By Mason Leaver
Dennis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016) is a film which explores many topics and ideas. The film approaches the topics of extraterrestrial life, international communication, the loss of a child, and the concept of time with grace and subtlety. But the most intriguing topic that the film broaches is its conception of linguistics. Arrival explores this concept through the alien language of the heptapods, which teaches the main character how to think in new ways. By borrowing from philosophers like Kant, Nietzsche, and Sapir, Arrival presents an emergentist philosophy of linguistics, suggesting that the languages that we use change the construction of our cognition.
Arrival’s story revolves around Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams), a linguistics professor who is called on to lead a team of scientists in learning an alien language. After 12 mysterious obelisks appeared in the sky, Banks and her team board one of these obelisks and discover it is a ship, and meet two aliens inside. These aliens are unlike any depiction of an alien previously seen in cinema. They are terrifying and strange; masses of dark flesh without clear form or distinction. These aliens are called heptapods, because of their seven legs. As Banks studies their language, she discovers that their sentences are written in a circle, and that they can be read starting anywhere in the circle. If we wrote our sentences that way, the phrase “I went to the store”, written circularly, could also be read as “Store. I went to the”, or any other combination. Banks becomes increasingly fascinated and engrossed in learning the language of the heptapods, until she eventually begins to even dream in their language. Eventually, she discovers the secret which the heptapods are trying to communicate with humans: that heptapods can see the future. Banks realizes that heptapods have a different conception of time than humans; one which is nonlinear. For heptapods, the future can be remembered just as easily as the past. When Banks realizes this, she also gains this ability, through the mastery of the heptapod language. The alien language reflects their circular conception of time, and learning this changes the way in which Banks conceptualizes time as well. The philosophy of the film is clear: the languages we speak can actually change the way that we think, including the way we think about time. But what sort of underlying beliefs does this philosophy have, and what are its implications?
Arrival’s story revolves around Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams), a linguistics professor who is called on to lead a team of scientists in learning an alien language. After 12 mysterious obelisks appeared in the sky, Banks and her team board one of these obelisks and discover it is a ship, and meet two aliens inside. These aliens are unlike any depiction of an alien previously seen in cinema. They are terrifying and strange; masses of dark flesh without clear form or distinction. These aliens are called heptapods, because of their seven legs. As Banks studies their language, she discovers that their sentences are written in a circle, and that they can be read starting anywhere in the circle. If we wrote our sentences that way, the phrase “I went to the store”, written circularly, could also be read as “Store. I went to the”, or any other combination. Banks becomes increasingly fascinated and engrossed in learning the language of the heptapods, until she eventually begins to even dream in their language. Eventually, she discovers the secret which the heptapods are trying to communicate with humans: that heptapods can see the future. Banks realizes that heptapods have a different conception of time than humans; one which is nonlinear. For heptapods, the future can be remembered just as easily as the past. When Banks realizes this, she also gains this ability, through the mastery of the heptapod language. The alien language reflects their circular conception of time, and learning this changes the way in which Banks conceptualizes time as well. The philosophy of the film is clear: the languages we speak can actually change the way that we think, including the way we think about time. But what sort of underlying beliefs does this philosophy have, and what are its implications?
The circular language of the heptapods
In order to properly understand the philosophy of language and of time which Arrival presents, we must first understand some underlying beliefs philosophers have formed about language and about time. One of the most famous philosophers of all time, Immanuel Kant, held that our knowledge of the future was knowledge which we could have without measuring it. This sort of knowledge is called “apriori” knowledge. Knowledge which we can only know after measuring it or proving it is called “aposteriori” knowledge. For example, our knowledge that 2+2=4 is apriori knowledge; just by thinking about it, we know it is true. However, the truth of something like “Oxygen’s atomic number is 8” is an example of aposteriori knowledge; we don’t know it just by thinking about it. Kant said that our knowledge of the future was apriori. We don’t need to measure or test the notion of the future to understand it. In even planning to test it, we would have already proven our understanding that there is a future. But in Arrival, the heptapod’s understanding of the future is fundamentally different from a human understanding of the future. For a heptapod, the future could be known apriori just as humans understand intuitively that there is a future. Arrival makes a bold claim: that our understanding of apriori knowledge is actually dependent on our language.
In “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense '', Friedrich Nietzsche wrote about language, and what language is at a fundamental level. Nietzsche held that all language was, at its most basic level, a metaphor. He gives an example of a leaf. No two leaves are exactly the same. But by developing the concept of a leaf, we drop all of the differences between the two leaves. Words form metaphors by likening two things which are really quite different. By making these metaphors, “every concept comes into being by making equivalent that which is non-equivalent” (Nietzsche, 147). Over time, people forget that these metaphors are metaphors, and take them as literal truth, despite the fact that really, no two objects are the same. Nietzsche called this process of turning a metaphor into perceived literal truth as the process of conceptualization. When we perceive a particular object, we immediately conceptualize it into a word which does not capture the individual aspects of the object, but categorizes it with other things in the world. In the example of the leaf, we perceive this green thing on a tree, in all its individual intricacies, and immediately conceptualize it as “leaf”, and categorize it with all the other leaves we’ve seen.
