“...they’ll be left to fend for themselves, forced to work together to create a new society while battling the elements and each other.” - Jeff Probst in Survivor Season 2: The Australian Outback
Every cast of Survivor has the same blank slate upon which to build. The game itself has very few rules: Don’t physically assault one another, don’t conspire to share the prize money, and don’t vote for yourself (looking at you, Rob). With very few exceptions, the “rules” of the new society they will create are left up to the players. The decisions are very seldom publicly democratic, though we have seen instances of public votes for things like designated tribe leaders. Instead, we see these rules subtly agreed upon as social bonds form and dominant strategies start to emerge, and then publicly announced with the snuff of a torch at Tribal Council.
Decisions made about “how important is being able to provide survival basics like food, shelter, and fire”, “how important is being able to ‘fit in’ socially”, and “how important is being able to contribute in challenges” are all ways that tribes show us the rules they are putting in place. One of the easiest ways to socially integrate into a new society is to speak the language. Survivor strategy has a rich and unique dictionary; you have to make BiG mOvEz, manage the jury, and outwit, outplay, and outlast everyone else to win. I think of it as “Survivorese”. It’s usually easy to identify someone who has been around the fandom for a while because they’re familiar with common terms and phrases used to discuss the game. This shared language helps us efficiently and effectively communicate our thoughts to each other.
If we think of Survivor as a conceptual geographic location then each new tribe that forms gets to develop their own regional dialect of “Survivorese”, the official language of their tribe. Each new configuration has the freedom to take the parts of the established language that they like, leave the parts they don’t, and add their own beautiful flourishes. I view each new regional dialect as having two components: one side social and the other side strategic.
The social side is how well you fit in with your tribe as a person. This can be something like a shared cultural background or similar interests, but for the most part I think the social side of a new tribe’s regional dialect can’t be taught. You either fit the vibe of the tribe or you don’t. I think of players like Survivor 35’s Katrina Radke or Survivor 47’s Jon Lovett as players that seem like pleasant people to be around and feel like they could have made significantly deeper runs if they were given different starting tribes. On the other hand there are players like the icon Cirie Fields and Survivor 29/31’s Keith Nale (R.I.P.) who stood out like sore thumbs, yet never seemed to have trouble “fitting in”.
The strategic side of the language is all about whether or not your strategy aligns with the dominant power structure. It’s something that can be taught, can be faked, and is far easier to exploit. Survivor 28’s Garrett Adelstein and Survivor 46’s David Jelinksy are perfect examples. While they might not have been the peak of socially fitting in, I think their tribes tolerated them socially but not strategically. Katrina and Jon didn’t seem to be speaking a different strategic language, they just ended up being the odd person out. Garrett and Jelinsky could have fit in well enough to get by, but their strategy didn’t align with what ended up being the dominant power structure in their respective tribes.
The Savu Tribe is an almost textbook case study in analyzing a tribe through this specific lens. It has been well-established across the first two episodes that Eric doesn’t speak the social language that the Savu Tribe has chosen. Every player on the tribe, barring Kristin, has had some kind of confessional centered around Eric’s behavior in the first 2 episodes. He doesn’t fit in socially and there are many cases where that’s enough to get someone’s torch snuffed. That’s where the strategic language comes in.
Eric talks…a lot. But prior to the strategic scramble after losing the second immunity challenge we were never shown Eric talking about potential votes. There’s probably something to be said about him not discussing votes because his name was being thrown around by a majority of the tribe as an easy out, but we still didn’t see him trying to conspire or push a strategic agenda. In the premiere we were shown Rob throwing out Eric’s name to Carter, then Carter saying Eric’s name to Ana. Everybody may have been thinking it and talking about it in confessional, but we were shown Rob, Carter, and Ana saying it.
