What Arrival Gets Wrong
An essay on the film's claim about language and thought, what the research actually shows, and how the two differ
- Due
- , 5pm
- Weight
- 30% of the course
- Set in
- week 9
- From today
The brief#
Arrival claims that learning a language can restructure how a mind experiences time. Say what would have to be true for that to be true.
Fifteen hundred to two thousand words.
The title of this assessment is a provocation and you are not obliged to accept it. An essay arguing that the film is doing something more defensible than the strong Whorfian reading suggests is entirely permitted, and past versions of this argument have been among the better essays submitted. What is not permitted is treating the film as though it were a paper with errors in it.
The first criterion carries a quarter of the marks and is where most essays are lost in the first paragraph. The film’s claim has to be reconstructed in its strongest form before it is examined. If your statement of it is one a defender of the film would reject as a caricature, everything after that is answering nobody.
For the second criterion, two results, read properly. The colour-boundary work, the spatial-frame research on languages that use absolute directions, the grammatical gender studies — any of these, or others you find. Read the method section. An essay that cites an effect without knowing what was measured is doing the thing it accuses the film of.
What you submit#
One essay, fifteen hundred to two thousand words, with references in any consistent style.
No glossing, no conlang material, and nothing about your own language. This is the one assessment in the course that is not about the thing you are building, and the fortnight it occupies is deliberate.
The spec
The brief poses the problem and leaves room for a response. The spec is the fixed part: what a marker checks. Some lines can be checked mechanically; the rest call for judgement.
- you state the film's claim precisely, and without caricature
- you engage with at least two experimental results you have read in the original
- your thesis is something a reasonable person could disagree with
How it is marked
| Criterion | Weight |
|---|---|
| The film's claim, stated in a form its defenders would accept | 25% |
| Command of the experimental evidence | 35% |
| A thesis, argued | 40% |