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33 - The Language of Exobeings

from Part VI - Life and Language, Here and Beyond

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2023

Raymond Hickey
Affiliation:
University of Limerick
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Summary

Would exobeings have language? The answer to this question without a doubt is: ‘Yes’. They would have language in the sense of a powerful and flexible means of communicating thoughts and ideas between individuals. Why? Complex societies arise through continual differentiated interaction among their members. While many non-human animals do live in communities whose members engage in considerable interaction this does not reach anything like the level characteristic of humans. Furthermore, no beings can acquire all the knowledge of a complex society from scratch on their own. Each generation of a society builds on existing knowledge, which is transferred from generation to generation by being documented using language. To build a technologically advanced society, language would need to be documented in some fixed form, which on Earth means using one of the many writing systems, captured physically, usually on paper, or digitally as bits and bytes in computer storage.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • The Language of Exobeings
  • Raymond Hickey, University of Limerick
  • Book: Life and Language Beyond Earth
  • Online publication: 16 September 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009229272.034
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  • The Language of Exobeings
  • Raymond Hickey, University of Limerick
  • Book: Life and Language Beyond Earth
  • Online publication: 16 September 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009229272.034
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The Language of Exobeings
  • Raymond Hickey, University of Limerick
  • Book: Life and Language Beyond Earth
  • Online publication: 16 September 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009229272.034
Available formats
×