Rhiannon Grant and Myfanwy Reynolds
Some of the dialogue in the Star Wars films has become deservedly iconic, instantly recognizable even to people unfamiliar with the series – such as “May the Force be with you.” Plenty more has fallen into obscurity, often equally well deserved – can you recall any of Anakin and Padmé's romantic dialogue from Attack of the Clones? Fan discussions of dialogue tend to focus on either the truly great or the truly terrible, but there's a great deal of dialogue that we can't evaluate as either great or terrible because it's untranslated – and maybe untranslatable.
The “galaxy far, far away” in which Star Wars takes place is home to thousands or even millions of species and cultures that mix freely across many planets. Several human characters speak two or more languages.1 On top of that, there are droids with noises of their own, some comprehensible to organic speakers, others requiring a “human/cyborg relations” specialist like C-3PO to translate. Star Wars is full of beeps, growls, screeches, and burbles. Are they instances of language? How about Chewbacca? Can Chewie speak?
Fans well versed in the wider Star Wars universe may wish to interrupt us here. As the Expanded Universe expanded, the alien cultures of Star Wars got fleshed out, and it's canonical that Wookiee noises are a language – Shyriiwook. So why are we asking this question? Ultimately, it has to do with meaning. Calling something a language doesn't mean it actually works as a language, any more than calling yourself a Jedi means you have Force powers. So, do Chewbacca's noises work like a language?
As viewers, it seems instinctively obvious to us that Chewbacca is speaking; he's expressing his thoughts for others to hear. Yet we also know that he doesn't communicate in any language we understand, and perhaps not in any way that fulfils the usual criteria for language at all.
Consider a typical exchange between Chewbacca and Han Solo. Han and Chewie's dialogues follow a basic pattern. Han speaks, asking a question or making a point, in English (representing Basic, the most prevalent language in the Star Wars galaxy); Chewbacca then makes a noise. Without context, we'd have no reason to assume this is speech,2 because his noises don't resemble the form of any language that humans speak. They do resemble animal sounds, which aren't usually classified as speech: wampas and rancors both make growling, howling noises that wouldn't be out of place coming from Chewbacca. If we're going to count Chewbacca's noises as talking – as language – why don't we do the same for these others?
We've run into a problem: there is no single definition of what language is. However, linguist Noam Chomsky has advanced the idea that an utterance must have a syntax (or structure) determined by a grammar (or set of rules) in order to be part of a true language. Taken by themselves, Chewie's utterances don't seem to have enough structure for natural language. For one thing, Chewie usually makes only one noise at a time (although the noises may be lengthy). For another thing, Chewie's noises don't generally have identifiable gaps, breaks, significant variations in tone, or anything else that might suggest the internal structures that Chomsky requires.
Of course, it's always immensely difficult to imagine what a truly alien language would be like (would it be based on sounds at all?), but there are sounds that usually don't change much between languages – sounds that correspond to names of a person, planet, or group of people, for example – which Chewie manages to convey without making any of the sounds we recognize as making up those names3 or speaking for the length of time required to deliver them. The first objection isn't significant: it's entirely possible Chewbacca can't physically articulate the sounds needed to produce, say, “Luke Skywalker,” and so he's substituting others. However, unless Wookiees have perfected some kind of super-abbreviated speech, it's unlikely that Chewie's sounds can contain all the information implied by the surrounding dialogue.
Chewie's noises, then, have neither the content (information) nor the form (length, structure) we expect of speech, and Chomsky probably wouldn't hesitate to file them firmly under “not speech.” The nail in the coffin is that Chewie's dialogue wasn't scripted. On set, Peter Mayhew just made appropriate-sounding noises at the right moment; in post-production, these were replaced with roars based on animal noises. The conclusion that these noises aren't real language is so obvious as to be unnecessary: Chewbacca doesn't speak.
Chomsky's theory of the nature of language, though, concentrates on structures, and doesn't touch at all on one of the most important topics in the philosophy of language: meaning. The organized complexity Chomsky identifies in human language is distinct from animal noises chiefly because it permits the expression of conceptual meanings that are inaccessible to animals. A wampa can tell another wampa where its latest catch is, but it probably can't have a reasoned discussion about, say, the ethics of eating meat. The question “Does Chewbacca use language?” is thus equivalent to “Do Chewbacca's noises convey meaning?” The next question would be, given that none of us speak Shyriiwook, “How could we tell?”
How does language convey complex meanings? How do we derive meaning from a string of sounds or signs that aren't individually significant out of context? There've been many theories about what exactly constitutes meaning and how it's produced, and the Austrian-born philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) contributed significantly to two of these theories.
