Language and Thought in the Invisibles

Francesco Alesio Ursini

“Which side are you on, anyway?” Regier et al./Jack Frost, The Invisibles Vol. 3: 1

1. Introduction: Why Language

A widely acknowledged aspect of Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles is its incredibly diverse

and complex combination of concepts as non-linear plot devices or tropes, here simply

defined as significant themes or concepts in a work of narrative (Juul 3-6). Morrison is

known for implementing dichotomies such as “chaos” and “order,” “control” and “freedom,”

or “youth” and “adulthood.” In Morrison’s works, the conceptual space between antinomies

is explored in detail; often, new syntheses become tropes in their own right (Neighly and

Cowe-Spigai; Meaney; Callahan; Singer). Among these dichotomies, one would not expect to

find “language,” if only for the reason that it does not apparently belong to a clear dichotomy.

However, recent works that explore Morrison’s use of language in The Invisibles discuss

language-based tropes, pointing to the existence of an implicit dichotomy between language

and thought (Rauch; Wolk 267-272; Singer 118-124). These critics suggest that The

Invisibles uses the strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which can be preliminarily defined as the

hypothesis that language determines thought (Casasanto 63-64).

The goal of this paper is to show that Morrison’s apparent and indirect use of the Sapir-

Whorf hypothesis is but one aspect of his exploration of a more complex conceptual system

that includes language, thought, and their relation. We will then analyse not only how

Morrison explores this system, but also how his use of this system as a complex narrative

device has been constant and yet taken different shapes over the story’s unfolding. The paper

is structured as follows. In section 2, we present some background on Morrison’s work, and

the key notions we will implement in my analysis, in particular the notions of trope,

conceptual system and narrative. In section 3, we present an overview of the current debate

on theories of the language and cognition relation. In section 4, we discuss how Morrison

uses this complex trope, and the corresponding conceptual system in The Invisibles, as the

narrative unfolds; in section 5, we conclude.

2. Background Notions: Theories of Narration

The goal of this section is to introduce some basic theoretical concepts and their relevance for

our analysis of complex tropes, in The Invisibles.

In the Morrisonian universe, dichotomies are defined via concepts that are used as tropes, and

are often conceived as polar opposites. These basic, tropes seem to form a complex web or

continuum of concepts. Such webs of tropes appear to be the building blocks of the narrative,

the complex structure that defines the progression of the plot (Juul 3-10) [endnote 1].

However, Morrison often recasts opposite concepts as extremes within a conceptual

continuum, usually proposing a synthesis of these complementary notions.

Such an authorial and epistemic choice provides an interesting theoretical problem for an

analysis of his works. The problem pertains to how Morrison uses scientific theories as tropes,

in his works. Here we choose one line of analysis, that of possible worlds theory, to address

how authors implement and use real world knowledge to build and explore plausible fictional

worlds (Doležel 30-44; Eco 20-30; Pavel ch.13-18; Semino). We will consider The Invisibles

as a work of speculative or science fiction, since it includes possible scientific theories

(Ryan) and discuss how Morrison uses different types of scientific theories of language

within the narrative of this work

In his works, Morrison implements at least three epistemological positions with regard to the

character of the narrator. A first stance is that of the “prosaic” author, who uses a specific

point of view within a certain debate as a trope. In Animal Man (Morrison and Truog),

Morrison promotes animal rights in a rather direct way, without offering more nuanced

philosophical counterpoints (Callahan ch. 4). A second stance is that of the “neutral” author,

who uses dichotomies as complex tropes, but in a theory- and debate-neutral perspective. In

Zenith (Morrison and Yeowell), “youth” and “adulthood” themes pervade the plot (the brash

attitude of Zenith, the arrogance of Peter St. John), without one pole being clearly favoured

over the other (Callahan ch.1). A third stance is that of the “debating” author, who elaborates

dichotomies in novel, speculative ways. Such re-elaboration of the chaos/order dichotomy

occurs in The Invisibles, among others.

Before we zoom onto a discussion of the language/thought complex concept, we need to

situate this trope within Morrison’s broader work. Morrison often uses language as a vehicle

to represent characters’ unique identities. Examples include the acronyms of the men from

N.O.W.H.E.R.E. and the parlari of Danny the street (Morrison and Case), the pidgin-like

English of Mickey eye or of the three We3 pets (Morrison and Stewart; Morrison and

Quitely). Furthermore, The Invisibles features the logoplasm, a shiny silver substance that

incarnates the “higher universe” from which the Invisible College and the Outer Church, the

two factions of the story, originate.

In The Invisibles, language is also used as tool to express, expand and reduce “thought” and

its potential. In this series, language is at times used as a weapon that characters employ to

control thought: how other characters perceive and understand reality. This latter use has

been interpreted as Morrison’s use, or even support of the strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (cf.

Rauch; Wolk 267-272). However, as Singer (118-124) notes, the existence of a language that

can be hacked via drugs to determine cognition presupposes [endnote 2] the existence of

language and thought as distinct domains. What the narrative of The Invisibles explores,

Singer argues, is how these two aspects of human nature interact, in various ways. Crucially,

the use of drugs that allows language to be used to control thought seems to suggest that a

second complex trope, call it the “control” and ”freedom” dichotomy, is at work when the

language and cognition trope is at work, too. We discuss this trope more in detail in the next

section.

3. Background Notions: Language, Cognition and their Relation

The goal of this section is to present in more detail the linguistic concepts and ideas that act

as background information for our complex trope. We will take a broad perspective, as the

debate on language, [endnote 3] cognition and their relation are closely intertwined with our

discussion. At the same time, we will make precise some notions (e.g. the Sapir-Whorf

hypothesis) that play a key role in our discussion.

At a basic sensory level, our five senses allow us to process the basic bits of information that

we receive about the external world; sensory inputs are the building blocks of perception.

