Adopted language theory in Herbert's Dune

[Baldanders]

Hi, all, how is it going?

If you read Dune Chronicles, you probably remember an idea said out by Herbert: people adopt language of the power they are following. I was thinking about it for some time and decided that it's fair - if you listen to the people attentively, you may notice them using terms, templates and phrase constructions, which hints on what political parties they support, what influencers they follow and so on. With this theory, you sometimes can understand opinion of the person even before they sounded that opinion - you just need to know what opinion about it the influencer, who's language the person adopted, has.

Something tells me it's not just a thought from a sci-fi book, but some kind of a theory (like the theory of linguistic relativity), but I wasn't able to find anything related to it. Google proposes me to read about how to talk correctly about adopted children

Had anyone met any similar theories outside Dune?

 

[AllanR]

A contemporary of Herbert, Michel Foucault - Wikipedia studied how power effects language.

An interesting example might be Hungary. The Magyars showed up around 1000 AD and took over the area. Their language replaced the preexisting Indo-European ones yet genetically the people are primarily Slavic.

 

[hitmouse]

I don't think genetics has anything to do with it.

 

[Dave]

Does Herbert not mean that the conquered adopt the language of the conquerors? This makes sense if you want to get work or to rise up the ranks within a society ruled by a foreign power. However, language, or dialect, is strongly tied to identity, so to continue to speak a language when it is suppressed or outlawed is an act of defiance, and to have your children learn another language different to yours, is an acquiescence to the new status quo. Alternatively, the new language might remain the language only of the nobility or government officers, to prevent or restrict any upward mobility.

 

[JimC]

Modern English is an example.

 

[AllanR]

I don't think genetics has anything to do with it.

The only reason I brought up genetics is that through genetics we've learnt that a small number of people —the Magyars— took power over a large number of people and brought their language which replaced the Germanic and Slavic languages of the area, but not the surrounding areas where they did not have power.

 

[msstice]

Does Herbert not mean that the conquered adopt the language of the conquerors? This makes sense if you want to get work or to rise up the ranks within a society ruled by a foreign power. However, language, or dialect, is strongly tied to identity, so to continue to speak a language when it is suppressed or outlawed is an act of defiance, and to have your children learn another language different to yours, is an acquiescence to the new status quo. Alternatively, the new language might remain the language only of the nobility or government officers, to prevent or restrict any upward mobility.

The OP was looking at this on a more microscopic level, but your statement is quite defensible.

India, which has been (partly) invaded and conquered repeatedly is an example of this. Persian, Arabic and then English has been adopted by subsets of the population as a way of adapting to the labor requirements of the current invaders. Naturally, having old and strongly venerated indigenous cultures, Indians always managed to bring their little bit of home along with them. So we have Urdu and Indian English.

This phenomenon is not restricted to language: religion is I think a more powerful marker, since religion comes from God, while language is merely identity.

In terms of the OP's question, yes, this phenomenon reveals itself in different aspects of language, including accent, word choice and sentence structure. Word choice is an easily found example: University going students have their own "lingo" which they use to distinguish themselves from everyone else. Some universities have their own lingo, distinguishing themselves from other universities. All three play into regionalism, education and class and upbringing.

Moving from one strata to another often involves mimicking the new way of speaking in order to blend in. And yes, I supoose this helps change ways of thinking, though I wonder if this would happen even if language did not change.

 

[Baldanders]

University going students have their own "lingo" which they use to distinguish themselves from everyone else

Exactly! Not just nations, but also smaller groups and their slang.

And I suspect professions like criminal profiler, counter terrorist and counter spy agencies, produced theories and methodic of how to detect these adopted language (language in a wider meaning, not just English, French, etc.) features and how it works. For example, terrorist groups in their propaganda are using ideas of national revolution against an oppressor and self-sacrifice (up to kamikazes). And people, who second these groups and their ideas, are supposed to use about the same terms and phrases that the propaganda told them, as well as personal variations of it.

When you know how this mechanism works, you can detect radicals among ordinary people, so I suspect the related agencies has a lot to say about it, but for now I wasn't able to find anything particular. And agencies are definitely using language in their job. A good example is Canary Trap.