The strategic language of the dominant power structure was still being determined at that time. Rob, Carter, and Ana were shown to be the players who strategically spoke the language of targeting someone openly. Conversely, we have players like Sharonda, Christian, Kristin, Linnea, and Eric who we saw let information come to them. Eric doesn’t speak the social language of the tribe but the torch that was snuffed at Tribal Council tells us that he speaks the strategic language of the tribe well enough to keep himself in the game. The dominant power structure that emerged on the Savu Tribe was the one speaking the same strategic language as Eric. I don't fault Ana too much because Alexis prompted her to give a name, then Alexis offered up a name herself. Ana was speaking the same language as Alexis in that moment. It wasn't until later when Ana was talking about Alexis to Carter and Christian that things started to fall apart.
I intentionally left out Ori and Alexis from both of these groups, but for different reasons. Based on Ori’s conversation with Sharonda in the premiere, I expected him to speak the same strategic language as her. His attempt to rally votes against Eric, even right before the vote at Tribal Council, says otherwise. I’m curious to see how Sharonda will react to Ori’s decisions in the fallout of this vote back at camp. It’s potentially beneficial to them to have voted separately, because people are less likely to see them as a duo, but this was Sharonda’s first opportunity to see the strategic language that Ori is really speaking and I’m not sure it will align with her long-term plans.
Alexis is the most interesting part of this tribe to me within this context. I rewatched the scene to be sure, and though Ana does identify Linnea as strategic, it was Alexis who threw out Sharonda’s name to Ana first, identifying Shardona as a threat. Alexis was speaking the strategic language that Rob, Carter, and Ana were speaking. She was actively identifying threats and throwing out names. The difference is that she was able to fake it and exploit it when she heard her own name come up. Looping in Linnea and Sharonda that their names were being floated, even though Alexis herself was one of the people floating those names, allowed Alexis to slip in with what ended up being the majority on the Savu Tribe at Tribal Council. By appearing to be someone who had simply received information and was tipping off the potential targets, Alexis ensured that the names on the table would be Eric and someone who had openly targeted Eric, in Ana. I think having the ability to speak both sides of the strategic language could give Alexis something to weaponize the further she gets in the game.
The Toka Tribal Council during the premiere was almost an exact mirror of the Savu Tribal Council in Episode 2. In the original Toka Tribe we saw Jenna initially struggle to fit in socially. She didn’t get the same treatment as Eric from her tribe, and nobody seemed to find her annoying, but nobody seemed to really connect with her either. Jenna was set to be a unanimous first boot until Aaliyah said the wrong thing to the wrong person. Jelly, Devin, and Aaliyah were all speaking the same social language as the vast majority of their tribe, but the strategic language that won out was waiting for information rather than throwing out names. Jenna and Patt were able to exploit that misstep from Aaliyah and Jelly to their advantage.
I find it interesting that the first people from both tribes that were shown throwing out names (Rob → Eric & Devin → Jenna) ended up being on the wrong side of the only vote they’ve participated in so far. What makes it even more interesting to me is that we’ve already gotten to see the fallout of the first Toka Tribal Council and both people who were in the minority for the first vote have found themselves in an alliance that consists of half the tribe. The conversation between Jelly, Devin, and Patt at the water well showed us some of Jelly’s potential when it comes to picking up a new language quickly. I think it was crucial for Jelly to call out Devin playing with his heart on his sleeve in front of Patt because it allowed Patt to see that she and Jelly were speaking the same strategic language. It was the groundwork for their later one-on-one where Jelly revealed to Patt that she had found an idol. Patt’s confessional during this scene saying that it was “exactly what [Patt] needed to cement that relationship”, combined with the resulting formation of a 5-person alliance consisting of Jelly, Devin, Patt, Mike, and Brady, was a remarkable win for Devin and Jelly. It was all thanks to Jelly’s ability to identify the language that was being spoken and teach herself how to speak that same language very quickly.
It will be exciting to see if the Savu Tribe mirrors the Toka Tribe’s fallout after Tribal Council. There were so many parallels between the first two votes and I don’t think it’s too far-fetched to think that Rob and Carter, armed with an idol much like Jelly and Devin are, might be able to find their way into a majority alliance on the Savu Tribe, even after being in the minority for the vote. The strategic language can be learned or faked, and both Rob and Carter fit in well enough socially (Carter maybe more so than Rob) that I think they could slip into an alliance if one starts to form.
