Arrival: Linguistic fieldwork on the big screen

In the summer of 2015, I was invited to consult on the screen-adaptation of Ted Chiang’s sci-fi story, Story of Your Life. Directed by Montreal-local Denis Villeneuve and written by Eric Heisserer, the resulting film, Arrival, is about the fieldworker linguist who is recruited by the military to translate for the aliens who have just landed all over the globe.

Though my short time directly involved with the film was a lot of fun, the best part of Arrival is the press it has generated for linguists and linguistics as a science. I wrote this piece about fieldwork and alien grammars for Museum of the Moving Image, and a larger article here:

• Coon, Jessica. 2020. ‘The linguistics of Arrival: Heptapods, field linguistics, and Universal Grammar.’ In Language invention for linguistics pedagogy, eds. Jeffrey Punske, Amy Fountain, and Nathan Sanders. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [pre-print PDF]

Here is a compilation of some of the news that came out around the November 2016 release:

Print:

• The Washington Post – “It’s all in the wording: Arrival raises profile of linguists, making them almost cool“
• io9-Gizmodo – “How Arrival turned linguistics into one of the most gripping drams of the year”
• Wall Street Journal – “In Arrival, a linguist is a movie hero”
• Wired – “The science of Arrival: What the film got right (and wrong)”
• Playboy – “The real-life linguist behind Arrival weighs the chilling challenges of alien contact”
• Babel Magazine – “Meet the Professionals”
• L.A. Times – “Decoding the linguistic geekiness behind Arrival‘s sci-fi sheen”
• Science Magazine – “For linguists, the new sci-fi film Arrival can’t come soon enough”
• Business Insider – “Arrival nails how humans might actually talk to aliens, a linguist says”
• Slate – “How realistic is the way Amy Adams’ character hacks the alien language in Arrival?”
• