Frédéric Landragin is a researcher in linguistics at the CNRS. He published this summer the Interstellar Communication Guidein which he examines the best way to communicate with extraterrestrials. This is what researchers from many countries have been trying to achieve, in vain, for over fifty years. Interview.
How does one come to write a book about communicating with extraterrestrials?
Frédéric Landragin: I am a linguist and researcher at the CNRS, so I am interested in languages and particularly in a question that linguists have been asking for a very long time, namely: “is there a universal language?” It is this question that led me to the theme of communication with extraterrestrials because it is a metaphor for the most extreme, most difficult communication situation possible.
So, is there a universal language?
A prioriwe know that no. A language that would resemble a human language, like French or English, but that would be universal and easier to learn for everyone does not exist. Attempts, like Esperanto, have been failures. And the most universal language we know is “Globish”, a cheap English.
So if we had to leave a message for an alien, what language would we use?
In my book, I distinguish between remote communication and face-to-face communication. For the latter, let’s imagine that an extraterrestrial ship lands on Earth. The contact would therefore take place in the Earth’s air and we could speak to them normally. However, there is no indication that the extraterrestrials have vocal cords, know sound, or that this wave is the one they use to communicate… This mode of communication would be completely random. On the other hand, let’s take the example of the visual language of bees, which communicate with a form of dance. Since this is absolutely not our way of communicating, we cannot communicate with them. But if we make small robots that have the same shape and size as a bee, and put them in a hive, it works…
So our best chance of communicating with aliens would be visual…
No. What this tells us is: “if aliens look like bees, we could use this mode of communication”. The fact remains that at the moment, we are discovering new exoplanets day after day and we will soon be able to say whether life is likely on one of them. This is a huge step forward. However, the life form is likely to be bacteria, micro-organisms, etc. Things that are alive, certainly, but with which we cannot communicate.
Finally, if the aliens look like humans, as in all science fiction films, we would apply the principles of field linguistics. This is what linguists do when they go deep into the Amazon rainforest or to Pacific islands to meet ethnic groups who have never seen anyone else.
How do they do it?
Step by step. They live with them, immerse themselves in their culture until they can point to a tool and ask what it’s called. That’s a little bit of what we see in the film. First contact by Denis Villeneuve: the linguist spends a lot of time with the heptapods and she learns one word, then another.
A few decades ago, representations of a man and a woman, as well as a song, were sent into space…
These are messages in bottles. They were sent more than fifty years ago and have barely reached the gates of the solar system, and it goes without saying that the chances of success are zero. However, other attempts have been made since the 1970s, but by radio waves. There, universal things are sent, impulses, bits, 0s and 1s. They list numbers, then additions, subtractions, etc. These are mathematical principles that have been retained as the first steps towards a universal language.
Is algebra the only universal thing in language?
Not necessarily algebra, but counting, yes. When I have 1, it’s this symbol, 2, this symbol, etc. We teach aliens to count. Which doesn’t make much sense if we imagine them to be very evolved. But it allows us to say to ourselves: “look, we are intelligent because this message is not noise, unlike the song sent into space. It is something that makes sense and if you understand you know that we are intelligent”. It is a signal more than a dialogue.
So, maths would be the best path?
Since the 1970s, nothing better has been found. Researchers – let’s say eccentrics because there are only two or three of them on Earth – have tried to develop the “lingua cosmica”. It is not a language and it is based on mathematics. It allows the creation of self-explanatory messages, which have their own instructions. It is as if our sentences included the Bescherelle and the dictionary. Thus, even if the message is extremely long (a series of 0s and 1s), it is supposed to be decodable by any form of intelligence. These microwaves go extremely far without being damaged and they are precise. Each sending targets a star. However, extraterrestrials must live there, listen and be on the right frequency. It takes a long time to set up, is expensive and only about ten attempts have been made.
So, in trying to communicate with aliens, you are mainly trying to find a universal language?
Yes, absolutely. Because when we do this kind of exercise, it’s a bit futile. So, the goal of this whole process is above all to question ourselves: what is a language? What is a communication problem? What is the basis of universality, of truth in everything we exchange?
Let’s say aliens exist. With what language (verbal, body, pheromone, etc.) do you think we would have the best chance of meeting them?
We can only extrapolate. But, in the end, the people who have best imagined the variety of means of communication are science fiction authors. Not film authors (with only vibrations and pheromones, we would be bored stiff), but writers. The fact remains that if we choose smell, the wind would ruin everything. If we choose sounds, in space it is not much use. If we choose signs, the visual (changes in skin color, a bit like a chameleon, for example), the aliens still have to have eyes!
Personally, I think that if contact is possible, if we manage to communicate with extraterrestrials, we will never be able to see them because of the distance.
And could all this research help to universalize language?
I think it’s too late. All our important documents (company rules, penal code, constitution) are written in natural languages. However, the same word can have several meanings and we have armies of jurists and lawyers who spend their time searching for and finding new interpretations of texts. This is how we operate.
Now let’s imagine that we manage to design a language based on logic and mathematics and that we can use it to express everything in a super reliable way: instead of having a 1,000-page book, we would have a book of hundreds of thousands of pages and artificial intelligence to help us find the right information. So with this universal language, for each question, we would have a very clear answer that would no longer be subject to interpretation…
Wouldn’t we lose part of our humanity in this way?
Well yes, indeed.