In this new article I get to bring together three of my favourite things: gesture, science fiction and working with the best collaborators. I teamed up with genre author and creative writing expert Dr Peta Freestone and corpus whiz Jess Kruk to look at the different ways scifi gestures also have lives in the real world.
We used emoji evidence to look at the ways use of the Vulcan Salute (🖖) on Twitter references Star Trek, as well as nerd culture in general. There’s no emoji for the Three Finger Salute from the Hunger Games (…yet?), so we used a newspaper corpus to see what we could learn about this gesture. It has become a gesture of protest by younger people against a variety of regimes across South and South East Asia, and is becoming untethered from its narrative origins. For this gesture, newspapers provided a good, nuanced understanding of the meaning and function of this gesture.
This article partially started out of a blog post where I was pondering fictional gestures in scifi and fantasy. The article is part of a special issue of Linguistic Vanguard on the linguistics of scifi, with a special focus on corpus methods, which was edited bySofia Rüdiger and Claudia Lange. It’s fun that this article stands alongside lots of great articles including work on the sociolinguistics of Firefly, the lexical influence of Star Wars and changing gender dynamics on Star Trek.
Abstract
Research
on emblems to date has not drawn on corpus methods that use public data. In
this paper, we use corpus methods to explore the use of original fictional
gestures in the real world. We look at two examples from popular science
fiction, the Vulcan salute from Star Trek
and the three-finger salute from The
Hunger Games. Firstly, a Twitter corpus of the Vulcan salute emoji shows
that it is used to represent Star Trek
fandom and wider nerd culture, alongside its use as a greeting. Secondly, a
global news corpus shows the three-finger salute has come to be used as a
pro-democracy protest gesture across political and cultural boundaries in South
East Asia. These corpus studies show different trajectories for the two
gestures, with the three-finger salute escaping the confines of its fictional
world, while the Vulcan salute has come to stand in as a reference to the media
it originated from. We conclude with a reflection on the opportunities,
challenges and limitations of bringing corpus methods to gesture studies.
Reference
Freestone, P., J. Kruk & L. Gawne. 2023. From Star Trek to The Hunger Games: emblem gestures in science fiction and their uptake in popular culture. Linguistic Vanguard. doi: 10.1515/lingvan-2023-0006
The Vulcan salutation is such an iconic feature of the Star Trek universe that it has its own Wikipedia page and was added to the Unicode emoji set (🖖). There are many ways to build a fictional reality, and gestures are one way of doing this.
These gestures are often Emblems, a type of gesture that has a fixed form and a fixed meaning for the group that use them. Gestures are distinct from performing magic or Jedi mind tricks, which in the fictional world are technically actions. There’s also this fun paper that looks at the way people in scifi use gestures to interact with computers and technology.
The intentional use and fixed meaning of emblem gestures mean that they can take on a life outside the fictional world. For example, here’s European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti in 2015 on the ISS, in a final salute to Leonard Nimoy.
Perhaps the most fascinating example of an emblem gesture extending beyond fiction in recent times has been the emergence of the three fingers salute from the Hunger Games books and films. This gesture has been used in pro-democracy protests in countries including Hong Kong, Thailand and Myanmar. The image below is from the 2021 protests in Myanmar.
These examples got me thinking about emblem gestures in other fantasy and scifi worlds. A recent one that came to mind was the two fingered blessing from Emperor Cleon in the television version of Foundation. Iconic enough in-world that statues of him are positioned using this gesture. It has a long history in Greek rhetoric and Christian iconography.
There’s a rude hand gesture in P.M. Freestone’s Shadowscent books - two fingers raised in a backhanded V, which parallels the Up Yours gesture in the UK and Australia, but also fits the in-world context as the offensive act is to plug someone’s nostrils (the hight of rudeness in a scent-focused world!).
I’m sure there are others too. I’ll undoubtedly start noticing them and add them to this post! (if you have any examples, I’d love to hear from you!)
The full Aramteskan grammar has been published on Fiat Lingua. This contains all the notes and details of the constructed language that I created for the Shadowscent fantasy world. Now that the series is completed, I decided to share the work that I had done on the language, in part to stop myself from continuing to tinker with it.
From the Fiat Lingua summary page:
This document provides an overview of the grammar of the Aramteskan language, created by Lauren Gawne for P. M. Freestone’s Shadowscent series (The Darkest Bloom and Crown of Smoke). This represents the state of completed work on the grammar at the conclusion of these two books. This is by no means a complete or detailed grammar, and some sections may contain more information than others.
The publication includes notes on a variety of linguistic features. It also includes a detailed translation of the quest text in book one, and a glossary of words in Aramteskan.
Have you ever wanted your own constructed language for a sci-fi/fantasy novel, D&D quest, video game idea or bespoke lorem ipsum? I’m donating my starter conlang creation package to raise funds to support the fire fighting crews during this horrific bushfire season.
