Galactic Basic and the Rising Globalization of English: The Influence of Common Languages in Star Wars and the World
The Star Wars saga introduces its audience to a multitude of diverse alien species, and with them, their equally diverse languages including Droidspeak, Huttese, Jawaese, and Shyriiwook among many others. Humans exist alongside these aliens, speaking English, referred to as Galactic Basic. Galactic Basic is the common language in the Star Wars universe and is spoken by a majority of the characters, no matter their race or home planet. The language is virtually omnipresent, and even when another language is spoken, it is usually translated into Galactic Basic by another character, to the benefit of the main characters and the audience.
The alphabet of Galactic Basic (the Aurabesh) showing its English equivalents.
The goal of this paper is to explore the parallels between Galactic Basic and English through a postcolonial lens. I will examine how characters that do not speak the common language are portrayed, and how those who are given subtitles in the films compare to those who are not, as well as the role of translation regarding this group of characters. The universal dominance of Galactic Basic, like the rising globalization of English, enforces power structures that limit the opportunities and influence of subaltern peoples creating inequality.
This upsurge of the English language is evident in many countries around the world, as discussed in “English Rules” by Madelaine Drohan and Alan Freeman. While it is not the most commonly spoken language in the world, behind Mandarin and Spanish in terms of native and total speakers, it has a much wider net, becoming a popular second language in more and more countries regardless of their distance from native English speaking countries. This transition can be clearly seen in many Eastern European countries following the fall of the Soviet Union. The requirement of learning Russian was replaced by English for many and the new language was quickly embraced by a majority of the people in the area (O’Meara et al., 430). Despite their close proximity to Russia, English became far more influential because it was the language of the countries with the most global power. Now that communication and interaction have been made more available and efficient through the evolution of technology and transportation, spatial distances have become less of a factor in the influence of a language. This has allowed English to begin to grow and take over other languages by becoming the prevailing language of business and popular culture. Becoming the prevalent language in these pillars of modern society gives English, as well as anyone who can speak it, more power.
This graph compares the number of native speakers and second language speakers of the most commonly spoken languages in the world, showing the dominance of English as a second language.
In Frantz Fanon’s book Black Skin, White Masks, he writes, “To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture. The Antilles Negro who wants to be white will be whiter as he gains greater mastery of the cultural tool that language is” (Fanon, 38). In this example, a people’s culture is being altered, with French the focal point. The language is a gateway into French culture, but speaking French will never make anyone French. This dynamic results in the French-speaking natives of the Antilles being viewed as inferior, as they are trying to be like the French but are not quite the same. Instead, they are just considered to be a hybrid between the more civilized French and their original, less civilized culture. The concept of hybrids being inferior to the natives of the dominant culture is present in any situation involving the spread of languages, including Star Wars, in which Galactic Basic is dominant language, therefore making humans the superior beings.
Superiority is also enforced through translation, as discussed by Robert Young in Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction. As he says, “No act of translation takes place in an entirely neutral space of absolute equality” (Young, 140). Because one language is being changed into another, there is a power shift from the translated language to the other, more dominant language. Those who speak the translated language are essentially being stripped of a part of their identity, as it is being transformed into something else for the benefit of the speakers of the dominant language. Furthermore, this something else is often an imperfect interpretation of the speaker’s message due to the impreciseness that comes with translation, resulting in a limited understanding of the native speakers.
Culture and identity play important roles when discussing colonialism and postcolonialism. They are the essence of a people; they define societies. A people’s culture is what differentiates them from the rest of the world, and language is one of its essential building blocks. Language makes up the framework of how people think about and view the world. Influencing a society’s language, therefore, affects its people’s identities as well. With this in mind, the injection of English into non-English speaking cultures is a form of imperialism. The same can be said for any language working its way into another culture.
As it is becoming the common language of the world, English is creating a divide between those who speak it, those who learn it as a second language, and those who cannot speak it. It has become a source of connectionism for many as more and more people across the globe are learning it, benefitting those who speak it, especially those who have it as their first language, and leaving out those who do not. The same can be seen more clearly with Galactic Basic, and on an even larger scale, with entire species being isolated because of their lack of means to communicate without a translator.
To support my thesis, I will be drawing examples from the original trilogy as well as Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View, which retells A New Hope from other characters’ perspectives, some of which providing insight into the minds of characters that are not subtitled or translated in the film.
The easiest way to see the divisions made by Galactic Basic is to look at the characters in positions of power. In the original trilogy, there are two prominent groups that exhibit hierarchies of power: the empire and the rebels. The empire is not a great example for this paper because they are made up entirely of humans, which presents a much more clear-cut form of segregation. The rebel alliance, on the other hand, exemplifies the language divide through, ironically, the inclusion of other species. The presence of Admiral Ackbar and his crew of Mon Calamari is proof that they are willing to accept the support of alien species. Despite this and the fact that humans make up a small percentage of the universe’s population, the Mon Calamari are the only aliens depicted as apart of the rebel alliance in the films, with the exception of Nien Nunb, and they spoke Galactic Common. The only two beings that were apart of rebels and did not speak Galactic Common were Chewbacca, who had joined alongside his translator Han, and Nien Nunb, who had a very minor role with almost no screen time.
Nien Nunb: the only character in either the Empire or the Resistance that appeared in the original trilogy and did not speak Galactic Basic (other than droids and Chewbacca).
