Phtlowphv of lan guage Language is so bound up with our own humanity and our individual indenti ties that it is the face we present to the world and at the same time the eyes in that face-the window into our minds It is a grid impressed on the flux of reality that allows us to perceive, to measure and to control the quanta of experience Groups which understood its na ture entered the struggle for power with a potent weapon THE BENE GESSERIT Paul Atreides noted that his mother often observed that tongues are the Bene Gessent's first training l Then: studv served two purposes m the B G regimen first language was the key to understanding others-both what they expressed and what they hid The B G novice learned to listen closely and observe keenly to take careful note of the sounds and signs by which a mind reveals itself She studied the great FREMEN LANGUAGE 243 FREMEN LANGUAGE galactic languages and their dialects, identifying the characteristics that put the fingeipnnt, so to speak, of the speaker upon the utterance, regardless of the language in which it was expressed One subject of study was "Language-Thought Orientation," the way in which language and patterns of thought intermingle For example, suppose a native speaker of Galach speaks in Bodnan, a major language of Placentia Bodrian has over 300 kinship terms describing age, sex, lineal descent, generation, and degree of distance from the most prestigious family member, plus more terms used when status is unknown or doubtful These terms come automatically to those who have grown up speaking Bodnan, but one used to the simpler system of Galach shows a characteristic hesitation when translating Thus the B G derived the Hfth Principle of Semantic Nets Classification is sun-pier than Division, expressing the observation that it is easier to proceed from the more specialized Bodnan term to its Galach equivalent than to go from, say, fuuwaree, the Galach word for male parent, to one of the twenty or so words in Bodnan that may be demanded by the situation and context Suppose further that the speaker is posing as a native of Placentia and has intensively practiced such semantic networks as kinship terms, where a mistake would reveal the deception The Bene Gessent teamed also to observe physical sigas-the flexure of facial muscles, the polsebeat in the neck, the dilation of the pupils, and the hke-for subtle signs of tension The involuntary signs among these reveal slight increases in adrenaline caused by the speaker's successful huddling of the linguistic bamer presented by a difficult translation But the voluntary signs alone betray a clever imposter The Bene Gessent counter then might take two stages the first was a withholding of recognition signals, those small sounds and movements that tell the speaker Suit the listener is attentive and understanding, that communication is succeeding From the B G interrogator would come no nods of die head, no murmurs of assent, no lifting of the eyebrows, no frowns, no smites, nothing The speaker could see that his questioner was watching him closely, yet the withholding of recognition signals produced its desired effect the speaker knew that something was wrong, yet did not know what, and his tension increased markedly Once the imposter was unnerved, the conversation would be led through a variety of topics called "Diagnostics," designed to pre sent hesitation points from a range of lan guages to probe the deception further An important Diagnostic as cited in Liber Ricarum was the speaker's field of speciali zation "Languages build up to reflect specializations in a wa> of life Each specialization may be recognized by its words by its assumptions and sentence structures Look for stoppages Specializations represent places where life is being stopped where the movement is dammed up and frozen "2 Specialization "Specialization" has a particular meaning m this context, one so important to the understanding of the Fremen that it warrants more detailed examination To begin with, whatever their language all peoples divide living creatures into hierarchi cally organized groups, for example 1.