The emperor knows that the plan has failed 5. The emperor says that the plan has failed 6. The emperor claims that the plan has failed The bright student would correctly group sentences 1 2 and 4 and sentences 3 5, and 6, pointing out that the verbs used tell us as much about the speaker as they do about the emperor The use of realize regret or know tells us that the speaker accepts the truth of the object clause-that the plan has failed-but the use of believe say or claim expresses no commitment by the speaker about the success of failure of the plan Assumptions explained by reference to a single word are simple ones of course the presuppositions which lie in the syntax or morphology of a language he deeper indeed The Bene Gessent aim was not to change language or its use but to understand it Their philosophers had no patience with cnt ics who viewed language as a barrier be tween the mind and reality Language like sight or smell or hearing does, not cut us off from reality it puts us in contact with it Losing language we would lose the largest window m the house of the soul If the window is dirty one does not refuse to look through it one washes it 6 Thus when the Lady Jessica came to the Fremen she brought a sophisticated attitude toward-the analysis of language to a people already disposed to receive such a philosophy Paul and Aha Atreides learned the Bene Gessent approach to language at their mother s knee and its influence extended to Leto and Ghanima although as will be discussed in a different and sinister way THE FREMEN To the Fremen, their lan guage was a sacred trust its study a virtuous act and its students enjoyed the honor of the faithful When the Fremen gathered on Arrakis FREMEN LANGUAGE 245 FREMEN LANGUAGE in 7193, they encountered a climate that was to have an enormous impact on those attitudes The climate of Dune was so ferocious that an awareness of it hovered in the background of every conversation Their language naturally mirrored this changed awareness as their vocabulary multiplied the terms needed to express the new distinctions that allowed them to survive Fremen terms for different kinds of sand, for example, or for wind conditions show the focus of their concerns Pardot Kynes noted their linguistic adapts tion early in his sojourn with the Fremen "They were the first people anywhere to express climate in terms of a semi-mathematic language whose written symbols embody (and internalize) the external relationships The language itself was part of the system it described Its written form earned the shape of what it described' *' Kynes was right in general, if not in specifics the vocabulary of die language had been adapted to Dune IB response to the same forces to which its speakers had adapted Yet for the most part, the Fremen were unselfconscious about their speech, moving through its transparent medium as a fish moves m water All this changed when Jessica and Paul arrived Dune was a planet almost designed to promote a self-sufficient individualism Farm ing is an activity that favors group action the more laborers, the more ground that can be planted and die more abundant the harvest But hunting and gathering (as the Fremen desert society practiced) favors the strong individual the terrain itself sets limits on the number of organisms it will support A cold climate drives people physically closer together for the warmth that means survival But an and, almost waterless climate means that some will survive while others die the necessity of making and enforcing life and death decisions does not promote strong social tus Every individual of whom we have record of intruding into rremen territory- Pardot Kynes Duncan Idano.