Wittgenstein once (allegedly) threatened the eminent philosopher Karl Popper with a poker. A lifelong eccentric, he spent three years as a Ben Kenobi–like recluse in a Norwegian village before serving in World War I. His most substantial work, Philosophical Investigations, was published after his death and soon became a classic in the field of philosophy of language. In Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein took an outright U-turn from the viewpoint of the only complete book he published in his own lifetime, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.4
In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein developed the so-called “picture theory” of language. The idea is that language works by creating a series of “pictures” of the world – so the sentence “Yoda is on Dagobah” tells us how one thing (Yoda) is arranged in relation to another (Dagobah). Similarly, “Han Solo is a scruffy-looking nerf herder” tells us how a thing (Han) relates to a category (scruffy-looking nerf herders). Language is complex, of course, and this theory has room for examples like “It's a trap!” as long as the object named by “it” has been previously identified. Within this theory, a statement is meaningful if it creates a valid picture of part of the world – one that is or could be true.
However, it soon becomes clear that many uses of language are unaccounted for. “Use the Force,” for example, is an instruction, not a description. Beyond this, some uses of language change the picture of the world – certain acts are actually performed simply by saying that you are doing them, as when Palpatine renames his new apprentice by saying, “Henceforth, you shall be known as Darth … Vader.” In order to correct the omissions in the “picture theory,” Wittgenstein later turned his attention away from truth-as-description as the measure of what makes language meaningful. Instead, in the Investigations Wittgenstein focused on language's context.
Wittgenstein argues in the Investigations that instead of focusing on whether a statement is true or not – whether it matches the world – we need to look at how a remark is used. To show this, he invents a very simple language, with only two or three words, which can't be explained by the picture theory. We can imagine such a language existing in the galaxy far, far away, too. Imagine Han is fixing the Falcon's engine and Chewbacca is handing him tools: if he says “wrench,” he gets handed a wrench; if he says “hydrospanner,” he gets a hydrospanner.5
In this very simple language, the words aren't descriptions but instructions. In a more complex language, it'd be necessary to say more (“Can I have a … please”) or to use nonverbal elements, like holding out your hand, in order to show it's a request. Otherwise, your friend might be overcome with an attack of wit and reply to “hydrospanner” by saying something like “Yes, that's a hydrospanner, well spotted!”6
Wittgenstein calls each of the specific ways and circumstances in which we use language language-games. Each game has its own rules and can be learned by itself; although we can also take words and phrases across from one language-game to another. Giving orders, as in the example above, is a language-game – you can give orders with single words, like “Fire!” if everyone knows that each word is an order (and not, say, an instruction to bring the speaker a source of fire, or a warning that something nearby is on fire). Other language-games Wittgenstein mentions include describing an event, such as Threepio telling a fireside story to the Ewoks; speculating about events (“Do you think they'll melt us down?”); making up stories – as Lucas has wonderfully done; telling jokes (“How many Gungans does it take to screw in a light bulb?”); and thanking someone, as when Han tells Luke after his rescue from Jabba's clutches, “Thanks for coming after me, I owe you one!”7
Other philosophers have debated about the application of what counts as a language-game, tending to think of larger things like whole religions as single games. For our purposes, though, it's more useful to think of language-games as small units. “Being a Jedi” or “being a pilot” is too big and complex a practice to be a useful concept here – games, both in our world and in Star Wars, are actually quite restricted. The rules of holochess, for example, only apply when the board is in front of you. Likewise, telling a story has rules that differ depending on whether the tale is the terrible legend of Darth Plagueis the Wise or something funny that happened at the Mos Eisley cantina.
One of the most important effects of Wittgenstein's turn away from truth and toward use as a measure of the meaning of words is that it leads us to think about the social aspects of language. We use words with other people; we learn words from them; we use words to communicate and coordinate actions with them; and, Wittgenstein argues, we can't even have meaningful words without other people. This section of Wittgenstein's work has been called the private language argument – a misleading name, because his claim is actually that a truly private language, a language for one speaker only, is impossible.
If Obi-Wan Kenobi is out in the desert with not even a droid or Qui-Gon Jinn's Force-ghost for company, could he create a meaningful word? Suppose that Obi-Wan senses a disturbance in the Force, and to record this he invents a symbol – Wittgenstein uses the example “S” – and marks it in his diary. A few days later, Obi-Wan senses something in the Force that seems to him to be the same sensation as before, and so he marks S at another place in his diary. In the second instance, is he using S correctly? How would he know?
There are problems here that may not be immediately apparent. One is about memory: is Obi-Wan recalling the previous sensation S accurately enough to compare it with the later sensation, which may or may not be the same? There's also a problem about the definition of S: without an independent way of checking for the correct use of S, how can Obi-Wan tell the difference between thinking that he's using S correctly and actually using S correctly?
Wittgenstein's answer is that he can't. At any particular time, he might think that he's using S correctly (i.e., it always stands for the same sensation), but he might actually be using S to refer to two different sensations. A language that is entirely and privately the possession of one individual can't have the kind of checking procedure that a real language needs. If Obi-Wan wants to invent a new word, he needs someone else with whom to use it, someone who can also use the word and whose use can be compared with Obi-Wan's. There will always be the possibility for disagreement – Obi-Wan and his friend can argue about what's a table, about what's funny, about what counts as S – but without the kind of community that creates those arguments, he can't really use a word at all.
