THE MOVIE “ARRIVAL” AND ITS CORRELATION TO PSYCHOLINGUISTICS
Arrival is a science-fiction film with a linguist named Louise as its protagonist. Working together with Ian, a physicist, she has to find a way to successfully communicate with extra-terrestrial beings that have landed on Earth before all hell breaks loose. The film shows several interesting psycholinguistics aspects, with the prominent one being the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis particularly linguistic determinism. The portrayal of the social basis of a language is also evident, followed by the argument of critical period. “..If you immerse yourself into a foreign language, you can actually rewire your brain”, is a line from the film that seemingly approves the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The hypothesis consists of two parts, a weaker version that deals with linguistic relativism, which is a belief that different language will generate …show more content…
For the sake of an argument, Louise insisting to appear face-to-face with the heptapods highlighted the social basis of language where language development must occur in a meaningful, interactive social interaction (Harley, 2014). American psychologist, Jerome Bruner (1983) put an utmost importance of the social setting in acquiring language. For instances, Louise scribbled the word ‘human’ on a small whiteboard while pointing and introducing herself as such, creating a direct connection in order to help the heptapods to deduce the meaning of the word. This is rather similar to the concept of the social setting of the mother-child dyad, a two way communication emphasized by Bruner. Processes such as joint attention to objects and actions are significant in enabling the child, or in this case, the heptapods, to discover the referents of the words (Harley,
Arrival is a science-fiction film with a linguist named Louise as its protagonist. Working together with Ian, a physicist, she has to find a way to successfully communicate with extra-terrestrial beings that have landed on Earth before all hell breaks loose. The film shows several interesting psycholinguistics aspects, with the prominent one being the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis particularly linguistic determinism. The portrayal of the social basis of a language is also evident, followed by the argument of critical period. “..If you immerse yourself into a foreign language, you can actually rewire your brain”, is a line from the film that seemingly approves the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The hypothesis consists of two parts, a weaker version that deals with linguistic relativism, which is a belief that different language will generate …show more content…
For the sake of an argument, Louise insisting to appear face-to-face with the heptapods highlighted the social basis of language where language development must occur in a meaningful, interactive social interaction (Harley, 2014). American psychologist, Jerome Bruner (1983) put an utmost importance of the social setting in acquiring language. For instances, Louise scribbled the word ‘human’ on a small whiteboard while pointing and introducing herself as such, creating a direct connection in order to help the heptapods to deduce the meaning of the word. This is rather similar to the concept of the social setting of the mother-child dyad, a two way communication emphasized by Bruner. Processes such as joint attention to objects and actions are significant in enabling the child, or in this case, the heptapods, to discover the referents of the words (Harley,