These bits are then transformed (“transduced,” Pylyshyn 3-8) in mind-internal bits of

information: memories, sensations, and other types of thoughts. Thus, they become part of

cognition: our unconscious, spontaneous ability to store, organize, retrieve and manipulate

information about ourselves and the world (Matlin 5-8). Cognition can be seen as

combination of different specific cognitive domains: vision, language, action planning,

memory, attention, emotion, concept formation, and several others, such as our “thoughts”

(Eysenck7-30). We can perceive and organize information about what we see, say, plan to do,

recall, and so on. Then, at a conscious level, we can operate on these bits of information to

interact with the world, and possibly “match” what we see and what we say.

The emergence of cognition as a field of inquiry occurred in the 1950s, in good part as a

reaction to the then dominant Behaviourist paradigm. Behaviourism reduced all complex

mental phenomena, including language, to forms of “trained behaviour” (Skinner). After

critical analyses showed the inadequacy of such approach, cognition and the study of mental

life became a central field of study again [endnote 4] (Chomsky; Bruner).

Subsequent decades saw the emergence of a continuum of models of cognition, and of the

useful “mind is a computer” metaphor. [endnote 5] At one extreme, computational models

assume that the mind can be seen as a computer relying on several specialized processors,

one per cognitive domain (e.g. Carruthers). Connectionist models eschew the “domain-

specific” approach, and suggest that any type of information can be processed in any part of

the mind/brain (Elman et al.). Intermediate models exist, and attempt to offer varying degrees

of synthesis between these ideas (Metzinger).

Regardless of the model, however, an important question pertains to what kind of relation

exists between the different parts of cognition, for instance language and vision. The strong

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is but one answer to this question within this complex debate. Since

previous works on the trope of language in The Invisibles do not flesh out the nature of this

debate in much detail, I offer a brief but precise overview on this topic.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis [endnote 6] takes its name from a formulation found in Hoijer

(3-5), which builds on an interpretation of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf’s research.

Both scholars worked on Native American languages, with Whorf focusing on corpora of the

Uto-Aztecan Hopi (Hopi: Ethnologue). Whorf observed that Hopi lacks temporal

morphology on verbs (e.g. the past suffix –ed in English: walk-ed). He conjectured, then, that

Hopi speakers could not talk about time, at least not in the way that English speakers could,

hence they could not even think about temporal information (Whorf 134-150). Whorf ignored

that Hopi includes temporal adverbs (e.g. now) to express temporal relations, hence his

claims lacked the necessary empirical punch. This fact did not prevent, however, from the

formulation of the so-called strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: that language determines thought

or, in our terms, cognitive categories.

With the raise of the cognitive revolution, a diametrically opposed perspective arose, as a

partial reaction to behaviourism’s dismissal of mind-internal processes. The Universalist

hypothesis states that cognitive categories determine linguistic categories, and not vice versa.

A very indirect argument for this hypothesis was put forward in Chomsky (7-20), since its

notion of a “Universal Grammar” underpinning all natural languages relied on a set of pre-

existing cognitive categories. Instead, works such as Berlin and Kay offered more cogent

arguments for the Universalist hypothesis. This work showed that, language after language,

basic colour terms emerge following basic chromatic distinctions: from black versus white, to

red, then to green or blue, and so on. Given the empirical solidity of Berlin and Kay’s study,

the Universalist hypothesis was taken to be a better model of the language-cognition relation

than the Sapir and Whorf one, which was then left aside.

The debate on this relation did not end, though. Subsequent works in language acquisition

and language processing hinted that language categories may influence how speakers pay

attention to visual scenarios, or recall their structure. Thus, a weak version of the Sapir-Whorf

hypothesis, also known as the “thinking for speaking” hypothesis, was formulated: that

language may influence, rather than determine, cognitive categories (Slobin). At the same

time, a better understanding of language emerged, qua a part of cognition, seen as a whole.

As a cognitive system, language allows us to “externalize” thoughts, beliefs and opinions,

and allows us to talk about the world (Lakoff 3-30; Chomsky “program” 5-60; Talmy 4-58).

In this role, language seems to act as a “mirror” to cognition, intended as sum of all our

cognitive activities. Thus, both domains would contain the same sets of conceptual categories,

but may differ in how these categories are used and related. [endnote 7]

Since three distinct hypotheses on the relation between language and cognition emerged over

time, the last 20 years or so witnessed a surge of studies investigating the validity of each of

these hypotheses. For instance, modern proponents of the strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

have suggested that specific categories of language constrain certain cognitive categories.

Thus, Levinson suggests that languages with so-called “absolute” spatial terms such as

Tzeltal [endnote 8] do constrain how their speakers understand spatial directions. In contrast,

proponents of the Universalist hypothesis observe that pre-verbal children can already count

and distinguish small quantities and operations on these quantities, before they can speak

(Bloom and Keil; McCrink and Spelke). Furthermore, proponents of the weak Sapir-Whorf

hypothesis observe that weak effects can emerge quite frequently, when linguistic and non-

linguistic tasks are temporarily connected (e.g. counting: Boroditsky; Casasanto). Overall,

each hypothesis seems to find some form of empirical support, although partial in nature.

However, in recent times a fourth position has slowly emerged in the works of Terry Regier

and associates (e.g. Regier et al.). These works have investigated the classic linguistic

domains that are the focus of this type of research (spatial cognition, colour names). A

general finding reported in these works is that languages across the world seem to express the

same sets of pre-linguistic concepts, a fact in support of the Universalist hypothesis. In doing

so, languages tend to vary on categories’ boundaries: whether languages have terms for both

green and blue, or either one, or neither. However, when speakers are asked to use these

terms, they can usually find alternative ways to express concepts that do not exist in their

languages. These latter two facts support a strong and weak Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, instead.

Consequently, Regier et al. (158-159) suggest that taking a side on this debate seems

counterproductive, since different sets of data can explain a part of the data at hand. If one

aims for a theory of the “whole” language-cognition problem, then a novel synthesis of these

hypotheses seems to be called for.

