Unlike most other world cultures, Whorf suggested the Hopi did not breakdown time in a sequential order-such as Halloween occurred over one week ago or that the next presidential election will be in four grueling years from now. Arguing that since the Inuit language has numerous words for snow, and the Hopi have different words for water-such as the difference between water you drink and the water found in a lake-their understanding of the world on a granular level is fundamentally different from Europeans’ perceptions of even the basic attributes of nature.Īdditionally, Whorf’s most contentious argument, and the most prescient to Arrival, was that Hopi natives previously had no concept of processing time through individual measurements. To prove his point, he compared the language of North America’s Inuit and Hopi populations to common European languages. In the 20th century, Benjamin Lee Whorf built atop the concepts of Edward Sapir (among others, including 18th century German Romantics who used language as an excuse for cultural superiority) to suggest that language massively influences our basic understanding of the world, and thus would make actual 1:1 translation between vastly different cultures virtually impossible. Plato famously argued against sophist thinkers’ assertion that the world has no meaning without language (Plato, in the antithesis of linguistic relativity, countered the world was made of eternal truths that language attempted to convey as much as humanely possible). These sort of debates about the merits of language go back to the dawn of philosophical discourse.

At one point in the 20th century, some academics even argued that language unto itself can determine the way you understand the world today’s advocates for this hypothesis now primarily argue that language merely influences your perception of the physical reality around you. Within the very first minute of Arrival, we watch the life and death of Louise’s daughter Hannah in a presumable “flashback,” even though the girl has yet to live.įor basic understanding, linguistic relativity refers to a concept in linguistics and cognitive science that suggests language can affect a person’s perception and cognitive worldview. Yet, this is exactly at the root from which Ted Chiang’s short story and Eric Heisserer’s screenplay have sprung from. Like many 21st century linguists, she views this double-named concept-paradigm (which is also first raised in the film by Ian) as naïve and impossible.

Sapir-Whorf is mentioned briefly in the film when Louise first starts having her breakdowns. And to be precise in the 2016 film’s case, Arrival is also the specific product of ideas related to linguistic relativity (aka the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis), proving that intellectual curiosity is its own kind of superpower. In fact, it is in many ways a spiritual companion piece with Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar since it’s about intelligent people going through familiar sci-fi tropes before offering heady concepts about fifth dimensional space and/or time manipulation. The kind that actually try to solve problems instead of punching or shooting them. Arrival is a challenging piece of science fiction, blessedly meant for adults, and about smart grown-ups at that.

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