aliens (heptapods) which is in the form of symbolic circles clearly points to the fact that how difficult would it be, without a cognitive language in this world. Imagine a world without language where we would have not been able to communicate and understand each other! Definitely, this world would have been complex and frustrating. We would have not been able to understand the intention of the other person just like the nations were not able to understand the intentions of the aliens. Even the early humans had some kind of communication between them in the form of sounds but still, after so many years of research, we have not been able to analyze their language correctly. Such a world would have been full of confusion, chaos, and misunderstandings. Living in such a world would have been difficult and incomparably problematic.
The importance of language lies in the fact that language and its correct form of communication help to avoid misunderstanding and misrecognition, but do not mistake language as something so easy to comprehend. Language is complex and its usage is restrained by various barriers. The most intriguing barrier occurs during comprehending the language of others. When the aliens and the humans had a different way of communication, there arose a severe issue with regards to understanding. On one hand, the aliens(Heptapods – Abbott, and Costello as named by Ian Donnelly respectively) communicated through symbolic circles, and on the other hand humans through a verbal form of language, which created incompatibility between verbal and non-verbal language. There was also a gap between their vocabularies. They were not aware whether the aliens were able to understand their vocabulary or not. It was very difficult for Louise and Ian to understand what the aliens were trying to say, so they first started by analyzing and understanding their vocabulary through different words. They started by introducing themselves as humans and further went on decoding different symbols for different words. As they became more proficient in the process, they were able to interrogate the aliens regarding their intention of coming on the earth. They received an answer in the form of a statement which was translated as “offer weapon”. China interpreted this as “use weapon”, which infuriated the nations to start a war against the aliens. So this became another barrier while communicating with the aliens which led to wrong assumptions and inferences. The translation of one language into another can never be fully proven because there is always some kind of differences within different languages. There will always be different interpretations and perspectives to different languages.
This situation also highlights the amount of destruction and violence that language is capable of. The misinterpretation of language can be monstrous. “Language is the first weapon drawn in a conflict,” Louise states. The monstrosity of misinterpreting language can be seen during the time when the nations were ready to attack the aliens after misunderstanding them, but at the very moment, Louise unravels the truth behind the words of the aliens. They were referring to their ‘language’ as their ‘tool’ which will help humanity to flourish, but this was mistaken to be a weapon of destruction. As correctly stated by Louise in the movie, “We need to make sure they understand the difference between a weapon and a tool because language is messy and sometimes one can be both.” Louise helped in saving humanity from taking a wrong decision at the wrong moment.
Therefore, language is a very powerful weapon. It allows us to express ourselves and our emotions. It can be expressed in various forms but it is boundless and eternal. It cannot be defined within a specific boundary. It does not have a specific definition. The real essence and flavor of any language are in its underlying emotions.