The emergence of a continuum in the debate on the relation between language and cognition

has allowed the emergence of a fourth position, which sees all of these approaches as

necessary, although partial accounts of this relation. Now that we have defined these four

related positions, we can reformulate and address our initial question as a two-pronged

question. A first prong is whether Morrison uses any of these positions as complex tropes in

The Invisibles. A second prong is whether he uses these positions as a system, in an

overarching attempt to explore how these complex ideas can be turned into narrative tropes.

4. The Data

The goal of this section is to discuss the language and cognition complex trope in The

Invisibles by proposing a partition of this trope type into sub-types. We pursue this goal by

discussing the tokens [endnote 9] of three sub-types of this trope in each volume of the comic,

and assess how each token instantiates each trope. Each sub-type is distinguished by

involving a different control method: drugs (key 17/23/64), explicit verbal commands, and

implicit or subconscious subliminal messages. The latter two methods also based on the use

of a “secret” universal language. We thus label these sub-types “drugs,” “explicit commands,”

and “subliminal messages.” Only instances in which language is explicitly used as a tool of

control will be considered as tokens instantiating our sub-types. We divide the discussion in

three sections, one per volume of publication, and follow a chronological order. We do so, in

order to highlight how the use of this trope and its sub-types have evolved (or, more

accurately, have remained conceptually consistent) over the series’ publication.

4.1 Volume 1 (Issues 1-25)

The first sub-type of the language and cognition trope that occurs in volume 1 is the “drugs”

sub-type. A first token occurs in the story arc Entropy in the UK (#18-24). The mind-altering

drug key 17 is introduced indirectly, as part of the narration. Sir Miles, the main antagonist in

the series, and an Outer Church scientist called Frankland are torturing the main character

King Mob, in order to extract information about the Invisibles. The crucial panels present a

first person narrative, and show how King Mob sees the chamber in which he is being

tortured. Everything looks red; Sir Miles appears in King Mob’s visual field with a bucket,

from which he throws Mob’s severed fingers on the floor, then shows Mob his ravaged face

via a mirror. The focus in the narration goes from King Mob’s perspective from a character-

neutral perspective. This change reveals that King Mob is actually being forced to read scraps

on paper on which the words finger and diseased face are written. King Mob opposes a fierce

resistance to this torture, pretending to be someone else than his current fiction suit: [endnote

10] Kirk Morrison, a horror books writer. The first dialogue that reveals key 17’s effect is

reported in example (1). The next token occurs when King Mob explains to his ally Lord

Fanny the nature of this drug, as shown in (2):

(1) Sir Miles: I thought you said this key 17 drug was foolproof

Frankland: The drug scrambles perceptual information reaching the secondary visual

cortex. It makes him unable to tell the difference between the word describing

the object and the object itself… (#18: 6)

(2) King Mob: The drug they gave me makes words appear to be things. You look at words

and you see the objects they describe. Key 17 it’s called (#24: 13)

As Frankland explains, victims of key 17 become unable to distinguish a written word from

the kind of object it refers to. Thus, although Mob is in precarious conditions and was led to

believe that his fingers were cut off during the torture procedure, his fingers are intact. Issue

18 does not offer more information about key 17 and its function, nor does it explain how this

form of “induced cognitive disorder” actually works, within this fictional setting. It does

point out, though, that the drug allows someone to manipulate (“scramble”) one aspect of

cognition and cognitive processes, vision, via language. In (2), King Mob has become aware

of this, and explains to Fanny what the effect of this drug on the visual system is, much like

Frankland did in the previous example. During this part of the arc, Fanny and King Mob can

counter-attack a third Outer Church member, Miss Dwyer, via a dose of key 17. She [endnote

11] can induce a false vision of Miss Dwyer’s father, via the text “world’s greatest dad” on

the cup, and verbal information that supplements this engraving. The key passage is in (3):

(3) King Mob: Write something Fanny anything she reads she’ll see it as real something I’m

hmmm…

Fanny: Look! Look who’s here to see you! [FANNY SHOWS A CUP WITH THE

ENGRAVING “WORLD’S GREATEST DAD” ON IT, MISS DWYER

STOPS MOVING] (#24: 13)

The use of key 17 clearly allows Fanny to manipulate the altered Miss Dwyer by adding some

more verbal information about her delusional visions. At this point, Miss Dwyer is supposed

to see her father, probably under a caring and emotionally “loaded” perspective: he is seen as

world’s greatest dad, after all. The combination of a drug-induced false visual stimulus and

Fanny’s plain verbal manipulation are the key aspects that force her to see what they are told

to see. By this point in the narrative, we can already observe how the drug sub-type is

implemented in the narrative. The use of drugs allows someone to manipulate two aspects of

cognition, visual information and emotions, via spoken and written language. Certainly, this

effect is somewhat similar the result of the strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: language is used

to determine (control, actually) cognition. However, this effect is obtained via key 17, while

both Sapir-Whorf hypotheses are hypotheses about the relation between language and

cognition without third intervening factors, let alone drugs. That is, characters can

consciously manipulate the unconscious linguistic and cognitive abilities of other characters.

Thus, neither the Universalist nor the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis can be invoked to describe the

events in this issue.

We now move to the “explicit commands” sub-type, which is introduced in example (4). This

passage offers a homage to 1984’s classic torture scene (Orwell), as Sir Miles plays the role

of Sir O’Brien and King Mob the role of Winston Smith. As Sir Miles suggests, humans

would normally be able to access this universal language, if they were not forced to learn

writing systems (and its alphabet, in the English case), that constrain this apparently innate

ability. The explanation is as follows:

(4) King Mob: four fingers…

Sir Miles: Of course. That’s what you see. But “four” is only a word.

Sir Miles: Have you ever wondered why we talk of “spelling”? There is a spell word, an

“abracadabra,” implanted in the brain of every English-speaking child, the root

mantra of restriction, the secret name of a mighty, hidden demon.

Sir Miles: “Eye-bee-see-dee-ee-ef[…]xed”

Sir Miles: that name and all the names it generates, were designed to set limits upon

humanity’s ability to express abstract thought [FIVE FINGERS CARTEL]

Sir Miles: What you see depends entirely upon the words. You have to describe what you

see. Nothing exists unless we say it does. The drug we gave you is called key

17 and with its help, we can conjure reality with the help of a few words

scrawled on paper.