In “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense '', Friedrich Nietzsche wrote about language, and what language is at a fundamental level. Nietzsche held that all language was, at its most basic level, a metaphor. He gives an example of a leaf. No two leaves are exactly the same. But by developing the concept of a leaf, we drop all of the differences between the two leaves. Words form metaphors by likening two things which are really quite different. By making these metaphors, “every concept comes into being by making equivalent that which is non-equivalent” (Nietzsche, 147). Over time, people forget that these metaphors are metaphors, and take them as literal truth, despite the fact that really, no two objects are the same. Nietzsche called this process of turning a metaphor into perceived literal truth as the process of conceptualization. When we perceive a particular object, we immediately conceptualize it into a word which does not capture the individual aspects of the object, but categorizes it with other things in the world. In the example of the leaf, we perceive this green thing on a tree, in all its individual intricacies, and immediately conceptualize it as “leaf”, and categorize it with all the other leaves we’ve seen.
The strange bodies of the Heptapods
The interesting question which Arrival raises is in regards to the difference between the heptapod and human conceptualization of time. As Dr. Banks is learning the heptapod language, she has to understand time in an entirely different way. She finds the words and writing form extremely difficult to understand at first, and this makes sense. The heptapod language, including the circular way in which it is written, reflects a knowledge of both the future and the past. How are humans to understand the metaphors of the heptapod language when the words of the heptapod language conceptualize experiences which we’ve never had? How are we to understand another culture when even their written language serves as a metaphor for an experience which we can’t have? Arrival answers: by steeping ourselves in the culture and mindset of another, we can begin to understand experiences which we’ve never had.
The final part of Arrival’s philosophy of language is actually addressed in the film. In one scene, Dr. Banks briefly refers to a concept called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Edward Sapir was a well known Emergentist philosopher of language. It is Emergentism’s “aim to explain the capacity for language in terms of non-linguistic human capacities: thinking, communicating, and interacting” (Stanford). Arrival holds to an emergentist approach to language: it’s concerned with how language affects our cognition. Emergentists, like Nietzsche, hold that language is a series of constructions (like the notion of time). According to Arrival, our human languages form a construction of time which is linear. Yet the heptapods hold an entirely different understanding of time. This raises the question: Which of these understandings is the proper one?
The final part of Arrival’s philosophy of language is actually addressed in the film. In one scene, Dr. Banks briefly refers to a concept called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Edward Sapir was a well known Emergentist philosopher of language. It is Emergentism’s “aim to explain the capacity for language in terms of non-linguistic human capacities: thinking, communicating, and interacting” (Stanford). Arrival holds to an emergentist approach to language: it’s concerned with how language affects our cognition. Emergentists, like Nietzsche, hold that language is a series of constructions (like the notion of time). According to Arrival, our human languages form a construction of time which is linear. Yet the heptapods hold an entirely different understanding of time. This raises the question: Which of these understandings is the proper one?
Emergentists like Sapir hold to a concept called “cultural relativism”. Sapir expresses the notion of cultural relativism when he states “Language is primarily a cultural or social product and must be understood as such…” (Sapir 1929: 214). Cultural relativism, in the strict sense of the term, says that what is moral in one culture may be immoral in another culture, and vice versa. The Emergentist viewpoint of language expands this idea, saying that what is thinkable for you might depend on the language you know. Arrival answers the question of correct perception of time by answering the same way that Emergentists like Sapir would: Neither perception of time is correct or incorrect, but our languages determine what is thinkable or unthinkable for us.
Nietzsche would agree with both Villeneuve and Sapir on this point. Nietzsche would say that the linear or the nonlinear view of time is arbitrary. It’s arbitrary which way you perceive the world, because there’s no criterion for that. We would need criterion for correct perception, which is nonexistent. How could we form such a judgment, about which perception of the world is correct? Instead, Nietzsche would say that by learning the metaphors of language used by the heptapods, Dr. Banks has learned new ways of conceptualizing the world, and in doing so, also discovered new ways of perceiving it.
Nietzsche would agree with both Villeneuve and Sapir on this point. Nietzsche would say that the linear or the nonlinear view of time is arbitrary. It’s arbitrary which way you perceive the world, because there’s no criterion for that. We would need criterion for correct perception, which is nonexistent. How could we form such a judgment, about which perception of the world is correct? Instead, Nietzsche would say that by learning the metaphors of language used by the heptapods, Dr. Banks has learned new ways of conceptualizing the world, and in doing so, also discovered new ways of perceiving it.
Works Cited
Scholz, Barbara C., et al. “Philosophy of Linguistics.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 1 Jan. 2015, plato.stanford.edu/entries/linguistics/.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgement. A & D Publishing, 2018.
Nietzsche, Friedrich, et al. The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2011.
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