Authors For Fireys is an auction of signed books, illustrations, unique experiences, one-off opportunities and writers’ services. It is taking place on Twitter from 6th Jan 2020 under the hashtag #AuthorsForFireys. Winners donate to the CFA (Country Fire Authority) and show proof of donation.
As part of the auction I’ll make the winner a bespoke language word generator. See this tweet for the auction. This will include a 1-on-1 chat so I can interview you about what you’d like to do with the language, and some aesthetic preferences.
A few quick details that don’t fit into the tweet:
We can meet 1-on-1 on Skype or in person if you live in Melbourne.
The package will involve figuring out the shape of words in the language. From there you can name characters and places, or start your own dictionary. Grammar is a whole other level of detail, but you can start building that yourself with the word generator!
The language will be yours to do with as you please.
Bids in Australian Dollars (these go further than American dollars!).
The auction ends at 11pm Sydney/Melbourne time on Saturday 11th Jan 2020.
Each author/illustrator involved (open invitation) creates a tweet announcing an item, unique opportunity or writing service they are offering to donate. The tweet will include a supporting image, plus the auction end time and hashtag #AuthorsForFireys.
Twitter users reply to that tweet with their bid in Australian dollars. Bidding continues on that thread (in increments of $1 Australian dollar or more) until the auction end time.
When the auction has ended, the item ‘owner’ messages the highest bidder on the thread.
The highest bidder is instructed to donate directly to the CFA. They must provide proof of donation to the item ‘owner’.
When proof of donation is received, the item or service is dispatched.
To sum up…
Creators run their own individual auction / tweet under the hashtag.
Twitter users scroll through the auction items under the hashtag and reply to the items to make their bids. Make your bids on the original item thread only. (ie. If you see an item quote-tweeted, do not bid there.)
A constructed language can have as many words as you have the time to make, but it’s where you focus your energy that can help give the language its personality. While constructing Aramteskan for P.M. Freestone’s Shadowscent I wanted to give the vocabulary of smelling its own detail, since scent is so important to this world.
I have had a lot of fun creating specific verbs for different ways of smelling things in Aramteskan. As the Jakobson quote goes “Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey“ (1959). English speakers can convey these meanings (after all, there are translations!), but don’t have single specific words for these meanings like Aramteskan does.
Here are some of the smell verbs I’ve created so far:
gatmar (gat-mar) v.t. to smell something deeply without knowing what it will smell like; to inhale irresponsibly.
gukmar (guk-mar) v.t. to smell something bad, often unintentionally, and then feel disgust.
hukmar (huk-mar) v.t. to smell something non-volitional, has a similar sense to gakmar but doesn’t have to make you feel as ill.
nelmar (nel-mar) v.t. to smell something faintly, often on a breeze.
nosnar (nos-nar) v.t. to smell something slowly for a long time because it has a pleasant smell, such as burying one’s nose in a bouquet of flowers.
nulmar (nul-mar) v.t. to smell, the general verb for smelling.
rashmar (rash-mar) v.t. to smell something by wafting the scent to your nose with your hand.
sugmar (sugmar) v.t. to smell cautiously, as though unsure of what the scent will be, to sniff.
toshmar (tosh-mar) v.t. to smell something that you remember but can’t immediately place.
yidnar (yid-nar) v.t. to smell with great enthusiasm, to inhale a scent deeply.
Lingthusiasm listeners will notice that Gretchen’s suggestion “to smell something and you’re not sure if it’s disgusting or not” has been added as sugmar.
Linguistically minded people will notice these verbs have a similar ending, which we don’t see in other verbs like ‘walk’ tawrad, ‘eat’ garat and ‘make’ donshir, indicating that perhaps there is some common root word here.
When P.M. Freestone first told me about Shadowscent, her YA Fantasy duology set in a scent-filled world, I was immediately intrigued. After reading an early draft of the opening chapter I was hooked. I have greatly enjoyed having the opportunity to create the Aramteskan language for this series.
You get some glimpses of Aramteskan in book one The Darkest Bloom (or Shadowscent as it’s known in the USA), but there’s a lot more of the language that doesn’t make it onto the page. Over the next year or so between books one and two being published I’ll be writing occasional posts about how the language works.
I want to start by outlining the three main things that influenced my decision-making process; the world of Aramtesh, the medium of books and how language works.
Thinking about the world Freestone built
In Aramtesh scent is prized, commodified and used to create social meaning in a way that is more like visual status symbols in our culture. I therefore made it central to many choices I made about how the grammar of the language works. There are many more verbs for smelling than, say, movement. There are also subtle translation choices; people in Aramtesh don’t talk about ‘facing forward’, they talk about being ‘nose forward’. The language also has an evidential system that marks if you know about something because you smelled it.