Sir Miles: When you were young you spent hours writing with your left hand, didn’t you?

You were trying unconsciously to break the alphabet spell our teachers placed

upon you.

Sir Miles: A brave and imaginative effort, my boy, but quite worthless. [PICTURE:

QWERTYUIOPASD]

King Mob: What hfm you want me t huf see?

Sir Miles: It is not enough to see. It is not enough to say that you see.

Sir Miles: you must believe. You must want to believe with all your heart. Key 17 will

help you to believe. (#19: 8)

Two concepts play a role, in this example. First, the secret alphabet is depicted as the

“universal” alphabet that allows to write all the words that can convey all possible human

concepts: the universal inventory of our “thoughts.” Note, here, that Morrison seems to blurry

the distinction between spoken and written form, as in the case of the first sub-type. Second,

in forcing humans to use only a part of this alphabet, the Outer Church forces (English-

speaking) humans to use only a part of this wealth of concepts, and their ability to create

(“generate”) new ones. The existence of a universal capacity for cognitive categories, and the

possibility to use language to constrain this capacity becomes part of the narrative, by this

point. Thus, this secret language is used to express commands must follow. Again, “language”

becomes a tool of control of cognition (thought), but in a rather conscious way, unlike

assumed in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

Another relevant example is offered when Miss Dwyer attacks King Mob and Fanny (#24:

12). Miss Dwyer uses a special sequence of words in the secret language to trigger a rapid

tissue degeneration, as shown in (5). From this point onwards, we report the relevant panels

in-text, in order to display the secret language’s visual form:

(5) FIG. 1

An important aspect of this token is that the key utterance [endnote 12] is described as being

a “genetic” command. The external narration panel explains that the human body is in part

“programmed” to understand this sentence as a command for “sonic cancer”: the Outer

Church actively controls education and health systems, after all. Thus, in this case language

can affect a physical category of some sort, because organisms have been placed in position

to be susceptible to this command. Hence, by the end of this volume, we still do not know

whether all types of utterances of the secret language can also be used to control humans and,

as in this case, their biological processes. However, we know that language can be used not

only to affect thought, but also other physical functions, a fact that falls beyond the scope of

either the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, weak or strong.

As our discussion suggests, then, the first volume only uses the “drugs” and “explicit

commands” sub-types, in manners that are hardly consistent with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis,

strong or weak alike. Only when a drug that allows to control visual cognition (“drugs”) or

cognition in general (”commands”) is used, language can be used to determine cognition.

Without such a device, characters cannot explicitly affect other characters’ cognitive

underpinnings. Thus, within the narrative of volume 1, Morrison does not use these sub-types

to promote the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Rather, he sets out to explore the narrative

possibilities that the control of cognitive faculties can offer, based on how various characters

can manipulate other characters’ perception of reality and language. The question that we

face now, then, is whether this use changes or remains internally consistent in the other two

volumes.

4.2. Volume 2

In Volume 2 and the story arc American Death Camp (#11-13), the uses and functions of the

secret language and its alphabet are presented in more detail. Our third sub-type, the

“subliminal messages” type, takes the centre of the narrative stage. This arc’s plot revolves

around Boy, who is on the run after stealing the hand of glory, a device that allows its users

to open a gate on the Outer Church dimension. King Mob and his cell move to one of Mason

Lang’s research labs to retrieve Boy, after Jack has a premonition that she is being held

captive there. Here, a cell later known as cell 23 places Boy under psychological re-

conditioning via drugs. Coyote, the leader of cell 23 and an old acquaintance of Boy in

incognito, queries her [endnote 13] about the nature of the “real” alphabet. I transcribe the

relevant passages in (5)-(6), and report the relevant images in (7)-(8):

(6) Coyote: How many letters there are in the alphabet?

Boy: Look…

Coyote: There’s 64. This is the real alphabet we’re talking about.

Coyote: Seeing and remembering letters from the Invisible alphabet often triggers

nausea in agents with multiple cover stories. (#11: 7)

(7) Coyote: And which side are you on? We think that seeing the letter tripleyou on the

wall was what finally cracked out the shell of your exopersonality. (#11: 12)

(8) FIG. 2

(9) FIG. 3

One important aspect of this passage is that the precise number of the letters in the secret

alphabet, 64, is revealed. Coyote mentions one of the letters of this alphabet, tripleyou (ex.

(6)), as the trigger for the “exopersonality” or fiction suit that Boy was supposedly acting

under. In this case, and differently from the example discussed in (4), the letters from the

secret alphabet act as commands that take control of Boy’s will, much like post-hypnotic

commands. Thus, the words from the universal language can be used to take control of Boy’s

cognitive faculties (her memories and will), but only once Boy is under the effect of unnamed

drugs aimed at removing her “fiction suit” programming. Towards the conclusion of the issue,

several tokens of the secret alphabet are presented. In a flash-forward, Coyote has now forced

Boy to wear a new fiction suit/exo-personality as an Outer Church agent. Then, cell 23 and

Boy pretend to be agents, with the aim of killing an imprisoned King Mob. A final use of the

secret alphabet occurs in the next issue, when Boy can reject her programming. These tokens

are shown in (9)-(12):

(10) FIG. 4 (#12: 21)

(11) FIG. 5 (#12: 22)

(12) FIG. 6 (#12: 23)

(13) FIG. 7 (#13: 10)

Note once more that the secret language utterances are presented as imperative sentences, as

in the case of (5). The panel on p. 21 lacks this punctuation mark, but the narrative context

suggests that Coyote is also imparting orders, as he yells with to boy with an aggressive face,

while also alternating orders in English. These tokens, then, offer a better depiction of how

the combination of drugs and the secret language can indeed affect the cognitive abilities of

Boy. If the secret language can affect cognition (memories and will, here) only via the use of

drugs, then its use hardly qualifies as consistent with either Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or the

Universalist hypothesis.

