David J. Peterson on constructed languages and aliens

David J. Peterson is back in the spotlight, and this time he’s bringing the conlang nerds with him. Wired recently spoke with Peterson, the linguist behind some of genre fiction’s biggest fictitious languages (including Dothraki and Valyrian Game of Thrones), about his new book The Art of Language Invention and what it means for the community of passionate constructed language fans to be “mainstream.”

While it’s a summarized interview, the bullet points are sharp and thought-provoking. Key to the entire piece is a scene from Return of the Jedi where a bounty hunter negotiates a price for bringing Han’s Wookiee companion Chewbacca to Jabba the Hutt.

Peterson uses that scene as a talking point about how viewers today expect a more systematic approach to alien languages when they are depicted on-screen. The book includes example problems from Thrones as well as SyFy’s Defiance to showcase how creating a language is very different from learning one. (Peterson talked about specific issues he faced in creating Dothraki in an op-ed for The Los Angeles Times not too long ago.)

Much of the interview concerns the “conlang” community—people who are passionate about constructed languages, and not strictly in relation to pop culture:

"[Peterson] cites linguistic pioneer J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Lord Of The Rings as an example of the community’s instinct toward self-protection. “There were some people who reacted negatively [when LOTR was published] because they knew conlang would start to get more attention, and they didn’t want that,” he says."

It’s because of exposure in pop culture that interest in constructed languages is rising, which could bring newbies into the fold. That’s part of the reason for Peterson’s book: he wants to help bridge a gap between the old conlang listerv guard and the newcomers who appear on the various social media networks we all use. (Peterson specifically cites Tumblr, which makes sense, because there are few social media users quite as adept at language usage and manipulation as Tumblr users.)

Lastly, Peterson discusses how constructing languages could help us should we ever encounter aliens. No, really!

"Someday in the future we may encounter aliens, and they may have a communication system that doesn’t even qualify as a language to us, that we wouldn’t think of as language…But the more we’ve seen, the more we know about, the more we postulate, the better we are going to be able to tackle something like that."

That makes total sense. The ability to come up with new problems and then find solutions to those problems is scientific as all hell; it’s cool to consider how these weird, niche hobbies can provide crucial critical thinking exercises that can be applied in a broader context.

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