Data using or not using contractions. What's the big deal anyway?

Ever since Next Generation, some people in Star Trek gave Data a hard time about whether Data was or not able to use contractions when speaking.

whats the big deal whether or not a robot is able or not to use contractions when speaking?

 

I don't think it's officially stated this way, but I believe it was a limitation put in to his programming by Soong purposely to make him "imperfect". (Inconsistencies aside, of course.)

 

The original assertion in "Datalore" wasn't so much that Data was incapable of using contractions as that he just tended to "use language more formally than Lore." He actually had used one or two contractions in the first half of that very episode. So while that might have been an inconsistency resulting from the very messy writing process in season 1, I take it to mean that it was more just his preferred way of speaking than an actual inability. It was later in "The Offspring" and "Future Imperfect" that he was interpreted as unable to use contractions rather than just disinclined to.

And no, nobody gave Data a "hard time" over it, besides Lore. It just came up a couple of times when it was relevant -- in "The Offspring," Data was surprised when Lal learned how to use contractions when he couldn't, and in "Future Imperfect," the illusory Data's use of a contraction was part of what tipped him off that he was in a simulation.

 

Considering that a computer of today can easily be trained to use contractions, it's one of Trek's weirder aspects anyway.

 

On the other hand, computers make humans with the wrong number of fingers.

If it's not one thing, it will be something else.

 

I always wondered if Soong had hard coded it into Data as a way that would always distinguish Data from Lore.

Since he didn’t destroy Lore, just took him apart, there was always a chance that Lore would be reassembled and “repaired” if you take Soong at his word. But if Lore tried to do what he does in his first appearance, and tries to pass himself off as Data, it’s a subtle way of distinguishing the two.

Here’s a question I have: Is there a canon reason for the choices Soong made with Data’s and Lore’s appearance? Like why did he make them with gold skin and eye color, when (given Data’s “mother” and Lal) it seems possible that he could have given them any appearance he wanted. Was it a compromise with the colonists so they could always distinguish an android from the rest of the population?

 

In "The Offspring", Data stated that he had been able to give Lal a more realistic appearance, but he didn't say why.

Given that Soong made Data breathe and have a detectable pulse, I would think that he would have also given him more convincing coloration, if possible.

 

There are still two early androids not accounted for*. Perhaps the first one had Soong's skin and eye color and it creeped people out too much? Or maybe he just didn't like seeing his exact face on someone else as much as he thought he would.

*Tainer-bot tells Data that there were three before Lore, so presumably B4 may have been one of them. Tainer strongly implies that the prototypes went kaput, but they may have simply all been like B4 and thus not up to the standard Soong wanted. As with so many things, there's wiggle room.

 

There's a more straightforward explanation, which is that Data's behavior basically codes as autistic. People in some areas of the autism spectrum (which isn't a scale of "more or less autistic" but a range of different traits that autistic individuals have different combinations of) actually do have difficulty with contractions, or at least dislike using them, for various reasons. It can be for the same reason they have trouble with idioms, figurative language, and body language -- because there's an indirect, hidden layer of meaning that's comprehended through social convention rather than being deduced literally, and that's harder to learn or less desirable for a literal-minded person. That fits well with Data's difficulty understanding figurative speech even though he's been around for some 27 years at the start of TNG. Alternatively, sometimes autistic people just prefer to speak formally or literally because they're comfortable with a certain way of using language and don't like to diverge from it, which fits how Data described his tendency to speak formally in "Datalore."

(Of course, in retrospect that makes TNG ableist as hell when its characters talk about Data's behavior as not fully human even though it fits perfectly within the behavioral range of neurodiverse humans. Ditto for TOS insisting that Spock's behavior only qualifies as "human" if it's neurotypical.)

I think it was more specifically so they could distinguish the androids from Soong himself, since he gave them his face and voice. I suppose the idea was also that he didn't want to hide their android nature, since he was egotistical and wanted his breakthrough to be recognized. Although I don't think they ever explicitly came out and said it.

 

Alot of this has to do with which version of Data we are talking about, what time frame, and what neural processor he was plugged into at the time. And the we could talk for hours about free will and Data's ability to chose how he wanted to communicate at the time based on circumstance and context.

The question is really "When did he realize he could if he wanted to"?

 

To me, it was just a case that Data didn't regularly use contractions, and it was more a reflection of his personality than his programming.

 

Someone decided it was an important plot point to tell him from Lore, like Data having no emotions was too, and they retconned it onto the character who occasionally used contractions and showed emotion.

I guess it helped make him more relatable to people on the spectrum and helped ensure the character's enduring popularity. So... yay?

 

No, the "no emotions" retcon wasn't until season 3, or at least late season 2. Remember "Skin of Evil," where he told Armus "I think you should be destroyed." That was genuine fury, albeit internalized. Same in "The Measure of a Man," where it became clear how much he cared for Tasha even if he didn't express the emotion neurotypically. True, in "The Schizoid Man," Deanna expressed surprise at sensing feelings from him, but it was ambiguous enough that she could've been referring to the more intense, obvious emotions of a human as opposed to his own more subtle emotions. It wasn't until "The Ensigns of Command" at the start of season 3 that he explicitly declared himself to be absolutely incapable of emotion, because the new season 3 writers mistook his subdued emotions for an absence of them.

I think his autistic-coded attributes were there from the start -- a logical mind, a difficulty with social skills and humor, etc. As I said, only some autistic people have difficulties with contractions or figurative language, and it's incredibly wrong to assume that autistic people lack emotion.

No, as you say, the contraction thing was just a clumsy retcon to distinguish him from Lore, a bit of season-1 bad writing that unfortunately stuck. And the "no emotion" thing was just a hackneyed cliche from decades of portraying artificial intelligences in fiction, which the season 3 staff retroactively imposed onto Data. The conceit, of course, is that emotion is a uniquely human thing that's more profound and complex than machine programming. Which is silly, because emotions are the closest thing we have to programming. They're hardwired, automatic responses rather than learned or chosen ones, and they exist in animals, so they must be less complex than higher thought and reasoning. Logically, it would be enormously easier to program an AI to emulate emotion than sapient thought, not harder.