MovieChat Forums > Arrival (2016) Discussion > The only real stretch was the "linguisti...

The only real stretch was the "linguistic relativity" and visions

posted 8 years ago by ShootEmUp
1 reply | jump to latest

Thought provoking and original film, but I did think the whole linguistic relativity plot device was verging on absurd.

Are we really to believe that by understanding the alien's written language, her mental perception can change to such an extent that she starts seeing perfectly clear, perfectly accurate visions of the future? So much so that she can even see something as precise as a phone number she receives years into the future?

I thought it would have been better if she worked out her future simply by studying the aliens' language in depth. Then she could come to the same realisation that her daughter would die, and the ending would be more or less the same, except without the (IMO silly) concept that learning a language could give her crystal clear mental visions of future events.

Thoughts?

[–] neverever121 8 years ago

It's an existing theory though, not made up for the film. The theory states that the way we learn a language, or the language we speak, has a major affect on how we perceive and understand the world around us.

The idea of the film is that, if humans were somehow able to comprehend and learn a language where language is conveyed with more dimensions than just sound, our perception of the world around us would evolve (and in the film's case, allow us to understand time as more than a linear concept).

All sci-fi films rely on a leap of faith scientifically, and this is no bigger a leap than any other.