When I was an ignorant pre-teen, I loved Star Wars and hated Star Trek. When people confused me for a Star Trek fan it always infuriated me. Then a teacher forced me to watch “Darmok.” Hmmm, I thought as it ended, I was very, very wrong about this Star Trek. Today there are few things I like watching/hearing more than Picard’s retelling of the Gilgamesh tale:
Lately, I’ve been thinking more and more about this episode and its relation to Internet culture. ”Darmok” centers on Picard’s troubles with understanding the Tamarian language, which Memory Alpha describes as follows:
The Tamarians speak entirely by metaphor, referencing mythological and historical people and events from their culture. As a result, Federationuniversal translators—although they can successfully translate the individual words and sentence structure—are unable to convey the symbolic meaning they represent.
For example, instead of asking for cooperation, they would use a phrase such as “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra“, because their culture’s stories include a tale of two Tamarians, Darmok and Jalad, who were brought together while fighting a common foe on an island called Tanagra.
The Internet is changing the way we think. One of the ways I think it’s changing us is linguistic. In a way, I feel it’s making us all Tamarians. Take reaction gifs and memes.
Reaction Gifs
I love the subreddit devoted to reaction gifs. To me, there’s something very Tamarian about it. Here are some recent examples of posts there:
Title: When my wife’s crazy friend comes over, and acts like she owns the place.
The Gif:
What we have here is a piece of story standing in for a feeling. If this gif were to be used frequently enough to express frustration at unwanted intrusions, I could give it a linguistic form–a Tamarian form. So, for example, detested in-laws might drop by unannounced and spouses could say to one another, “Pongo and Roger, huffing and puffing!” and they wouldn’t need say anything more than that to let it be known what they’re feeling.
Each of these recent posts could also become Tamarian words/phrases:
Title: My mom, walking in on my private time as a teen
The Gif:
The Tamarian Translation: Snow White in the forest, running away. (Meaning: A moment when you are overcome with a mixture of shock and fear).
Title: When I see my little brother playing with my old toys
The Gif:
The Tamarian Translation: Bilbo when the madness took him. (Meaning: Someone does something they wouldn’t normally do but couldn’t help but do).
Title: When I am in a pool and I swim through a suspiciously warm area.
The Gif:
The Tamarian Translation: Carl Winslow, his eyes round and round. (Meaning: A dawning feeling of awkwardness, disgust and pure discomfort creeps over you).
Memes
I feel the same way about memes. In fact, I can say that some memes have already started working in my mind in a very Tamarian way, to the point that when I feel the concept behind the meme, I think of the image first and the appropriate words second. This has mainly happened with the Futurama Fry meme.
Here’s a pretty typical example:
Truthfully, now when I get that “not sure if” feeling, I usually think of this meme first. It’s to the point where if I’m truly stumped by something (I’m not sure if I want to eat more or if I just feel like I have to finish what I bought), I’ll say, “Here’s that Fry meme again.” Or I could just say, “Fry, his eyes narrowed.”
When something like the below happens to me now, I usually just say, “Here’s a good first world problems meme,” rather than actually describing it:
Obviously, the memes/gifs themselves are not examples of a real world Tamarian language. Tamarian is still linguistic, and the memes/gifs are visuals. But what I’m trying to say is that these visual shortcuts are making us think more like Tamarians. Rather than expressing things in a string of words, we are seeing the small narrative moment that encapsulates the concept we are experiencing. When I have a first world problem I see: The rich girl, a tear streams down her face. When I’m genuinely stumped by two options, I see: Fry, his eyes narrowed. If we moved from seeing the meme in our minds to saying the meme as a shortcut expression of what we’re feeling, then I think we’ve arrived at something Tamarian.
I always thought that despite how clever and well-crafted “Darmok” was as an episode, the Tamarian language was pure fantasy. It would be impossible for people to actually use it. But here we are, getting closer and closer to incorporating something that while not exactly Tamarian, feels like it’s within the same ballpark.
As a writer, I have no problem with it. I’m a language realist, meaning I try not to say “this is proper English” because I learned it that way during the two decades when I was in school. Language is always evolving, and if this is a peek at where we are headed, I just find it…intriguing.
What do you think?
Good article, and I think you’re right. This is what happened to me while reading it: http://imgur.com/oXVmj
Loved the reaction image: http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/rdj_thanks.gif
When I first saw this episode, I scoffed at Tamarian language. It seemed so restrictive. Strangely, a Tamarian-esque language doesn’t feel quite so bleak anymore. Thank you for your article.
you sure like cancer
The way I see it is that all language is constructed that way.
I think you’re right. The origins of the meanings we associate with words are arbitrary. Hence, there can be no “universal translator” which does not already know all of the “meanings” of all words in all languages and their mappings to all other words.
good article-i agree with the concept totally-i am guilty of this process too. Linguistics and its evolution, adaptation, the vernacular, processing language, semiotics, mimetics, all very interesting fields
Welp, I’m a Star Trek convert now. Thanks a LOT for giving me something else to eat up my time with.
