linguistic relativity

Arpan suggested that I review Arrival, a SciFi movie that has as its lead character—wait for it—a linguistics professor. I first thought of writing a review without spoilers but realized that it’d be impossible to write about the linguistically relevant parts of the movie without giving it all away, so I scrapped that plan. This review specifically addresses only and all linguistic aspects of the movie, so it might feel like nitpicking if you are not interested in all that stuff.

RVC recently told me about Through the Language Glass, a book by Guy Deutscher (GD), an Israeli linguist, that is based around the premise of ‘linguistic relativity’. Ordinarily, hearing those two words together evokes a bit of a fight / flight response in me, so I read the excerpts he sent with some trepidation. I realized that, far from being yet another piece fawning over linguistic relativity, this book actually seemed to be addressing many questions I had about this topic but had never seen properly answered.