Herbert doesn't play much with his thought about adopted language. Though he uses some word-analyzes (for example, Matres say "someone will be punished", not meaning anyone particularly, but promising punishment anyway, so Odrade thinks Matres are emotional, not rational), but it's more about psychology than a mechanism of adoption of language (and ideas - through the language).

 

[Judderman]

People definitely pick up phrases from influencers. Although I feel like recently that is more from social media or reality tv influencers than that political people or leaders have a particular turn of phrase that would be copied. Still it would help you deduct some stereotypes of the person using the phrases. Maybe a guess on age if you were only hearing their voice.

Centuries back I suppose language and phrase just steadily spreads through an area with the people bringing it. Maybe those in favour of the power adapted quicker?

 

[Montero]

I do find that I adjust a bit for company, largely on automatic pilot, in terms of vocabulary and accent. My baseline comes out most strongly when I am trying to be heard, or if cross. Such as on a bad day, answer the phone AGAIN, and the long term business associate on the other end says "gosh you are sounding posh today". Pause for a second and adjust. "Oh, hi, how's it going?"

A modern example of language adaptation was East and West Germany - the former gained Russian words in their vocabulary, the latter American words.
It isn't always about power, but about who you meet. One of the stars of Goodness Gracious Me was telling the story of how a sketch of theirs got the Hindi word for underpants into the English vocabulary. Though I guess that counts under influencer. All the school kids started saying "kiss my chuddi (I think it was something like that for underpants)" It then made it into the Oxford English dictionary and all the star's family said "couldn't you have got a nicer word into the dictionary".

 

[Dave]

With this theory, you sometimes can understand opinion of the person even before they sounded that opinion - you just need to know what opinion about it the influencer, who's language the person adopted, has.

This will certainly be possible using AI technology. You might require a substantial amount of text for the AI to analyse, but that would be easily doable if the person has a number of published books, or from transcripts of their speeches or TV appearances, or from their social media posts over a number of years. However, I expect that given this amount of text, then their "opinions" would already be very clear without the analysis.

I think another questions is, that while a person can take elocution lessons, and remove their accent, and change their pronunciation, grammar, and style, can they ever change the actual words that they use; their vocabulary, or will that always point out their origins?

 

[Swank]

The flip side to all this is that people purposely adopt in-group language as a badge of that group and a way to exclude others. Evangelical Christians, just for instance, use the word "witnessing" as a verb that means to tell someone about their faith. It is a really ugly way to use the word witness, but using it that way draws a line between them and the unwashed.

Language is a leverage tool. Intelligent people see that and either ethically avoid weaponizing language, or they purposely manipulate with it. Everyone else might not see this is happening, but they are happy enough to participate if it gives them that craved sense of belonging.

 

[alexvss]

Hi, all, how is it going?

If you read Dune Chronicles, you probably remember an idea said out by Herbert: people adopt language of the power they are following. I was thinking about it for some time and decided that it's fair - if you listen to the people attentively, you may notice them using terms, templates and phrase constructions, which hints on what political parties they support, what influencers they follow and so on. With this theory, you sometimes can understand opinion of the person even before they sounded that opinion - you just need to know what opinion about it the influencer, who's language the person adopted, has.

Something tells me it's not just a thought from a sci-fi book, but some kind of a theory (like the theory of linguistic relativity), but I wasn't able to find anything related to it. Google proposes me to read about how to talk correctly about adopted children

Had anyone met any similar theories outside Dune?

This is definitely an amazing topic.

Linguists call a word that instantly identifies the speaker a shibboleth, and it comes from the Bible.

I remember an article on Tor.com about how authors use cussing to worldbuild. I couldn't find the article, but they have a whole tag for that.

 

[-K2-]

An excellent topic of discussion and each of the above posts points are all valid--yet I would suspect each point applies to -all- languages except those that were the first languages of isolated peoples.

Perhaps because I was non-verbal much of my youth and was then suddenly exposed to untold languages, creoles, pidgins, and slang--and still often slip into my lifelong style of pidgin--I too often for most folks tastes use diverse languages in my writing, whether Earth languages or devised conlangs. I've briefly studied numerous Indigenous American languages (the most complex of any language I have found, here is Cheyenne: Cheyenne Dictionary online ), Japanese to gather info on air combat in New Guinea, Cantonese, various Filipino, S. American Portuguese, Spanish variants, etc-etc.. Yet what always fascinated me most were pidgins, patios, creoles, and regional slang.