I’ve been struggling with these ideas for a long time as well. Written and spoken language are only the primary forms of communication because they are the most efficient and the easiest to teach and utilize. Technology will change this. Advice animal memes are a fantastic way of creating and iconographic touchstone that communicates a wealth of information, and towards a wider audience, more efficiently than video, or spoken language, or text alone are able to do. That is solely for these types of situations: universal concepts which occur in highly specific episodes.
I imagine that the next great evolutionary leap in communication will be in brain computer interfaces that allow us to communicate from one consciousness to another, or to many simultaneously. Trying to imagine how this would work is difficult because I can only envision it through the brain I have now, and the technology I use. I would assume that it would be akin to assembling a sort of powerpoint presentation in my own mind. This would consist of text, video, and images which I would then broadcast to another consciousness.
This is almost certainly not how such communication would occur. When computers communicate they don’t type out text to be read by one another. When I recall information my brain doesn’t have to replay a video in my minds eye. Direct brain-to-brain communication is impossible for me to imagine because I have no examples to compare it to. I only know that it would be entirely unlike our current ways of communicating.
The way that my mind works now, I can conceive a large amount of information that is neither visual, auditory, or linguistic and I can do so nearly instantly. But I have to translate this information using systems and technology that degrade the information and take a very long time to communicate, relative that is to the amount of time it takes me to recall and assemble the information in my own mind. Imagine if we were able to communicate more like computers, with bursts of code that contain this information without degrading it, or reinterpeting it, and which transmit instantaneously. If this were possible, then would written or spoken language, as we use it now, even survive?
Obama, impressed
Love that episode, and I think you are totally right. I have been saying for a while that memes are the seeds of a very unique international language. Fry meme means the same in English as it does in Chinese. The words may be different but the feeling is the same. Hadn’t made the darmok leap, but it is very similar. Once we have a large enough lexicon of memes, we can begin breaking language barriers easily with nothing but pictures of emotions.
But can enough memes be sustained at one time? I wish they used memes instead of annoyingly abstract pictures for ape communication: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Do-Monkey-Talk-47911.shtml
Sometimes, I will write “firstworldproblems.jpg”, or “motherofgod.jpg”, refering to a meme, and all that it implies, in a given surcumstance.
I wanted to comment but suddenly felt Socially Awkward Penguin…
You should listen in on a conversation between two Ultra-Orthodox Rabbis. They speak to each other in fragments of quotations of Talmudic scholars, usually in a mixture of English, Yiddish, Hebrew, and Aramaic. They allude to plot points in stories from the Midrash, to 10th century commentaries on 6th century commentaries on these stories and on relevant passages from ancient legal codes, and so on. Unless you are one of them, you will have no earthly idea what they are talking about–assuming you speak all of these languages in the first place. They are speaking a Tamarian of deep sophistication and subtlety, and they’ve been doing it for centuries.
Reddit memes? Meh, kids.
In anthropology, they talk about high-context and low-context cultures. High-context cultures assume a high degree of shared experiences and expectations. Shorthand can be deployed because the context evokes similar inferences for the participants: the Tamarians know the story of Tanagra, the blog readers have seen Pongo and Roger. Low-context cultures do more explaining through words rather than references to context; these are frequently societies with high migration.
It’s going to be interesting to see how some of this material ages: when we no longer remember the context of the meme, what will we get from the piece?
My friends and I regularly engage in this verbally. If something bad happens or we make a tough decision that leaves us feeling crummy we might just say ‘feelsbadman.jpg’ or if something was really enjoyable ‘megusta.jpg’. Instantly conjuring the picture of the corresponding meme and therefore the meaning of the feeling/situation.
Doug Williams, going to Disney world.
I made much the same observation a month or so ago, which prompted me to make the following comic: http://i.imgur.com/BReYC.gif
I chose that particular image because you frequently see it used without any accompanying text in the image. The image is used by itself to convey meaning. And that’s pretty close to Tamarian in my book.
Jeremiah Johnson, nodding in agreement.
Thanks for all of the insightful comments. I’ve learned so much from your knowledge! Overall, I think that, if anything, this demonstrates how popular culture is far more than entertainment–it gives us insight into complex collegial ideas that I would not have explored purely on my own, but now, because of my investment in the entertainment am completely intrigued by.
I’d like to point you all to this reddit thread, where I see a number of more comments have been made on the topic: http://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/xc8vi/the_tamarian_takeover_scifi_memes_and_language/
Some experts (or seeming experts) on linguistics dispute what I have to say here, and it is worth noting where they disagree with the ideas I propose.
This has been part of English for centuries. We use the terms like “A fly in the ointment”, “That’s the sticky wicket” or “Shut up!”; they were very likely started in the same manner as the meme based terms you used.
My friends and I (who use reddit) use a variety of memes in our everyday communication. A short list of the trigger phrases and memes are
“Don’t know if…” Futurama Fry.
“I don’t always do X” The most interesting man in the world.
“Why you no!” Why you no guy
“X is bad and you should feel bad.” Zoidberg
“Why not X?” other Zoidberg
“If you X, you’re gonna have a bad time.” South Park ski resort instructor.
So, as you can see from these examples, your Tamarian translations are too clunky for us earthlings. We are already incorperating memes into our language, but the shorthand is shorter.
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Spitting in the ocean.
Orson Welles, his hands clapping
Chuck testa.
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