I think players in the game tend to care more about the strategic language actively being spoken, while jurors tend to care more about the social language that was spoken. The strategic language is more likely to get you sent out of the game, as we saw when both Aaliyah and Ana were sent home for saying the wrong name outloud, but the social language is usually what makes a juror feel good about voting to give you a million dollars. Being able to speak both fluently can play a huge role in becoming the eventual winner, especially if you can also speak the languages of the social and strategic minorities. Being relatable, even to people you aren’t actively working with, provides options that many players don’t get simply because they can’t effectively communicate within the social or strategic language context.
I think there are a handful of players on both tribes that are speaking both the strategic and social language of their tribe very well. Mike and Patt stand out to me on the Toka Tribe. None of their tribemates have had anything negative to say about either of them, publicly or privately in confessional, and they’ve been shown to be influential in deciding which strategic language is going to be spoken. Mike had a great TikTok (@mikepinsky on TikTok) that he posted after Episode 2 aired where he talked about wearing his Buff as a tube top and how it wasn’t something he was excited about. In his words, “Survivor is a game about going along to get along and I didn’t want to be the stick in the mud that said no”. Refusing to participate in something silly like wearing a Buff as a tube top isn’t typically the type of thing that gets you voted out immediately, but it can make your road to getting jury votes that much more difficult.
Patt stood out to me because she was the person that Jelly felt the most comfortable trying to build an alliance with after voting separately at Tribal Council. Patt had a huge part in sending Aaliyah home and for Jelly, who was closely aligned with Aaliyah, to feel comfortable enough to show Patt the idol and try to build an alliance really shows just how well Patt is speaking the social and strategic language of her tribe. I’d also add Jelly to the list of people who are fluent in the languages being spoken. The drastic difference in her position on the tribe between the end of the premiere and the end of Episode 2 shows amazing adaptability. Being able to pivot, read the room, and figure out what you need to change in your vocabulary to get yourself back in is one of the most important traits a player can have. I also think Thien An, Kilby, and Lewis have the potential to be stand-outs later in the season, we just don’t have enough data from them yet.
The Savu Tribe has less clear stand-outs to me, but I think it’s partially because they just haven’t been shown as much in the edit in relation to the strategic conversations. Christian and Kristin stand out to me because they haven’t stood out in the strategic edit the way almost everyone else on their tribe has. I saw two factions forming on the Savu Tribe: the people who felt targeted (Alexis, Eric, Linnea, Sharonda) and the people targeting Eric (Ana, Carter, Ori, Rob). Christian and Kristin didn’t fall into either camp as far as we have been shown. Nobody has thrown out either of their names (other than Ana casually floating Kristin as a decoy due to her broken foot) and they appeared to be the deciding factor in which side won the vote at Tribal Council. I have often said “good gameplay is boring gameplay” and I think that holds especially true this early in the game. Not being forced into either group gives them options moving forward and makes them attractive allies to work with because they are able to speak the language so well.
I have Sharonda and Linnea on my radar as well. Although they were both identified as threats during the conversation between Ana and Alexis, they were able to successfully keep the target off of themselves while taking the shot at the person who they were told was targeting them. I find it impressive that they were able to get the majority vote off of what seemed to be a unanimous Eric boot when conventional wisdom at this stage would typically say to keep the tribe united. I think that will be a useful skillset the deeper into the game that they get. I think Alexis has potential as well but she was doing a LOT during this episode and I worry that it could catch up to her in a way that she can’t talk her way out of.
The game of Survivor is not a forgiving one. Being fluent in a language doesn’t mean you never misspeak. Any of the players that I’ve praised could make one mistake that costs them their game, regardless of how well they’re speaking the social or strategic language of their tribe. Hopefully they all have Duolingo downloaded to their coconut phones and they’re studying hard. Based on what we’ve seen so far it’s going to be a fun ride watching which of them manages to talk their way into becoming a millionaire.