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Worldbuilding

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    $\begingroup$ The glyphs in Arrival (excellent film, incidentally) are linguistic; every bit as much as this text you are reading. This is made very clear in the film through the human efforts to learn the language. Specifically, it is an ideographic written language (like Egyptian or Mandarin). $\endgroup$
    – Matthew
    Commented Nov 10, 2021 at 16:13
  • $\begingroup$ Nonlinguistic communication transmits/imparts information without using phonetic language. See new link in my edited answer. The example from the film is distinct from spoken Egyptian or Mandarin in that the language (and corresponding symbols) are non-phonetic. But yes, ideographic in the same way that hieroglyphs are, and the Mandarin symbols. But, we know that the Egyptians and Chinese spoke linguistically in addition to using a ideographic writing system. The example from the film is a culture without spoke word, unlike the Egyptians and Chinese. $\endgroup$
    – stephan_phd
    Commented Nov 11, 2021 at 3:32
  • $\begingroup$ Phonetics is a level encompassed by linguistics, because linguistics is the study of human language. Yes I read the article I cited. See new citation in my comment for a link to an empirical source, wikipedia tends to generalize. Keep in mind, my answer is attending to the question asked. "Communication" and "linguistic" seem to be conflated here, so I elaborated with examples. $\endgroup$
    – stephan_phd
    Commented Nov 12, 2021 at 2:09