The one character that could be described as being in a position of power in the original trilogy who does not speak Galactic Common is Jabba the Hutt. He does obviously possess a great deal of power, owning his own palace and having a group of bounty hunters at his disposal, but I would argue that he further supports the concept of the common language divide restricting opportunities. Jabba has power, but it is power that he has acquired through illegal means; he is a crime lord. Depicting crime as the only way to gain power for someone who does not speak Galactic Basic just reinforces how the subaltern have had their options heavily limited. Additionally, Jabba did not seem to have a ton of influence in the grand scheme of things and ended up being killed by his own slave, as he was rendered powerless by and unable to stop a small crew of prisoners despite having an entire barge filled with his own barge of fighters.
Most of the time when an alien language is spoken in the films, the main characters and audience find out what was said through another character that translates for us, most often through Han when Chewie speaks Shyriiwook and C3PO for R2D2’s Droidspeak and any other language. It is interesting that two of the main characters in the films were written to be unintelligible, not even given subtitles. It heavily stresses their reliance on their translators because, without them, Chewbacca would be reduced to a bellowing, primitive beast and R2 a beeping robot. This dehumanizes them, which makes sense contextually, considering they are not human, but is important when comparing them to the subaltern in our world. Chewbacca is especially dependent on a translator, coming off as an unintelligent brute when Han is unable to translate for him like when they were separated in Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back.
Chewbacca without Han is similar to the Tusken Raiders in A New Hope. Never translated, never subtitled, the Tusken Raiders, or “Sand People” as Luke referred to them, were portrayed as brainless, uncivilized and violent in the film, their only actions consisting of attacking Luke and being scared off by Obi-Wan making silly noises. These people are isolated, living in a homogenous society that is fairly rare in the films due to the widespread connectionism that has led to the creation of mixing pots all over the universe, like Mos Eisley for example. The omnipresent influence of Galactic Basic is the driving force behind this. Without it, societies like that of the Tusken Raiders would be far more common. Because the Tusken Raiders have not learned Galactic Basic and mixed in like other species around them, they are seen as lesser and primitive. The Tusken Raiders have not accepted the new way of life that most others have, and have therefore been isolated and thought of negatively because of it. There is no attempt to understand them; they are simply categorized as dangerous and otherwise ignored.
As a viewer, I had no real insight into Tusken Raider society until reading “Reirin” by Sabaa Tahir, a first-person account of a Raider woman. The story showed that Raiders were intelligent, and even had the awareness to know that they were considered lesser beings by humans. “Typical. Farmers treated anything that didn’t look like them like bantha dung. Droids, Raiders, Jawas. All the same, Second class. Lesser,” she thought (Acker et al., 52). The story revealed that there was not that big of a difference between Tusken Raiders and other species except that they had rejected connectionism and Galactic Basic, valuing their own community and traditions more. This decision is a perfectly fair one to make, but because no context is given in the films the viewer can only make assumptions based off of what is shown to them, and what is shown to them is an isolated, unintelligible and violent people.
All these examples discuss the subaltern, in this case, those who do not speak Galactic Basic and are thus restricted and attenuated compared to those who can capitalize off of how widespread the common language is and connect with so many more people through this ability to communicate. Should we strive to have a common language like Galactic Basic? Currently, it seems like we might not have a choice, as English is becoming more and more influential. If English does become a truly global language, Galactic Basic in Star Wars is a model of the possible marginalization and division that could come with it.
Works Cited
Acker, Ben, et al., Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View. Century, 2017.
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by Charles Lam Markmann, Grove Weidenfeld, 1967.
Kershner, Irvin, director. Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back. Twentieth Century Fox, 1980.
Lucas, George, director. Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. Twentieth Century Fox, 1977.
Marquand, Richard, director. Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi. Twentieth Century Fox, 1983.
O’Meara, Patrick, et al., editors. Globalization and the Challenges of a New Century: A Reader. Indiana University Press, 2000. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt2005tk7.
Young, Robert. Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction. W. Ross MacDonald School Resource Services Library, 2009.
The idea of a “universal” language presents an interesting problem. While on the one hand, it could foster more international cooperation, I agree with Max’s analysis that the rise in English as a global language will bring marginalization and second-class citizenship to many non-native English speakers. In terms of the imperial project, while it still lasts, those who cannot speak the language of the imperialist is denied “opportunities” while those that can speak the language are meant to, but can never truly grasp the language as the imperialist does, not of their own fault, and confirms the imperialists depictions of the colonized as childish or unintelligent. Today, through neoimperialism, English has become the language that the rest of the world must learn. The solution to this problem is surely complex, however, I do not think it will end until there is an end to global neo-liberal capitalism. Even if America’s influence were to so drastically decrease that English became less relevant, I assume that China or another neoimperialist country would take its place. Even if the dominance of English will not end until the fall of international neo-imperialism and capitalist exploitation, I think an important question that many people who have a different first language than English, including my family, face is whether or not to teach their children English or another language as their first language. In my family, my Grandparents’ and father’s first language is Spanish but they chose to teach my sister and I English as our first language. This can have many positive and negative effects and is a hard question to navigate. On one hand, having English as a first language in America is very useful because it is the dominant language, learning to speak without an accent can prevent discrimination or bullying, and it will be very useful later on in most professions. On the other hand, it can cut children off from part of their heritage, it will be difficult to learn another language if it is not spoken in the home and the child may not have a chance until they begin to learn a foreign language in school. For parents, it is a very difficult question to navigate and, drawing from the experience of my father, children who do not speak English in America are separated from the other children and as a result are easy targets for bullying or exclusion from the English speaking children. However, speaking from my experience, it is hard to feel connected to a community when one cannot speak the common language of the larger group. The imposition of English in different communities evidently can both create colonial oppression on a large scale, but also many small-scale conflicts that individuals and families have to deal with on a constant basis.