A linguist is called to investigate robots that seem to have created their own language.

A grieving mother and accomplished linguist relives her child's lost life as she learns to communicate with the aliens that have landed on earth.

A catalog of the tools different alien species use to read and write, leading to fundamental questions about what it means to make patterns of knowledge against the noise of the universe.

An old linguistics researcher is ousted from his university position on the frontier of a small island he acculturated. Upon his return home, he begins to believe that he and his life's work are marginal.

An innocent introductory French course called la Muerte teaches vocabulary, by describing a typical farm until the farmer disappears.

A Los Angeles speech pathologist is assigned to the case of a presumably mentally-ill woman who speaks in gibberish that turns out to be Old English. When the woman disappears, deciphering her mysterious writing leads the pathologist to wonder if she has stumbled across a time traveler.

Following a messy breakup, an MIT graduate and a PhD student at Indiana University separately talk about the problems in their former relationship in two spliced-together conversations, exploring conflicts surrounding language, intimacy, commitment, and intellectualism.

In Spain during the Francoist dictatorship, a girl's father insists that their family will never speak Spanish again in favor of Basque — a small act of political defiance that slowly changes their lives, until they can never go back.

A teacher invites her adult students — many with personal ties to the Holocaust — to attend a symposium on genocide, but the event is interrupted by incessant screams of an unknown origin.

A grad student helps two unlikely lovers connect in a future state of a damaged world.