This week I chose to read Babel 17, a novel written by Samuel Ray Delaney. Babel 17 is about the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, a theory in which states that any individuals thoughts and actions are determined by the language that the specific individual speaks. It states that all human thoughts and actions are bounded and held back by these restraints, ultimately shaping our behavior.
The books starts out where the Alliance military comes across a new code (by the invaders) from a radio transmission that they cannot crack. They hire Rydra Wong, a top poet, cryptologist and top linguist to crack the code. She informs them this is not a code at all, but an actual language and agrees to crack itProtagonist Wong assembles a crew and studies the data, which the Alliance calls Babel-17. the crew is a very unusual group. She recruits discorporates, triplings and cosmetically altered team members into the Alliance. She discovers that this language is used to cause a human host to be against the Alliance and try and sabotage it. She improves the language and shifts the power to the Alliance. Babel-17 is really well thought experiment and cultural awareness message. Some of these ideas in their languages strike very oddly similar to some cultural language we hear today. For instance, when someone says, “I’m from a Third World country.” That could imply they are not as educated. What do most people visualize when they hear that. We need to be more diverse and open-minded. I find the author of this book, Samuel R. Delaney was way beyond his time, 1966. The main character/hero is a woman and is multi-cultural as well. I feel as though he is attempting to stretch cultural understanding to a higher level.
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