The art of worldbuilding is a manifold process. It is hardly a straightforward endeavor, involving a series of crafts and techniques aimed to tailor different aspects of a setting — from geography and ecology to architecture and political history. Together, these artistic processes come together to breathe life into a storytelling project — not just the world being depicted, but the societies that inhabit it.
One such worldbuilding process is that of developing constructed languages, or conlangs: artificial languages developed with a specific intent in mind, such as testing linguistic hypotheses or for artistic purposes. The process of developing conlangs, often abbreviated as conlanging, is most often associated with authors like J.R.R. Tolkien, who engaged in conlanging as a means of communicating his love for poetry and mythopoeia. As a storyteller, he used their place in the world of Arda to shed light on the shared histories of the societies and peoples inhabiting his legendarium.
Conlanging is an integral part of worldbuilding and storytelling and plays an important role in allowing a setting and its inhabitants to speak independently from the narrator. It can be very easy to approach this craft in an idyllic, idealized manner — but like all forms of art, it is necessary to approach conlanging critically and with introspection.
Like real-world languages, conlangs are inseparable from their speakers — but unlike the former, conlangs are more than a natural manifestation of the phenomenon of language. They are deliberately made for a specified purpose and are thus subject to the biases of their creators. As such, responsible conlanging requires us to confront a major ethical concern: eurocentrism and subsequent Orientalism in linguistic worldbuilding.
Conlangs are just as much a product of our world as they are a product of a specific intent. In a world where Western cultural hegemony inherently prioritizes discussions of European society over those colonized by it, the syntax and phonology of European Indo-European languages are disproportionately represented in the conlanging community. This can occur for a variety of reasons, be it an implicit bias toward European languages as the perceived norm or a lack of knowledge of non-Western languages. These kinds of biases can work their way into the conlanging process with or without the knowledge of a creator and can inadvertently perpetuate eurocentrism in a variety of ways.
For instance, auxiliary conlangs — auxlangs — designed for universal use can perpetuate eurocentrism by drawing primarily — if not entirely — on European Indo-European linguistic typology, portraying it as a “universal” of human speech rather than a variation thereof. One such example comes in the form of Esperanto, an auxlang developed by Ludovic Zamenhof as a potential means of international communication.
While his goals in creating Esperanto might not have been overtly eurocentric, it was based almost entirely on European linguistic typology and is thus hardly a universal international auxlang. This is part of the reason why Esperanto failed as a project: It presupposes the idea that the dominant languages spoken in the West would be a primary basis for universal speech, and thus carries an implicit eurocentric bias in its inception and development.
Beyond auxlangs, eurocentrism impacts conlanging in a much deeper way, especially when they are developed for worldbuilding purposes. Oftentimes, artistic conlangs — artlangs — are developed for stories within the genre of science fiction, namely for extraterrestrial civilizations. These factions often serve as vessels for societal conceptions of “otherness,” and are thus developed through Orientalist and exoticist attitudes toward non-Western cultures.
One prominent example comes in the form of Klingon, an artlang developed by Marc Okrand for the eponymous Klingon civilization of the Star Trek franchise. Marc Okrand has stated that the bulk of his inspiration for Klingon came from the typology of Indigenous American and Southeast Asian languages. This is not a problem in and of itself, however, a major problem arises when one considers his intent to make Klingon sound “alien.”
Okrand’s approach to developing Klingon is arguably Orientalist, framing the typology of Southeast Asian languages as having a perceived attribute of “otherness” or “alienness.” This attitude is also seen in his attitude towards Indigenous American languages, which — like their Southeast Asian counterparts — have been historically endangered by European colonialism and imperialism — the same phenomena which perpetuate the cultural hegemony that prioritizes European Indo-European linguistic typology and alienates all other languages.
Throughout the history of Star Trek as a franchise, Klingons have represented a prominent manifestation of Orientalism in popular science fiction. Since their debut in 1967, they have served as a vessel for typical Cold War-era conceptions of “the other,” stemming from Orientalist caricatures of East Asian societies and cultures. The Klingon artlang is a major part of this problem, contributing to the maintenance of Klingons as a repository for Western aversion to those who are deemed to be “alien.”
The connotations of the Klingons and their eponymous artlang raise a very important question — not just about conlanging, but about the way in which fictional species and societies are developed for media: Why do we want to portray them the way we do? Like conlanging, the act of developing the inhabitants of a setting is inextricably linked to the intent and context behind their inception.
In order to engage with worldbuilding, we must ask ourselves where we source our inspirations for our factions, civilizations and creatures, lest they become vehicles for Orientalism, exoticism and racism. We must ensure that the factions and peoples we showcase in our storytelling are not mere caricatures, but extensions of earnest worldbuilding that exist not to stereotype, but to tell a story.
If we are to breathe life into our stories through conlanging, we must ensure that the life we breathe is one which reflects respect and awareness. We must ask ourselves not just where we source inspiration for conlangs, but why we seek to acquire such inspiration at all. It is not enough to simply credit our sources; we must dispel the idea that languages should be treated as mere repositories of linguistic information to be picked at for source material. There is nothing inherently wrong with looking at existing languages to guide one’s journey into conlanging, but such perusal must be done with respect for the languages in question, as well as their speakers.
Leave a Comment