When asked how many languages he speaks, C-3PO's answer is “over six million forms of communication.” So far as quantity is concerned, he could well have a far more complete knowledge of these languages than any organic speakers raised with them. It doesn't matter how well he “knows” a language, though, if it doesn't work – that is, if he tries to communicate with a speaker of that language and fails. It's not the completeness of his vocabulary and grammar databases that tells us, for example, that C-3PO can speak Ewok, but rather the fact that he can talk to Ewoks.
The Star Wars films and Expanded Universe materials teem with processes, objects, and entities that are unique to their fictional setting, are without counterparts in real life, and would need to be learned by someone encountering them for the first time. Each of these new concepts is named and described to us in the films with either a wholly new term – like lightsaber, which didn't exist before Lucas coined it (although the script still uses the generic “laser sword” in places) – or an existing term used in a new way, like Force. In some cases, the audience learns the words at the same time as the protagonist on screen: when Ben Kenobi produces Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber for the first time, Luke's incredulous “What is it?” prompts Ben to explain directly: “Your father's lightsaber. This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight.” Ben next explains to Luke what the “Force” is – a much preferable explanation to Qui-Gon's explanation to Anakin of what “midi-chlorians” are.
Most of the time, however, the audience works out what new terms mean without ever getting a direct explanation. Instead, they just observe how the characters use them. For example, the backstory of the Sith Order is never explained in the films (though it is in Expanded Universe sources), nor does anyone ever define a “Sith” outright. Still, someone watching only the films can construct a perfectly workable definition of “Sith-ness” by observing the term in use.
This is the way you learn how to use words in any situation: you hear how someone else uses a word, and from there you get cues for how to use it yourself. Where Wittgenstein's theory is revolutionary, though, is in arguing that this process of communal use, understanding, and feedback is the only way language gains meaning. As we saw, you can't create a new word by yourself, since you need others to use it with you. Furthermore, you can't just make a word mean whatever you personally like simply by redefining it – despite Ben Kenobi's contention that his description of Vader having “murdered” Luke's father is a true description of events “from a certain point of view,” Luke is having none of it. If a word is going to change its meaning, several people, at least, need to use it in a new way, because a private language for one person isn't a language at all.
Conversely, if more and more people do start to use a word in a new way, eventually the newer usage will become its accepted meaning – either coexisting with an older meaning or superseding it. Handy meant something very different to Chaucer than to a modern Anglophone, and ditto for naughty in Shakespeare's day; and there's no doubt at least one word in this very sentence will appear strange to someone reading a century from now.
Earlier, we said that Chewie's speech doesn't meet the requirements laid down by Chomsky for being a language: his utterances are too short and unstructured. For Wittgenstein's “meaning is use” theory, though, these shortcomings become less relevant. Chewie is communicating: however it's happening, he clearly passes on information and opinions (sometimes very strongly expressed) to Han and others.
In storytelling terms, the trick is simple, since it's just a matter of ensuring that Han's dialogue tells us just enough about the content of Chewie's utterances without simply repeating them in English. In Wittgenstein's terms, this trick not only maintains the sense of being in an alien world we don't fully understand, but also provides us with sufficient information that we can be confident Chewie really is using language without this ever being stated explicitly. Like Han and Leia, Chewie is a person, not a mere brute like a wampa, or a dumb machine.8 Despite this, Shyriiwook isn't a language in the world in which we live. Unlike, for example, the Elvish of Tolkien's Middle-Earth, Shyriiwook isn't a fully constructed language;9 it doesn't have an internal grammar, stable vocabulary, or consistent transcription.10
What it does have is the conversational behavior of a language within the script of the films. Because it allows Chewie to take full turns in a conversation, it serves the function of a language within the setting. Just as we learn the names of new objects by hearing and seeing them used by characters, we learn that Chewie is speaking a language by watching others respond to Chewie's utterances in ways we expect people to respond to language in our world. We have to be wary, though, of overgeneralizing conclusions based on a fictional world. We must acknowledge that the script, visuals, and soundscape of the films have been carefully crafted both to tell us that other characters understand them (inside the film) as well as to ensure that the audience understands what's happening (outside the film). This provides a high degree of context that the real world often conspicuously lacks.
To delve too deeply into surveying syntax, grammar, information content, and prosody to determine what makes language language is perhaps to miss the point. Wittgenstein shows how a pared-down language consisting only of commands – or beeps, or growls – can be perfectly workable as long as it's understood, while a more nuanced language would be functionally useless if there's nobody else to use it with: imagine if Marc Okrand's Klingon language – the foundation for all spoken or written Klingon in the Star Trek universe11 – had been lost, or Tolkien's carefully crafted Middle-Earth linguasphere had remained an unpublished, unseen “secret vice”?12 What defines language should not be what is said but whether it is understood, and Star Wars provides a case study of galactic proportions to show that understanding is happily possible without decipherable words. In what's still one of the most iconic images in the saga, the medal ceremony in A New Hope, the only dialogue comes from Chewbacca and R2-D2 – and we know without a doubt that it is dialogue. We have tuned into Artoo and Chewie's speech, their languages, sufficiently to understand the feelings they're expressing – joy from Artoo and undoubtedly frustration from Chewie for his lack of a medal – despite the lack of words in any language an Earthling could understand.13