“Arrival” is an American science fiction movie directed by Denis Villeneuve and published in 2016 based on the short story “The story of your life” by Ted Chiang. In the movie,12 alien spacecrafts went to 12 different nations on Earth, including the US, Russia, China, and Pakistan. Experts in various fields must decode the aliens’ presence and their language. A linguist was called upon to translate the aliens’ language and understand why they appeared in different parts of the world before launching a global war. The movie employs one of the popular linguistic theories called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which is a theory that suggests that people’s thoughts are determined by the language they speak. There are two versions of this theory; the strong version or the linguistics determinism is less accepted by the linguists and it states that all human thoughts are determined by the language they speak, and the weak version or what is called linguistics relativisms implies that language shapes people’s thoughts.

Arrival on Netflix

After watching the movie, can you explain how this Hypothesis is portrayed in the movie?

Also, to understand the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis better you can watch this video: