“I have no clue if there are aliens out there,” concedes Douglas Vakoch, director of METI International, an organization committed to contacting extraterrestrial intelligence. But he is certain that studying the character of alien communication has the ability to fundamentally transform our understanding of ourselves and the role of language. This is the crux of xenolinguistics a word all but unheard of beyond the ranks of professional linguists but which looks at the theoretical work on extraterrestrial language and brings it to bear on human knowledge.
Though the possibility of deciphering aliens’ tongues is science fiction, scientists contend that it is a rich source of discovering more basic questions about communication itself. The 2016 movie Arrival dramatized this idea, as Amy Adams played a linguist who is called in to work out the meaning of alien “heptapods'” language. Their means of communication, full of subtlety and tied to their conception of time, is a theoretical but interesting example of the types of challenges that scientists would have to deal with in actual situations.
Xenolinguistics isn’t alien contact strictly speaking it’s also a consideration of the nature of language. Researchers from every field came together in the November 2024 workshop hosted at Southern Illinois University to address these questions. Irene Pepperberg, who has dedicated over three decades to studying parrot language, countered conventional ideas of nonhuman mind. Her research on Alex, an African grey parrot, had proven that communication in animals is much more sophisticated than humans tend to think. Parrots, dolphins, and even dogs have senses ultraviolet vision or ultrasonic hearing, for example that humans lack. Pepperberg’s findings suggest that an alien society could employ completely unrecognizable forms of communication, which calls for humility of assumption.
“We sort of sit there, [and] we go, ‘Oh, it’s going to be some kind of flashes of light or something like that that they’re going to send to us in a pattern that we’re going to be able to recognize,” Pepperberg said to the workshop. “But who knows what they’re going to send us?” Her incredulousness is highlighted by the necessity for receptivity to new forms of communication that may extend to radio waves, visual signals, or sensory inputs beyond human range.
The absence of direct evidence in xenolinguistics no extraterrestrial societies, no extraterrestrial languages may on first glance appear to be a handicap. But according to philosopher Matthew Brown of Southern Illinois University, such an absence can propel terrestrial fields such as linguistics, psychology, and anthropology into new territory. “By asking hypothetical questions about alien language that push the boundaries,” Brown said, scholars can refine their knowledge of communication systems on our terrestrial home.
Notably, this strategy is a reflection of the hope of astrobiology, a sister field that investigates life in the universe on the assumption that there is no extraterrestrial biology. In each case, the fields use interdisciplinary data to make hypotheses regarding unexplained facts. With xenolinguistics, this means using human and animal languages as the starting point for speculating about how nonhuman animals would communicate.
Vakoch, author of the book Xenolinguistics: Towards a Science of Extraterrestrial Language, first raised doubts about applying linguistics to the study of extraterrestrials. “I assumed, like other SETI [search for extraterrestrial intelligence] people, that language was really kind of irrelevant to communicating with aliens,” he said. His early skepticism was founded on the belief that human language is deeply embedded in biological and cultural contexts that extraterrestrial civilizations might not share. Yet, as he delved deeper into METI’s work, his perspective shifted. Vakoch now sees alien language as a lens for questioning assumptions not only about extraterrestrial life but also about the diversity of communication among humans and animals.
The potential variability of extraterrestrial communication poses some interesting philosophical questions. Elin McCready, a research professor at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies, did not believe in the mainstream assumption that extraterrestrial civilizations would employ language systems that are much like ours. “The assumption,” she contended, “is very much that everybody in the universe would use linguistic or languagelike systems to do the same things that we do. But why?” McCready’s cynicism counters the anthropocentric argument that language is designed to transmit truth. On our own planet, humans use language for stories, jokes, paintings, and even lies. Why should things be different with aliens?
McCready’s view addresses two xenolinguistics subdisciplines: pattern recognition, which addresses deciphering possible messages from extraterrestrial life, and xenoanthropology, which aims to bridge cultural gaps throughout the universe.“When we’re faced with a being that is doing something potentially quite different than we are, how do we try to interact and find common ground?” she asked. The question applies not only in the context of extraterrestrial contact but also in human-to-human contact.
In reality, the search for extraterrestrial language can be a gateway to broader information about the diversity and goal of life. The efforts of METI to make contact with closest stars through messages, such as the 2017 transmission addressed to blind extraterrestrials, are the best example of this vision. These efforts are not merely about first contact they are about taking human understanding of communication as universal.
As Vakoch so powerfully said at the SIU workshop, The better we can understand communication between lifeforms on Earth, “the better we can comprehend extraterrestrials.” Whether or not ever humans get a reply from the stars, the quest for xenolinguistics challenges us to re-consider the plenitude of communication in all its dimensions on Earth and elsewhere.