These examples do not exhaust the tokens for the “subliminal messages” sub-type in volume

2. Another token for this type is introduced when cell 23 attacks King Mob and his cell. Two

members of cell 23 are shown to discuss the property of this agent (#13: 6-7), although Jack

Frost mentions some other information earlier in the story. The relevant passages are

presented in (14)-(16):

(14) Henchman #1: Jesus, King Mob. Do we have time to introduce a viral component into

the language tanks? (#13: 6)

(15) Henchman #2: Yeah: I just got exposed to one of those prototypes a couple of years

back. Damn thing just kept going through my head for two days, non-

stop. I heard it ended up being used as a subliminal in the chorus of

some big hit record.

Henchman #1: This is the first time I have used one of those viral words. (#13: 7)

(16) Jack Frost: Better watch out; they’ll ask you for a word, right? But the word’s not a

word. It’s one of their words, man. If our words are circles, their words are bubbles.

(#12: 21)

Examples (14)-(15) show that the words that cell 23 uses in their attack acts as a “viral

word”: a word that in is in a sense more complex than normal words, as Jack Frost mentions

in (16). The attack that ensues once King Mob and his cell become a threat to cell 23’s

actions makes clear what the complexity of these words consists of. Examples (17)-(18), and

the adjacent two pages reported in (19) illustrate this fact in detail:

(17) Henchman #3: Good Evening. Reality is all about Language. We can demonstrate.

Jack Frost: Fucking Hell

Ragged Robin: Oh shit

Henchman #4: I know some of you are familiar with detournment or hijacking—it’s

a term from situationist theory. We have taken it a step further. We’ve

just occupied the language processing areas of your cerebral cortex. You

will now generate auto-critique. (#13: 6)

(18) Ragged Robin: We seem to have g—my tits spell anarchy

King Mob: The most pernicious image of all is the anarchist-hero figure. A creation of

commodity culture, he allows us to buy into an inauthentic simulation of

revolutionary praxis.

Ragged Robin: When is the movie?

King Mob: The hero encourages passive spectating and revolt becomes another product

to be consumed.

Jack Frost: Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Mason Lang: Everything has a value on the open market. Who pays for the revolution?

Lord Fanny: The transvestite, far from being a rebellious or transgressive figure,

actually serves the status quo by validating stereotypical images of

femininity. Uh

Mason Lang: The light! They’re hypnotizing us…God made money in his image.

King Mob: Up against the wall, motherfuckers! Recuperate this! (#13: 7)

(19) FIG. 8 and 9 (#13: 7)

A third member of cell 23 explains to King Mob and his cell that they have already been

placed under control, so that they lose control of their ability to spontaneously generate

[endnote 14] language. However, this occurs when King Mob and the others fall under the

influence of a hypnotizing light, as Mason Lang points out. The image in (18) shows the

hypnotizing effects: the panels look like photographic negatives. The “hijacked” auto-critique

sentences (here, underlined) are represented via typewriter-style fonts, in the panels. The

third sub-type (“subliminal”) of our trope is revealed, since the control factor in this use of

language is the hypnotic signal, which may be the “viral word” mentioned in (16). Once the

first attack is over, cell 23 members shift gears and use a much more powerful attack, as

explained in (20)-(22) (#13: 8-9):

(20) Henchman #1: This isn’t slowing them down. These people are hardcore…Hit them

with some vocabulary.

Henchman #2: We have the power to do things to your mind because we have the keys

to a wider world which you haven’t been educated to comprehend.

Henchman #2: We’ve been taught the full 64letters of the alphabet.

Henchman #2: We have words and concepts for things that you aren’t even able to

imagine in the rudimentary language of your slave language.

King Mob: How do we fight words?

Henchman #1: There are things all around. Things you never see because you don’t

have the words, you don’t have the names. You only have the 26-letter

alphabet. Here are some names for things.

Fairy: The basic irony is that pre-verbal children see us everywhere but we’re made of

language, which cannot be easily processed by infant minds.

Fairy: That’s why communication is so difficult between us. (#13: 8-9)

(21) FIG. 10 (#13: 8)

(22) FIG. 11 (#13: 9)

In this passage it is not entirely clear whether King Mob and his cell are still under the

influence of the subliminal message or not. Thus, this may be the only genuine case in which

the secret language can be seen to affect cognition without any mediating control factors.

However, a possibility is that since the unnamed member continues speaking via an amplifier,

the subliminal may still be active. Mind-control is here explicitly part of the narration, rather

than implicitly. The net effect of this attack is that King Mob and his cell are forced to see

“things” for which they lack the language, given their “slave” English spelling-based

education. “Fairy,” one mysterious entity that now King Mob can see, points out that pre-

school children can see these “things,” as they have the conceptual but not linguistic tools to

describe such a richer reality. Children lose this ability only when educational systems take

control of their linguistic skills, and consequently of their thought processes. This fact also

suggests that “control” broadly conceived, once more, determines how humans can become

unable to fully use language and thought to understand reality (pace Rauch 648), whether this

control is linguistically achieved via explicit commands or subliminal messages.

As the story progresses, the attack proves to be almost lethal. Ragged Robin must cancel the

other characters’ memories, before everyone is put to sleep via a cell 23’s command, as

shown in (21). Thus, the only solution to remove the effects of this hijacking technique is to

remove its effect from memory altogether. This is done via a telepathic command: cognition

controls cognition, in this case. Other forms of “cognitive control” occur, one example being

the use of the “skorpio” hypnosis weapon (#14-16; #19-22). However, as pure cognition

tropes, we leave them aside, and sum up our discussion for this volume.

As our discussion shows, the “subliminal messages” sub-type involves the hijacking of the

characters’ cognitive faculties in an even more explicit manner than in the other types. The

victims of this method lose control over what they understand as being real, hence becoming

victims of (verbally) induced control. As in the case of the “drugs” and the “explicit

commands” sub-types, and their use in volume 1, this is hardly evidence that supports the

exclusive use of either the Sapir-Whorf hypotheses or the Universalist hypothesis as complex

tropes. Once more, the fact that language is used to control aspects of other cognitive

faculties is based on the fact that some characters can achieve a form of control over other

characters. In other words, Morrison uses the combination of the “language and cognition”

trope with the “control” trope, but chooses to represent this combination of ideas in a

different way (or type, in our parlance). Thus, by volume 2 it seems clear that Morrison

seems not to be on any side of the debate between the Universalist and the Sapir-Whorf

hypothesis. We can now address whether this consistence is borne out in volume 3.