I say ALL the points others made above are right in that people like to demonstrate their autonomy, superiority, maintain their cultural privacy, and so on--yet people are also prone to adopt novel things, mimic others, try and fit in, etc. Once you work through every possibility on each side of that coin, in the end, people need to understand others, and most of all, crave to be understood.

An analogy which put me on the path to literacy came from a young man who grew up in a US ghetto. Functionally illiterate and solely speaking the regional slang, he was regularly in fights, violent, in and out of jail, and on the path to criminal self-destruction. In prison he learned to read and expanded his basic English vocabulary. That ALONE changed and rehabilitated him--because now he had the words to express his thoughts and emotions to everyone without violence, which stemmed from his frustration of not being understood.

Again: yet people are also prone to adopt novel things, mimic others, try and fit in, etc. Once you work through every possibility on each side of that coin, in the end, people need to understand others, and most of all, crave to be understood.

That's why I find pidgins so fascinating (and slang for lesser and opposite reasons). Take the Tower of Babel: pidgin--finding words which all other language speakers agree on, just to understand one another--would have been the first universal language after if the story were true. Pidgin is a language of necessity, borne out of a need to survive and thrive among others who don't speak the same language. Pidgins arise from a need, patios and creoles from a desire for an established regional and cultural identity, firm languages and authoritative lexicons to consolidate and maintain power---and then dialects and slang flourish as the people take back that power, cultural identity, and group autonomy.

Perhaps it is why my primary work's conlang, it's various verbal pidgins, simplified spellings, and writing system is so developed. I need to work through that whole loop of change so that speakers of countless languages can work together and fight the oppressive power over them.

Great topic and excellent insights everyone.

K2

 

[Dave]

I did a little online research and I found this: https://cls.ucl.ac.uk/wp-content/up...ergenerational-transmission-of-vocabulary.pdf

It appears that the influence of their parents vocabulary on that of a child up to the age of 13 has been well studied, and the different exposure to words between children of a high social class and low social class has been well studied, but that it has been less well studied in teenagers. While the total volume of a teenager's vocabulary is related to their parents education and class, for the actual vocabulary that teenagers use then that parental exposure is less important because their "vocabulary is acquired via indirect or incidental exposure to language materials including school activities, books, the Internet, cinema, TV and radio, and interaction with peers." This adoption of new language continues into adulthood.

I think this backs up what people have already said in this thread. That the vocabulary used in an adult's speech would be less a product of their origins and more a product of all the other influences and influencers upon them.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Woody Allen made a great film about this, called Zelig. It's about a man who takes on the speech patterns and behaviours of those around him. He's Jewish (of course!) and is in love with Mia Farrow. It's a really superb film, the more so because he used cutting-edge technology to fake the old black and white film look. That technology was used also in The Purple Rose Of Cairo (also a great film). I can certainly recommend Zelig to anyone, terrific film.

 

[Montero]

Saw a documentary on the spontaneous development of sign language in a deaf institution in Argentina - they worked through their own gestures to explain things and with each new year learning it and adding to it, it evolved into a nuanced language. (Why on earth they weren't being taught sign, I don't know, but the language evolution was very clear.) It was essentially summarised mime, symbolic rather than spelled out Argentinian words.

 

[Judderman]

I think this backs up what people have already said in this thread. That the vocabulary used in an adult's speech would be less a product of their origins and more a product of all the other influences and influencers upon them.

Good point though surely that base learning up till pre-teens will still form the core of an adult’s vocabulary. You won’t miss their origins unless they are deliberately hiding it.

Having said that I think living with others can have a big impact, such as early adult university years if you leave home.

 

[alexvss]

Since people brought up movies, there's Pontypool (2008): a radio host in a small Ontario (CA) town amidst an zombie epidemic in which the virus is transmitted via the English language. There's also a 2022 Turkish Netflix Original Series with a similar plot.

In Yorgos Lanthimos' Dogtooth (2009), a deranged couple keeps their children secluded from the outside world and teach them wrong names of things.

 

[Dave]

A season one episode of Star Trek: DS9 called Babel also had a virus which jumbled up the crew’s speech and reading abilities similar to aphasia.