Malouf explores the emotional and psychological effects of the hegemony of a language on a culture in such a way that allows the reader to sympathise with the protagonist. While considering the quote, "When I think of my tongue being no longer alive in the mouths of men a chill goes over me that is deeper than my own death, since it is the gathered death of all my kind", a sense of sympathy can be felt for the protagonist, a victim of an endangered indigenous language. He seems to largely attach his identity, ancestry and culture to the intricacy of this language, forming strong point of view against the extinction of languages.
Further through the passage, Malouf explains the link between the land his people used to live on and the language they spoke, how their description of certain fauna or flora varied from that of the new language that has taken over. He claims, "The first landscape here is dead. It dies in this man's eyes as his tongue licks the edge of the horizon, before it has quite dried up in his mouth. There is a new one now that others are making." Essentially, through the loss of a language, their point of view, their culture is lost as well. As the protagonist watches his language disappear, he is also exposed forfeiture of all he has ever known. Although a colonial power is not directly blamed in this text, a hegemony of colonialism is understood due to the protagonist's lack of control of the introduction of a new language.
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