Language and Culture in Fictional Worlds

There are so many considerations when building a fictional world that comes to life, one that all readers know isn’t real but still feels like it could be. Building such a world is the goal of any sci-fi or fantasy author, and the task seems sometimes overwhelming in its complexity because well…a real world is very complex. As authors, we are constantly walking the line between putting in so many details that the reader is overwhelmed with information that doesn’t really matter to the story and putting in enough information that the setting is brought properly to life. One of the most difficult and often overlooked ways to expand on an epic setting is that of language and to a lesser extent the culture that is strongly integrated into language.

               Language integration into a setting is so difficult because the text itself already has a language, in my case that language is English, but whatever the language, the text of the story is already set, so how can the idea of alternative languages be introduced without actually writing dialogue or sections of the book in the different language? Some authors may literally put in the alternative language, especially in dialogue, sprinkling various phrases into the text. Sometimes the alternative language requires a separate definition and sometimes context is good enough. If the snippets of language are very short, it can add flavor, and usually adding flavor is the author’s purpose when doing this. Anything more, and it tends to make the text muddled and difficult to understand. This would be even worse in a world in which all of the languages are fictional, and therefore all of the foreign words are also entirely made up.

               This approach, putting the actual language into the text of the book, has all sorts of issues. Primarily, it is limited. In most settings, characters are speaking all of their dialogue lines in a foreign language and are even thinking in a foreign language, so writing that way is essentially impossible and if attempted would just result in a confusing mess for the reader. Instead, the better way is to imply the usage of alternative languages and even their cultural contexts but include it so seamlessly and consistently into the text that it fades into the background. The setting feels even more real, but the reader is never hampered by having to interpret foreign words.

               I’m sure there are many great examples of this being handled to perfection, but in my experience, one of the best is Ancillary Justice and the following Ancillary series by Anne Leckie. There are a lot of subtleties going on her in work, but her integration of language and culture into the work is masterful. Notice that I purposely did not say her description of language and culture. Description is far too crude a word to entail what she accomplished.

               All of Leckie’s dialogue is in English, as are all of her descriptions. She never muddles the reader by introducing a foreign word, even in the simplest contexts. Rather, the deeper implications of language are brought to life in how the characters interact and even think when relating to each other. The reader gains a flawless understanding that none of the characters are actually speaking in English and that the differences in their language and their knowledge of language play a role in what they do, say, and think. This idea becomes not only important to the story but also is completely seamless in the reading experience. Language is a deep part of her world and her story, even if no direct examples of the languages are ever presented. This is done with a careful examination of particular words and their changes in meaning, saying that characters used a certain word and how its context was important at that moment.

               This method helps to establish something integral and unique to Leckie’s worldbuilding, and something that sets her work apart (and probably plays a role in all of the awards it won). In the culture of her work, the leading civilization has no concept of gender, meaning they draw no linguistic descriptions between male and female. It is apparent that sexual differences DO exist, there are “males” and “females” biologically speaking (and all primary characters are human offshoots) yet the protagonist cannot readily distinguish this fact. There are so many ways this situation could be handled poorly or awkwardly, breaking the vital suspension of disbelief readers must have when engaging with a fictional world. Yet, Leckie pulls it off so spectacularly, that as you read through the book and then the series, the very idea of gender loses its meaning for the reader. The language succeeds in pulling you in so distinctly that you begin to think like the protagonist, and that implies that you stop noticing or being able to accurately notice gender differences between characters. It is deeper than just that, however. Gender is such an important part of our experience that taking it away at first seems lacking as if vital information is missing from the story and must be hunted down through other clues. This feeling persists for a while, but for most people, I bet that about halfway through the book and certainly before the end, they simply stop looking for gender clues, and like the protagonist herself, they stop caring what gender the characters are. The language of the book itself has embedded the protagonist’s linguistic and cultural identity onto the reader. Simply an amazing feat to achieve for any fiction!

It has been my pleasure to continue to read through Leckie’s series and notice her attention to consistency in how she handles the language and cultural contexts of her work. I think any writer of epic sci-fi should make a study of Leckie’s series as the best example of how to build this complex detail not just into the book’s descriptions but into the language of the text itself, into the essence of the story. Do this, and the detail fades into the background, it becomes an accepted fact of reality, unquestioned, while it weaves vital elements seamlessly into the story and the characters.