Gene Wolfe uses the idea of aliens as beings from another country or planet to explore the concept of alienation. Wolfe encourages the reader to question their assumptions about exclusion and belonging. He presents language as the key to identification and communication. Fascinated by the Tcove language, the unnamed narrator of “Useful Phrases” seeks to discover the location of the Tcove nation or society on terrestrial maps. His failure to find it as well as the “piteous visitors to Earth” referred to in the book’s title may imply that the language is spoken somewhere else than Earth.

The narrator is a bookish introvert who lives among books, not people. His interest turns into a possibly dangerous obsession. The more he delves into the foreign culture, the further distanced he becomes from his own society. Wolfe suggests that there are strong parallels between alienation from one’s customary social world and physical travel to another world. The narrator develops an increasingly strong affinity for the unidentified author(s) of the phrase book. His affinity for a different sphere is marked by the sentence he crafts and practices, notably his reference to the “crystal blossom of home.”

Wolfe’s decision to leave the ending ambiguous expands the story’s applicability to any situation in which an individual deeply feels their difference. The depth of the narrator’s concern for the aliens over his own species may make the reader wonder if the narrator has crossed from being alienated to becoming mentally detached from reality.