Darmok and Jalad on the Internet-The Importance of Metaphors in Natural Language

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357662253_Darmok_and_Jalad_on_the_Internet_the_importance_of_metaphors_in_natural_languages_and_natural_language_processing

by 1970-01-01 • 3 years ago

94 37 3 years ago

researchgate.net

morkalork2• 3 years ago

https://i.imgur.com/c2meXJO.mp4

Angostura• 3 years ago

Thank you. I had not seen that before

morkalork2• 3 years ago

It felt apropos

_nub3• 3 years ago

made me laugh. tyvm.

smilingcat.jpg

ohthehugemanate2• 3 years ago

In the right company, i've taken to Darmok descriptions of the gif or meme I would use. The results have been... Spock on the bridge, his eyebrow raised.

I wonder if this is damaging language or communication. A dog with coffee, its home in flames.

But it is a kind of communication in which the internet generations can all share. Homer and bart patting the couch, their faces shadowed. But this could be it: the way the internet and memers take over how we communicate! Ron paul, his arms wide, background flashing!

Baeocystin• 3 years ago

I am amused at both how I understood this perfectly, and how I have no idea how I would explain why it was funny to half my family. I wonder however much of a shibbo{leet, leth} this will wind up being going forward!

LesZedCB• 3 years ago

my favorite example is the generational difference of use of period and ellipses in sms/text messages. even just

ok

ok.

or even (gasp)

ok...

all have massively different tone, but if it was my parent or grandparent reading them, they'd probably be interpreted relatively the same.

my partner are our friends all enjoy having entire conversations as well by only using meme gifs. it's amazingly effective, and funny as hell. I also like using several emoji to describe the changes when I'm approving a PR that doesn't need a comment. hieroglyphics are definitely making a comeback, personally I'm there for it.

labster• 3 years ago

Fire engines and a girl smiles impishly.

dandelany• 3 years ago

Fighting linguistic trends, insisting on tradition. Drake pushing aside, pain in his face. Embracing and extending, finding the new path forward. Drake with a knowing smile, pointing a finger in admiration.

remarkEon4• 3 years ago

What I find fascinating about your comment is that you're invoking pop culture references in the style of Darmok, when in the episode (which is imo one of the top 5 episodes in all of Star Trek) Darmok is using metaphorical references from his culture's history.

Doing this the same way would be more akin to bringing up famous generals or Statesmen to describe your current situation. "Napoleon at Waterloo, his canons silent": I just engaged in a great struggle after many victories and have finally been defeated. "Bismark, his uniform bloodied": I'm trying to get consensus on a very difficult topic and some are so opposed that they would seek to gravely sabotage my efforts . "Washington on the water, his men ready": I'm doing something insanely risky but the cause is worth it. And so on.

Anyway, it's pretty easy to use the Darmok construction to communicate as long as there's a common understanding of the culture.

Tade02• 3 years ago

Who said the Tamarians weren't speaking the formal version of their language and that there wasn't a more colloquial version, referring to more recent events?

I'm sure their teenagers had a phrase ending with "...his eyes rolling!"

DoreenMichele2• 3 years ago

I was a History major at one time and used to pull books off the shelf to look up specific battles depicted in movies as I watched them and I wouldn't have understood a word of that without the 'splanations given.

/single data point suggesting thou art excessively well-versed in military history.

ohthehugemanate2• 3 years ago

I love that episode, too. I don't recall it ever being clear if the references were literal historical, mythical, or what. And anyway, when we make references to history we are necessarily using our mythologized, cultur-dependent version of it. You refer to Napoleon the myth, more than Napoleon the human.

To me, the point is using common cultural stories or referents - historical or fictional is not relevant.

Ron Paul is a real person, and he did raise his arms in a famous historical moment. I think he even said "It's happening". But just like Bismarck with a bloody uniform, the point is not the literal reality but rather what that moment signifies in our common cultural frame of reference.

From another angle: Bismark meant something very different in 1870 Prussia, 1918 USA, and 1937 Germany. In fact even with a historical figure or event, you are stuck referring to the contemporary cultural associations.

I think this is actually wgat we do when we drop gifs into conversation: we pull up a moment from Friends or Seinfeld that all participants are familiar with, to lend their emotional tenor to the conversation. And if you don't get the original reference, you very quickly pick up on the meaning. (I had no idea that it was Drake doing the clever idea meme, but I knew just what that reply meant!)

Bottom line, references to history, to memes, or gifs are fascinating ways to communicate based on shared culture and I enjoy using them.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

gmuslera• 3 years ago

We kind of do that actually, in the opposite direction. We take long winded phrases and shorten them to something new but carrying the original meaning, like OK or goodbye. A lot of present/common words used to be metaphors or have roots on myths or religions. It's a bit like Tamarians had a word "dajtanagra" or something like that, meaning cooperation, that couldn't be translated, and even they would struggle to explain from where it comes from.

sharts• 3 years ago

So true, Jean-Luc!

davesque• 3 years ago

My roommate and I used to communicate in Seinfeld quotes.

messe• 3 years ago

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

gymbeaux• 3 years ago

No soup for you!

wombatpm• 3 years ago

Elon, his billions twittered.

