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• 1 media/Arrival_2016_Film.png 2016-12-05T18:23:09-08:00 Pop-Culture: Arrival and Universal Language 8 Where Universal Language and Mainstream Culture Intersect plain 2016-12-05T20:34:58-08:00

  For the majority of the main pathway, I have discussed how symbolic typography allows all readers and viewers of these artists’ books their own individualized reading of these texts by the fact that, since these symbols do not belong to any one language that a reader speaks, it can be translated either just by viewing the symbols and attempting to interpret them or by having a key that is supposedly universal and can thus be translated into any other language. However, one counterargument that, although it has sat largely debunked since the 1970s, has been brought back into the public eye recently: to be specific, about a month ago. With the release of the movie Arrival, the idea of a particular linguistic hypothesis has been discussed recently. While I would like to put forth my own idea about this topic, I would like to warn anyone who has not seen the movie Arrival that there are *spoilers!* up ahead. 
  In this film, directed by Denis Villeneuve and starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Forest Whitaker, Adams plays an internationally famous linguist, Louise Banks, commandeered by the US military to attempt to communicate with aliens that have just arrived on Earth. During this movie, she begins communicating with the aliens mostly by translating the symbols that they write. The symbols represent sentences in their language, and the symbols are mostly circular, alluding to the fact that their language is nonlinear, a stark contrast compared to our languages. During the movie, Banks is able to translate their language and find out why they have arrived on our planet; the reason they give is to “offer weapon”, which, naturally, sends the world in a frenzy. There’s a bit of an action or thriller-nature to the movie, but Banks soon finds out, through time-traveling visions of her own, that the weapon that the aliens are gifting them is the ability to mentally time-travel. After decoding this message, Banks learns that the key to unlocking this weapon is learning their language, due to its circular nature and their fundamental belief in time being nonlinear and, in fact, cyclical, with the ability to go backwards and forwards at will. Banks, by eventually learning their language, acquires the ability to time-travel, seeing things that are (confusingly?) believed to be in her past but are really in her future.
  
  While all of this time-traveling, language-decoding information is a bit confusing, this science-fiction film calls attention to something that I alluded to earlier, a linguistic hypothesis that is known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, also known as the linguistic relativity hypothesis. This hypothesis, while having largely been debunked, provides the basis for the time-traveling ability that Banks acquires due to the learning of the alien’s language, due to the fact that their culture sees time differently than most human societies do. In Paul Kay and Willett Kempton's journal titled "What Is the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis?", they define the idea as stating three things: first, that the “structural differences between language systems will...be paralleled by nonlinguistic cognitive differences...in the native speakers of the two languages”, second, that the “structure of anyone’s native language strongly influences or fully determines the world-view he will acquire as he learns the language”, and third, that the “semantic systems of different languages vary without constraint”. When discussing the movie Arrival, I'm mostly focusing on the second statement, that individuals largely acquire their perception of the world from the native language that they speak. While most scholars disagree with this today, it’s interesting to take this hypothesis into account when looking at this film, and even when looking at symbol-heavy typographic artists’ books. The whole point of the film is that once Louise Banks learns the aliens’ language, she is able to perceive time in the same cyclical, nonlinear way that the aliens do, rather in the strictly linear way that humans do.
  
  When looking at all of the previous artists’ books, it is possible to see the symbols laid out on the pages and think that, due to the fact that they are just symbols, anyone can come up with the same interpretation when provided with a key. However, if you think about it theoretically, it is also possible that, due to the nature of our differing languages and their respective semantics, that each reader, depending on their linguistic background, will have a differing interpretation. The reason I wanted to share my spiel about this movie is to show that there are conversing arguments in the case of universal language and universal communication, and Arrival presents an idea that each person's experience and their language provides a basis for how they perceive the world. It is the nature of reading, especially reading artists' books, that each reader has their own experience with the book and can even leave their own impact back on the book. This nature of reading and its inherent experiential qualities provide a certain unattainability of complete universal language, but it provides a unique opportunity to pervade the boundaries of linguistic understanding and the divides that languages supply.