4.3. Volume 3.

Volume 3 features again the “drugs” sub-type via a new version of the drug, key 23, and

language manipulation as an integral, constant part of the narrative, which is in turn an

instance of the “explicit commands” sub-type. However, this type is also indirectly used to

expand and explain more in detail how the “Universal Language” concept works, a concept

briefly introduced during volume 2 and the encounter with cell 23.As a result, Morrison

indirectly clarifies how he assumes that control of language can be achieved, within the

economy of the narrative. In the first story arc, SatanStorm, the invisible linguist Helga

Tannen is introduced as a member of Mister 6’s cell. She is shown to throw up, then make the

following comment about the invisible language she was trying to learn:

(23) Helga Tannen: you’ll have to excuse me…I was trying to learn an alien language and

it all came up… (#8: 8)

In this volume, it is revealed that the Outer Church and the Invisibles refer to “twin” realities,

halves of a more complex reality. Thus, they share access to the same universal language.

Crucially, “alien” is used to describe the secret language, which turns out to be the same

language used by the Outer Church. The nature of this language is explained more in detail in

the storyline Karmageddon, when Helga tries to discover its properties:

(24) Helga Tannen: 23pm, 30 mls. Key 23. Direct via the angular gyrus to the language

cortex. high-speed random letter combinations: loading.

Key 23 is a synthetic mind-control agent. Under the influence of this

drug, written words appear to be what they describe.

I tried it with the word “bliss” scrawled on a card my little sister drew

for me. I entered a state Buddhists call nirvikalpa Samadhi. The rapid

drop in metabolic function almost killed me. […]

The 38 extra letters of the alphabet are kept secret by those at the highest

level of so-called “global control”

Sound reconstructions of many words in the ubersprech are now

available and…If terrestrial words become things under the influence of

key 23—what if I expose myself to alien words?

It takes seconds. Some gloossslaghghghah occurring. […] 11:23.

Alphabet generator.

They’re breeding like rabbits. (#6: 2-4)

(25) FIG. 12 (#6: 3)

As explained in (24) and shown in (25), the secret alphabet includes a set of 38 extra “letters”

to the “normal” alphabet. It is a secret or “superior” language (übersprech ‘superior

language’), kept hidden by both the Outer Church and the Invisibles’ hierarchies. It allows its

users to express “alien” words, which in turn can convey concepts that humans are taught not

to access, but that Helga learns to access, overriding this conditioning. One more token of this

sub-type are used in the final story arc, Glitterdammerung, once Helga has got a hold on how

the secret language works, as King Mob explains in (26):

(26) King Mob: Helga calls her alien alphabet generator “KALI,” which I know I can talk her

and Six into being an acronym for Kabalistic Alien Language Initiator or

something---the screen’s a storm of fucked and fucking text---the roman [sic]

alphabet fertilized by Helga’s holographic syntax--- (#4: 2)

Helga has developed a software that has cracked the syntax (“grammar”) of the alien/secret

language, which KM describes as “holographic.” The exact sense of KM’s words seems not

very clear, and may refer to how syntactic annotations appear in the program. By this point,

though, it becomes clear that that the alien language is a full language, possibly with an “über”

structure that shares the same properties of “normal” languages. In this sense, as Singer (124)

also notes, the use of the “language” side of our complex trope does echo the Universalist

hypothesis. When free of all conditioning and control, our universal language seems to reflect

our fully developed cognitive categories, or “thoughts.” Control, instead, triggers Sapir-

Whorf-like effects: language can be explicitly used to control cognition. Further evidence that

this analysis is on the right track is offered when a young Sir Miles is shown to undergo an

LSD experiment in the early ‘60s, which was recorded by BBC:

(27) Sir Miles: You see, man will not be man…he will be like them…star-headed…in

the…2012…The trans-continuum…that is how they are putting it…like

them…their language… (#10:5)

This oblique reference is to the fact that, should the Outer Church win, they will impose their

own language, and the cognitive control it comes with it, to the oppressed humans. A more

relevant use of the ”drugs” sub-type occurs in this same issue, when it is revealed that Jack

Flint, a member of the cell Division X, has been kidnapped by another cell, to undergo “re-

initiation” into the invisibles. Examples (28)-(29) report the key text passages:

(28) You are in the wicker man now

(29) Purves: key 23; the drug affects the language centers in the brain. Whatever he reads

becomes real to him…

Jack Flint: The invisibles…

Purves:…makes initiations so much easier…

Helga Tannen: The alien metalanguage has some words but no real grammar yet. Still,

Chinese seemed like a real challenge when I was 15. (#10: 19)

In (28), Jack Flint is tied to a chair, inside a wind-mill that featured already in the series (#5-

8). Under the effect of key 23, he is shown a picture of a burning wicker man with the text on

23 superimposed on the picture. As a consequence, he hallucinates that he risks becoming a

sacrifice in a modern “wicker man” ceremony. In (28), the invisible Purves explains the

functions of key 23 one more time, while Helga is, by this point, still wrestling with

understanding the secret language’s syntax. Note that, at least according to her preliminary

understanding, the secret language is language for languages (a meta-language): perhaps, a

universal language. The use of key 23 is not limited to internal re-initiation: Sir Miles

attempts to attack Jack Flint and the other invisibles inside the wind-mill, but falls prey to

their telepathic attack. Sir Miles is then drugged with key 23 and undergoes brain-washing

and interrogation, as respectively shown in (29)-(30):

(30) Purves: We’ve dosed you with LSD and key 23. You may think the universe is sick, Sir

Miles…

Mister 6: But we rather think we’ve found a way to inoculate.