Jalad• 3 years ago

Sokath, his eyes uncovered

itronitron• 3 years ago

In one of my philosophy of aesthetics classes in college, we read an essay by someone making the point that both humor and art connect with their audience through shared experience.

Darmok and Jalad is interesting as we don't know their history but by mapping language to our experience we gain insight and thus shared experience... Shaka, when the walls fell.

dccoolgai• 3 years ago

I heard something on a podcast a week ago that blew my mind: tribesmen who come from cultures without a word for "blue" cannot distinguish _the actual color blue_ when shown a series of swatches of different colors (blue, red, green, etc.). The author was using it to point out how in Homeric poetry we have references like "wine-dark sea". The way our culture encodes information seems to go as deep as even our _basic perceptions_ which is just wild to think about. Temba, his arms wide.

YeGoblynQueenne• 3 years ago

Detail: Tanagra is the real-world name of a Greek town existing since antiquity, in Boeotia, outside of Thebes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanagra

To Greek trekkies [1], "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" sounds doubly strange.

I'm guessing Zulu trekkies get a similar feeling with "Shaka, when the walls fell".

___________________

[1] "Trekkie" is a reclaimed word.

optimalsolver2• 3 years ago

In the scene where Data and Troi are asking the Computer to identify these terms, it's established that the same word can have numerous different meanings throughout the Galaxy:

TROI: Computer, search for the term Darmok in all linguistic databases for this sector.

COMPUTER: Searching. Darmok is the name of a seventh dynasty emperor on Kanda Four. A mytho-historical hunter on Shantil Three. A colony on Malindi Seven. A frozen dessert on Tazna Five. A

TROI: Stop search. Computer, how many entries are there for Darmok?

COMPUTER: Forty seven.

...

DATA: Freeze. Computer, search for the term Tanagra. All databases.

COMPUTER: Searching. Tanagra. The ruling family on Gallos Two. A ceremonial drink on Lerishi Four. An island-continent on Shantil Three

optimalsolver2• 3 years ago

Also, "Malindi" is a city in Kenya.

DiogenesKynikos• 3 years ago

Chinese has a huge number of short (4-syllable) metaphors, called Chengyu (成語), that get sprinkled into speech.[0]

It can be very confusing when you first encounter them, because the meaning is often far from obvious:

井底之蛙 = "Frog at the bottom of a well" = A person with a limited perspective.

完璧歸趙 = "Return jade intact to Zhao" = Return something intact to its rightful owner.

樂不思蜀 = "Happy, forget Shu" = Being content due to trivial pleasures, and forgetting where you came from.

畫蛇添足 = "Draw feet on a snake" = To superfluously add to something, or to go overboard. It has a negative connotation that due to initial successes, you've become overconfident, and could end up failing.

Then there are some idioms that are delightfully evocative:

掩耳盗铃 = "Cover ears, steal bell" = You can deceive yourself, but not others. The metaphor is of someone who is trying to steal a bell. The bell makes sound when moved, so the thief covers their own ears, as if that would stop others from hearing the bell.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengyu

rkagerer• 3 years ago

Thanks this was tremendously interesting!

"Draw feet on a snake" is my new favorite tech metaphor. eg. Dropbox adding an excess of new features unrelated to its core offering, or the reimagined lipstick on every new version of Windows.

If you shared my viewpoint (I recognize some may not) would those uses make sense to a native Chinese speaker?

interestica2• 3 years ago

reimagined lipstick

Some native English speakers wouldn’t understand this metaphor.

mjklin• 3 years ago

For anyone interested in Chengyu, the book “Easy Way to Learn Chinese Idioms” by Yong He gives a good selective overview (by no means comprehensive).

Link: https://archive.org/details/easywaytolearnch0000unse

interestica2• 3 years ago

I was reading about the heat wave in Europe today and the phrase “the mercury hit…” must seem so strange to a generation used to digital temperature readings who see no connection of the Liquid Metal to temps. It’s not quite a metaphor, but it’s this representation of meaning that gets further and further from its source.

JieJie• 3 years ago

I highly suspect that whatever organic mechanism in the human brain generates and processes metaphor what generative AI chatbots are leveraging, and the key to why they work so well. Metaphor is a sort of "translation" between ideas, and in this sci-fi example, a literal translation between languages; which LLMs share in reality, which is their ability to gain function from training on one language that leads to understanding of other languages.

So, when we train a model on phrases like, "time is money", and it's able to discern both that time is not literally money, and that time expenditure can be equivalent to monetary expenditure. That ability to do translation between concepts is how language is able to perform "work" on information. Metaphorically, of course.

Darmok and Jalad on the Internet-The Importance of Metaphors in Natural Language

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