How we cite our quotes: All quotations are from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Quote #1
PROJECT LEADER: Is the interpreter with you?
LAUGHLIN: I'm not a professional interpreter. My occupation is cartography. I'm a mapmaker.
PROJECT LEADER: Can you translate French into English and English into French?
LAUGHLIN: Yes. Yes, I explained it to the team leader. I'm just a little taken by surprise.
In the very first lines of dialogue, Spielberg show us language barriers and communication problems. Lacombe only speaks French fluently and needs an interpreter to to communicate with his English-speaking research team. The Mexican man who witnessed the UFOs speaks Spanish, which is translated into English, then French. The scene sets us up for the bigger "language" barrier later on.
Quote #2
HARRY: Air East 31, do you wish to report a UFO? Over.
AIR EAST PILOT: Negative. We don't want to report one of those either.
HARRY: Air East 31, do you wish to file a report of any kind? Over.
AIR EAST PILOT: I wouldn't know what kind of report to file, Center.
HARRY: Air East 31, me neither. I'll try to track traffic to destination.
The major problem characters have with the UFOs—other than the way they fry our expensive electronics—is that they lack the ability to communicate their experiences of them. That's because the UFOs are beyond our human experience. These pilots are professionals in the flying biz and even they can't figure out how to report about it.
Quote #3
RONNIE: Roy, what did it look like?
ROY: It was like an ice cream cone.
RONNIE: What flavor?
ROY: Orange. And it wasn't like an ice cream cone. It was more like a shell.
RONNIE: Like a taco? Was it like one of those Sara Lee moon-shaped cookies? Those crescent cookies?
Unlike the pilots, Roy's an average Joe trying to explain his experience to his wife. As you can see, he's not exactly a wordsmith. An ice cream cone? That the best you got? Obviously, it's an ineffable experience.
Quote #4
RONNIE: Roy, look. Don't talk about this until you know what you're talking about.
ROY: Ronnie, that's crazy. If I can't talk about it, then how am I gonna know what's going on?
RONNIE: What?
Not to put too fine a point on a complex subject, but communication is how we acquire knowledge. It's what is happening right now as you read these words. Roy can't acquire knowledge about his experience without communicating with others. Ronnie can't handle the challenge to her worldview and wants him to just shut up.
Quote #5
MAJOR WALSH: That's good. I like that. But it may not evacuate everybody. There's always some joker who thinks he's immune. What I need is something so scary, it'll clear 300 square miles of every living Christian soul.
Major Walsh uses modern means of communication, such as the TV news, to spread disinformation and fear. In doing so, he hides the knowledge of the alien encounter, the exact opposite of what the film argues communication should do.
Quote #6
PROJECT LEADER: The only thing these phrases have in common are five signals.
MAN: I hope somebody's taking all this down.
SYNTHESIZER PLAYER: What are we saying to each other?
PROJECT LEADER: It seems they're trying to teach us a basic tonal vocabulary.
MAN: It's the first day of school, fellas.
At the film's conclusion, we see communication open up between the humans and extraterrestrials. We have no idea what they're saying, and neither do the humans, but you can't learn everything on the first day of school.
Quote #7
[Lacombe teaches the alien the sign language signals for the 5-tonal phrase. The alien mirrors the hand motions, and the two smile at one another.]
If we haven't learned the lesson by now, Spielberg reiterates that communication is the key to relationships, proving that Crosby, Stills, and Nash were right when they wrote in "Wooden Ships": "If you smile at me, I will understand, 'cause that is something everybody everywhere does in the same language." Personally, Shmoop prefers the Jefferson Airplane version, but whatever.