We’ll swallow all your poisons and piss them as vintage champagne. [WE

ARE THE FUTURE PROJECTED ON MR. SIX, HELGA AND PURVES]

(#9: 19)

(31) Sir Miles: I can see the eriksonian commands emerging through your sentence structure.

All of your neurolinguistic techniques are visible to me as emergent structures.

Sir Miles: What are you? This is key 23, isn’t it? I’ll have you lobotomized and turned

into a doll!

Helga Tannen: get in line, dad! (#7: 2-3)

In (30), Sir Miles is forced to see the trio of invisibles as “the future” which, given the effect

of key 23, likely means that he is forced to image their victory in the ongoing battle. This

passage reveals in an even clearer way that, via key 23 and language, attackers can control not

what the victims “see,” but also how they can conceive and form beliefs about reality. In (30),

Helga uses key 23 to appear like a myrmidon to Sir Miles, although it is never illustrated how

this is achieved. Sir Miles sees through the illusion, though, as Helga is moving her body like

a myrmidon’s to implement the written “signal.” Sir Miles notices this, as he notices that the

post-hypnotic (“eriksonian” [endnote 15]) commands are clearly discernible in her language,

therefore trying to resist these commands. The remaining other tokens occur in the final arc,

Glitterdammerung, as reported in (32)-(33), and (34):

(32) Sir Miles: What are you gawking at? They shot the creature full of key 23 in an attempt

To bind the archon…they made it useless for our purpose.

Soldier #1: He helped them. He’s always been one of them.[…]

Sir Miles: Damn! Key 23…the drug is in me… (#2: 6)

(33) FIG. 13 (#2: 6-7)

(34) King-of-all-tears: I am the king of the Aeon

King Mob: Are you? You were dosed with logoplasm: key 64, you evil shit: welcome to

the word. And a bullet in the right place…is not substitute for the real thing

[GUN SHOOTS POOF!] (#1: 16-17)

In (32), Sir Miles is shown to shoot to death the Moonchild, the monstrous creature that

should have become the king of the dark millennium. As the Invisibles were about to control

(“bind”) the Moonchild via key 23 and language, Sir Miles decided to sacrifice their own

pawn. At the same time, though, he realizes that he is under the effect of the drug, and will

end up suiciding, later in the story. However, this occurs after the Invisibles spread scraps of

papers with words for complex concepts written on them (e.g. tomorrow), to create havoc in

the coronation ceremony in Westminster abbey (viz. (33)). This action allows the Invisibles

to save Earth from the forces of the Outer Church, in perfectly super-heroic fashion. The final

example is from #1: the action takes places on December the 22nd, 2012, the day on which

humanity enters the super-context. King Mob doses the king with key 64, a more powerful

version of key 23, and uses a gun that shoots a cartoony “poof!” message, causing the archon

to implode. Such is the control power of the new drug that the archon commits a form of

suicide, imploding into thin air.

Although the “drugs” sub-type features prominently in volume 3, the “subliminal commands”

type does feature in this volume as well. A single token is presented during Jack Frost’s

incursion in a myrmidon’s factory, as shown in (35)-(36), respectively:

(35) Jack Frost: Special agent Black, M.I. none.

My ((number/date/official/see numbers)) I.D. We’re ((trustworthy/a little strange/to

be expected)) here to install new time travel codes ((childhood memory/doctor

who/happy to be a little scared)). Your deep ((we acknowledge your knowledge and

intelligence and)) tank operatives are being recalled ((appropriate)) for ((don’t

overlook this)) re-imprinting. (#5: 5)

(36) Jolly Roger: What was that subliminal shit when you were talking to him?

Jack Frost: Found out about it in Egypt. I just sort of look through his eyes and change

what he’s seeing. It’s not like something you do… (#5: 6)

In (35), Jack Frost uses a subliminal controlling method that learnt with Elfayed, at the

Invisibles’ academy, as a weapon against his enemies. Via this method, Jack can apparently

produce utterances that can have multiple words in key positions, so that his interlocutors will

understand them as per their expectations of a dialogue. In (36), he reveals to Roger that he

can directly take control of an unnamed character’s vision without the use of drugs, but with

hypnotic methods similar to those used by cell 23. Jack. Thus, the Outer Church scientist is

led to believe that Jack is also an Outer Church officer. This is the only token for this sub-

type, and the last token we discuss before moving to the general discussion.

Let us take some stock. By volume 3, Morrison has used each of the three sub-types of the

language and cognition trope, and has outlined how the direct, agentive control of linguistic

and cognitive faculties can determine how characters perceive and understand reality. Some

of the tokens related to the “drug” type are used to reveal more details about the properties of

the fictional “universal” or “superior” language that underpins the use of these sub-types.

First, at least English and the written form it is taught with is conceived as a “slave” language,

designed by the Outer Church to restrict a much broader, universal language. Second, the

systematic use of this language to indoctrinate humans causes them to lose conceptual

categories: the “slave” language and the systematic conditioning permanently hamper human

cognitive categories. Universal categories are thus constrained via linguistic means and years

of indoctrination, but can apparently be recovered when access to the secret language is also

recovered. The Helga Tannen’s cases point to this direction in a particularly clear manner.

We can conclude that Morrison further elaborates the use and presentation of these three sub-

types, in volume 3, but does not change his initial conception of the relation between

language and cognition, our complex trope. Throughout the series, Morrison does not seem to

side with either a Universalist or Sapir-Whorf perspective, but rather explores what could

happen, if forms of cognitive and linguistic manipulation could affect how characters

perceive and understand reality in the long and short term. Pace Rauch and Wolk’s claims

(and, to an extent, Singer’s as well), our discussion suggests that Morrison does not to take

any sides, but rather explores the narrative effects of each side. To an extent, Morrison

anticipates the main suggestion put forward in Regier et al.: that there is no good reason,

empirical and conceptual, to take a side on the debate regarding the relation between

language and cognition. Therefore, Morrison definitely seems to act as a debating author,

entertaining and using different ideas as tropes in The Invisibles’ narrative, without taking a

side on the debates he wishes to analyse and use. With this final result at our disposal, we can

move to the general conclusions.