Of course, there are non-scent features of the world that influence the language too. Aramtesh is an empire with diverse geography, and a range of cultures. Freestone and I spent a lot of time talking through these different regions and their history. Although there is one language spoken across the Empire, it has its own characteristics in each area; People from Hagmir pronounce vowels more like Old Aramteskan, you’ll only find names with ‘ph’ in Aphorai and names that begin with ‘I’ are distinctly from Trel (Hi there Iddo!).
There’s also at least half a millennium of time history between the earliest documents of the empire and when the story takes place. I built a few centuries of language change into Aramteskan to give that sense of history; think something between Chaucer’s Middle English and Shakespear’s early Modern English.
Thinking about books and reading
The language not only had to suit the world, but also work in YA fantasy with a cracking pace. All of the sounds of the language can be written using standard keyboard, and mostly have the pronunciation you would expect as an English speaker. We didn’t want the language to feel too jarring to readers.
Did I also take into account how the language would sound if someone turned Shadowscent into a film or TV show? Of course!
I’m very excited that translation rights have been sold for a number of language. I’m looking forward to seeing how the names and words we created are translated into French, Hungarian and Czech, and very excited to see how they’ll look transliterated into Cyrillic for the Russian version.
Thinking about how human language works
Because constructed languages are made through a series of conscious choices, it provides an opportunity to make decisions to include features that don’t appear in ‘natural languages’ (the term conlangers use for language that emerge through use and transmission, like English, ASL, Hindi and the 7000 or so others). I wanted Aramteskan to be mostly naturalistic, doing things that we usually find in human languages, with a few twists.
This is where my knowledge of linguistics became very useful. I know that most of the structures I’ve created are not very unusual, but some of them are so unusual we don’t have any documented evidence of them in natural languages. Take the ‘smell evidential’ I mentioned above. We know that around a quarter of the world’s languages have evidentials, which let you mark the source of your evidence. Many languages have one that marks that you saw something, or sensed it, or that someone told you about it. No natural human language to date has one that means specifically you know something because you smelt it. Adding that was a fun way to break with naturalness, while also fitting in with the world of Aramtesh.
P. M. Freestone’s debut novel The Darkest Bloom (Book 1 in the Shadowscent duology) celebrated its book birthday on the 7th of February. You can get it at any good bookseller. the blurb:
In the empire of Aramtesh, scent has power.
When disaster strikes and the crown prince lies poisoned, long suppressed rivalries threaten to blow the empire apart.
It’s up to a poor village girl with a talent for fragrances and the prince’s loyal bodyguard to find an antidote.
To succeed, the unlikely pair must uncover secrets – cryptic,
ancient tales as well as buried truths from their own pasts – in an
adventure that will ignite your senses!
The book features the first few snippets of Aramteskan, a language I created to be unlike any existing human language, which places smell at the centre of people’s experience. All the names in the book are from the language, and you’ll even catch some lines of dialogue.
The book will also be published in these countries (with translation), I’ve added dates where known:
USA: Scholastic (Fall 2019)
Australia/NZ: Scholastic
France: Editions du Seuil
Spain: Roca Editorial
Russia: Eksmo
Hungary: Maxim
Czech Republic: MOBA
If you are in one of these places and have to wait, trust me it’s worth it! I’m already looking forward to seeing how Aramteskan is transliterated into Cyrilic for the Russian, and how it’s going to look with case marking in a bunch of languages! I’ll be posting more about the mechanics of Aramteskan when the book is out in more places!
I’m so excited to be able to share some news from the world of fiction. P.M. Freestone’s debut YA novel about a world of scent-based magic has been picked up by Scholastic in the UK and US as a duology deal.
I’m not only excited because it’s a fast-paced and beautifully-written adventure. I’m also thrilled to be able to share the news that the book will include some bits and pieces of a language I created. The language is based on the scent-focused world of the book - what happens in a language where smell is the most important sense? I got to create and explore a grammar that is unlike any existing language.
Working with P.M. Freestone is a delight, I’m looking forward to bringing you more about the world and words of Aramtesh in 2019.
The story, from the press release:
In the empire of Aramtesh, scent has power.
When disaster strikes and the crown prince lies poisoned, long suppressed rivalries threaten to blow the empire apart. It’s up to a poor village girl with a talent for fragrances and the prince’s loyal bodyguard to find an antidote. To succeed, the pair must uncover secrets – cryptic, ancient tales as well as buried truths from their own pasts – in an adventure that will ignite your senses.
I’ll be sharing more information about the language and how it came to be in 2019, here and hopefully in an episode of Lingthusiasm. You can also keep up with the news from P.M. Freestone by joining her mailing list!
The book is also available for pre-order from Amazon (UK) ahead of the Feb 7th release date - where you can also see the very pretty cover.
