*Note from Curator: I have chosen to feature this post from Masato Hirakata mainly due to commonalities between his post and my own. However, while Masato and I both chose to focus on the unique use of language in The Dispossessed, I find it interesting that we centered slightly different aspects of the language. In addition, I very much enjoy Masato’s writing and analyses. As I began my curation, I knew from the start that I would be featuring a post from Masato, it was just a matter of which one.

Featured Texts:

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed

I immediately found the concept of language explored in The Dispossessed to be interesting, specifically because while we read it in English, the languages spoken are not. As early as page 3, we see the foreman of the Defense gang noted to be speaking a language called “Iotic”. “No. They, ah, protest,” she said in her slow and limite Iotic,” (Le Guin, 3). In most science fiction, there is a universal language spoken by most, if not all members of the universe. English assumes this role even in our daily lives, acting as a global language and lingua franca. However, the planets of Anarres and Urras possess different languages, which even individuals such as the Defense gang foreman, a profession likely to be in constant contact with people from Urras, have difficulty speaking. Within that initial conversation between the Defense gang foreman and the ship captain, we find that the word “bastard” does not translate from Iotic to the language of Anarres, Pravic. However, as an intelligent human being, the foreman is able to infer the meaning of the word through the captain’s tone, as well as her own perceptions of the sound of the word, and of the captain himself.

Certain phrases and words may not always translate from one language to another, but the fact that a common insult such as “bastard” does not make it from Urras to Anarres was something interesting that Le Guin introduces as soon as page 3. It seems an immediate commentary on even the title of the novel itself, as a “bastard” is someone who does not belong, or as the foreman notes, “some kind of foreign term for her people,” (Le Guin, 3). The language of Anarres is also explained in some depth on page 58. “The singular forms of the possessive pronoun in Pravic were used mostly for emphasis; idiom avoided them,” (Le Guin, 58). As we understand Anarres to be an anarcho-syndicalist utopia, it makes much sense that even the language itself avoids possessive pronouns. It is mentioned that the use of them is something small children do by mistake; a mistake that is corrected swiftly. In this, we see that on Anarres, people are not even allowed to own feelings of kinship or familial connection, as “my mother” corrects to “the mother”.

On page 29, children are reprimanded for “egoizing” language. “Speech is sharing—a cooperative art. You’re not sharing, merely egoizing.” (Le Guin, 29). This sort of radical expression of anarcho-syndicalism contributes to the overarching question asked early on by the presence of the physical wall around the Anarres spaceport. While the ownership of others is not particularly a positive concept, especially in the context of socio-economic affairs such as quasi-indentured servitude under the auspices of capitalism, Anarres seems to me like simply the opposite extreme, in which thoughts are policed, and deviancy is punished ruthlessly—much like the actual Soviet Union. I found it funny, then, that such similar principles are expressed by a nominally anarcho-syndicalist commune. Also, the name for ANARres seems ripped from ANARcho-syndicalism, which I found funny as well.