5. Conclusions

The goal of this paper has been to analyse how the complex trope of the relation between

language and cognition is used in Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles. We proposed that

Morrison uses this trope by taking a nuanced approach to a fairly complex problem: the

relation between language and thought. Linguistic theories on this relation either assume that

cognitive categories determine linguistic ones (Universal hypothesis), or that linguistic

categories determine, perhaps influence cognitive ones (strong and weak Sapir-Whorf

hypothesis, respectively). Only in recent times a complex theory implementing each

hypothesis into a coherent whole has been proposed, as discussed in Regier et al. (156-157).

Our key results, and the importance of these results for the ongoing debate about the

Morrisonian opus, can be summarised as follows.

In The Invisibles, Morrison indirectly uses each of these scientific hypotheses as complex,

connected tropes within the narrative, and refrains from taking any sides in the dispute. This

use does not change over the unfolding of the narrative, but it is elegantly presented under

different perspectives and forms, as we discussed via the discussion of the “drugs,” “explicit

commands” and “subliminal messages” sub-types of this trope. From volume 1 to volume 3,

it is clear that only when characters take control of linguistic and/or cognitive faculties of

other characters, they can manipulate perceptual and cognitive abilities. Furthermore, it is

also shown that when characters break free of these constraints, they could perhaps access a

fuller understanding of reality and language, without deterministic constraints on one domain

over the other. This is in line with an overarching theme of Morrison’s works: the

sublimation of apparent dichotomies in a more sophisticated, unified perspective. Such a

perspective seems to be consistent with the “fourth approach” to the relation to language and

cognition, which integrates these hypotheses into a distributed scientific model. In other

words, Morrison seems to take a fairly sophisticated stance in representing a rather complex

problem in fiction, thus mirroring the complexity of the “real” debate in The Invisibles, to

some extent.

We conclude, then, by proposing that Morrison uses this complex trope in a vest of a

debating author, rather than that of a prosaic author (cf. again Wolk 267-272). As the

Invisibles anticipates a Regier et al. fourth “skeptic” approach, then, we may even say that

this use of this complex trope were novel, for their times. The approach to such complex set

of tropes, as well as a sober decision not to take any sides in the discussion, however,

represents a standard staple of Morrison’ approach to fiction-building, as well documented in

the literature (Callahan; Singer: 10-30). Since Morrison seldom takes sides but prefers to

explore them, its use of language and cognition in The Invisibles follows this tack, too.

Endnotes

1. This definition has recently been introduced in the field of ludology or game studies to

identify the code parts of a game software that handles players’ choices and their

consequences within the game world. I adopt this definition in order to highlight how tropes

can be dynamically used to develop a plot and its constituting events.

2. A presupposition can be seen as a proposition (a bit of information) that must be true in

discourse, for the truth of an assertion (explicitly stated sentence) to be true as well (Riemer

ch. 6).

Nota Bene: in this section, “language” is a label we use for our “real world” phenomenon,

rather than for the trope under discussion. No confusion should arise, during the discussion.

3. Behaviourism, in turn, was in part opposed to the Gestalt school of Psychology, which

focused on proposing general principles by which the mind organizes information about parts

into coherent wholes (Boden: ch.1-4).

4. A simplification on the relation between “mind” and “brain” is that the brain is the

physical support of the mind, intended as the combination of our cognitive abilities, as well

as our conscious intellectual abilities. Although this is a (vast) simplification, it will serve our

simple purposes (cf. Coltheart for a review).

5. A caveat: neither Sapir nor Whorf put forward this hypothesis in its various incarnations

(Casasanto 207-208). I use label for ease of presentation, as it is common practice in the

relevant literature.

6. The attentive reader has probably noticed that the logoplasm is indeed represented a

“mirror entity”. Again, I defer a discussion of this topic for future research.

7. A Mayan language that only has cardinal terms akin to North and South (Tzeltal,

Ethnologue).

8. I take the basic notion of type, a certain class of objects in a model of analysis and token,

an instance of this class (Wetzel and references therein). If a (literary) trope is an abstract

particular (“specific thought”), then a token of a trope is each use of this trope in a text. A

type is thus an abstract universal: a class of tropes that share structural properties (e.g. plot

twists). See also Maurin (§3) for discussion on types and tokens. For simplicity, I focus on

one modality of representation: language as text in balloons.

9. Morrison has often defined a fiction suit as a state of mind that allows someone to

experience and interact with a fiction (Morrison in Meaney 228-230). Fiction suits can be

recursive: the reader of a text wears a fiction suit when it “enters” a character in a story. The

character can then enter a cover story being wearing a fiction suit within the fiction, and so on.

This is the case of King Mob as Kirk Morrison, or vice versa.

10. Lord Fanny is a transvestite shaman, but certainly a glamorous lady; hence, the use of she

in our discussion.

11. Utterances are phonological realizations (“spoken forms”) of syntactic sentences, and the

corresponding semantic propositions (Riemer ch: 1-2).

12. Boy is also a lady, hence my use of the pronoun she.

13. An interesting fact is that the notion of “generating” sentences/utterances can be traced

back to formal theories of language, which usually rely on a UV hypothesis. This vocabulary

choice can be seen as a very indirect use of this hypothesis; more direct uses are discussed in

4.3.

14. The term “eriksonian” refers to “Neuro linguistic Programming”, a quack theory on how

to use language to “program” individuals: roughly, by taking control of their language faculty.

See Glasnser-Edwards and Rawson (96-97) for discussion. Its quack status certainly is not

detrimental to its use on the story, though.

Biographical note

Francesco-Alessio Ursini is currently Senior Lecturer in Semantics, Morphology, and

Language and Cognition at the English department of Stockholm University. He holds a Ph.D.

in cognitive sciences (linguistics track) from Macquarie University, Sydney. In recent times,

he expanded his interests to comic studies, with a focus on cross-cultural research on

themes/tropes shared across manga, fumetti and comics.

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