The Perception Of Language In The Movie 'Arrival'

The Alien is a science fiction horror movie. Its setting in space and the presence of technology and artificial intelligence empathizes on its science fiction genre. Moreover, the presence of the Alien and the fact that it is a threat to human lives reflects it is also a horror film. The movie revolves around seven human beings that have the mission to return to earth from the space.

The film “The Linguists” follows linguists Gregory Anderson and David Harrison on their journey to learn about and document endangered languages in Bolivia, India, Arizona, and Siberia. Through their quest, they are able to interact with some of the few remaining speakers of languages that are near death and they manage to make an impact on how these communities view their heritage language. Focusing on the moribund languages of Siberia and Arizona, it becomes evident that speakers of the heritage language feel a love for the language and the culture it represents, but went through periods of oppression and embarrassment for being speakers of a minority language that ultimately shaped their attitudes on the language.

Another thing that makes Arrival a great film is that Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner do an amazing job portraying Ian and Louise in Arrival. “Amy Adams is a miracle worker of an actress – she makes us believe in whoever and whatever she's playing” (Travers). That quote can’t be truer. Amy Adams really makes the viewer believe that she is a linguistics professor who has previously worked for the military and is now acting as a liaison between the aliens and the humans. The first encounter with the aliens when Amy Adams is experiencing all of this for the first time, you can tell it is suspenseful because she is not sure what is going to happen making all these questions arise within the film. During the third encounter with the aliens Adams and Renner take off their hazmat suits. Adams touches the glass to try to almost connect with the

Babel is a film about communication. There are four main storylines, which involved four countries and five languages. However, the director used a rifle to link up the four stories together aptly, which makes it a coherent movie. The first storyline was about the married American couple, Richard and Susan. They travelled to Morocco, but Susan was shot during the journey. Another storyline was about the two brothers lived in Morocco, and one of them unintentionally shot Susan. The third storyline was about the Mexican woman, Amelia. She was the baby-sitter of the Richard family. And finally, the last one is about a deaf Japanese girl, Chieko. Chieko desperately want to be loved and to be cared. However, she seriously

Unconsciously, we all speak different languages; we categorize the way we speak by the environment and people at which we are speaking too. Whenever a character enters an unfamiliar environment, they experiment with language to find themselves and understand reality. For immigrants, language is a means to retain one’s identity; however, as they become more assimilated in their new communities their language no longer reflects that of their identity but of their new cultural surroundings. When an immigrant, immigrates to a new country they become marginalized, they’re alienated from common cultural practices, social ritual, and scripted behavior. It’s not without intercultural communication and negotiation

First and foremost, new immigrants encounter copious issues to fit in the new society. The major concern among these problems is the language barrier. The excerpt from ‘Newcomer’ written by Mehri Yalfani 's highlights the challenges that Susan, an immigrant from Iran, faced throughout her course of understanding and speaking English. According to the story, both the hesitation to be fluent in an alien

In his article "Does Your Language Shape How You Think?" the author Guy Deutscher discusses how the acquisition of one's mother tongue shapes one's view of the world. The article was published in The New York Times in August 2010. The author's major paradigm is that every language one learns influences one's mind and feelings in a different way. Deutscher explains that depending on one's mother tongue, objects can be considered masculine or feminine, which results in the speaker feeling differently about them. The author believes that different languages do indeed make one speak about space in different ways as well; although he claims people do not have entirely different views of it. Deutscher then explains that experiments have shown that

Although there is no official language in the United States, the English language is the most widely spoken. Language helps to shape our identities, define and limit our expectations of the world around us and who we are. You might ask yourself, how does our language shape our identities and influence our perceptions of the world? Through language, we are able to make meaning, understand, and define ourselves. We are able to communicate what we feel, our ideas, our hopes, and our dreams with others who can respond to our feelings and thoughts. However, our choice of words cannot always capture what we are feeling to the full extent.

Recently some students of an English class watched a short film called Arrival, directed by Denise Villeneuve. One of the main stars of the film was Dr. Louise Banks, the hetapods that are actually called aliens. Arrival is about how these aliens called hetapods come down and land one of the 12 spacecraft’s on Earth. In the film they create world chaos to the point where the military is involved and the military needs Dr. Louise to help answer the citizens questions? “ Why are the hetapods here?” Due to them being aliens Dr. Louise job assigned by the military is to use her career skills as a language expert to understand these hetapods language and to communicate with them. Eventually she can communicate with the hetapods, considering reality how likely do you believe it is to have aliens or other intelligent beings would be on Earth? Thinking about their language, habitat lifestyle and how would the world react to them being here. How would we contact them? Could the world afford to use money for scientific tools and resources attempting to find and listen for space aliens?

In the article “Lost in Translation”, the author, Lera Boroditsky, maintains as her thesis that the languages we speak not only reflect or express our thoughts, but also shape the very thoughts we wish to express. Boroditsky begins the main section of her essay with the history of the issue of whether or not languages shape the way speakers think. Charlemagne was the first to think that languages do in fact shape the mindset of speaker, but Noam Chomsky rebutted this idea with his thought that languages do not differ much from each other, thus in turn proposing that linguistic differences do not cause a difference in thinking. Now with scientists

From the time of birth, a person is introduced to their first form of understanding the world, language. The language a person speaks helps

No matter where you are in the world, you are taught about language. Whether it’s in your home learning your language or in school trying to learn a foreign language. Although while learning language the notion is never really thought about or brought up that the language and way we speak can influence the way we think and interact. Phycologist and neuroscientist alike have spent years, with multiple different tests to see if there is a connection between the various languages that are spoken and the way people not only think but also how they go about their daily lives. She writes to not only her colleagues and neuroscientists but also to anyone in the general public that is genuinely interested in the connection between

What would happen if alien life forms landed on earth? How would we communicate and cooperate with them? If there was a conflict, how would we fix it? The movie Arrival, directed by Denis Villeneuve attempts to answer these questions.

The Sapir Whorf hypothesis mentioned above is based on the ideas of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf who studied aboriginal languages among Native American tribes, mostly the Hopi. They believed that the language one speaks is directly related to the way they understand the reality and see the world. For example, Whorf once wrote ‘we dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages’ (Whorf cited in Salzmann 1993: 153) which led to Zdenek Salzmann’s conclusion of Whorf’s ideas: ‘Difference among languages must therefore be reflected in the differences in the worldviews of their speakers’ (1993: 156). This hypothesis has been challenged many times by several anthropologists and linguists and there are arguments and evidence for and against it.

Through looking at patterns of social interaction of different languages it is easy to predict the linguistic results of language contact. This could be seen through multilingualism which is a result of language contact between multiple different languages. Multilingualism can create diglossia which helps display the multilingualism of a country or community and helps show it is useful for predicting the results of language contact. Code switching in which people switch from one language to another depending on the situation, helps show how social interaction between speakers of different languages helps us predict the linguistic results of language contact. Then there is dialect levelling and language change which helps show the beginning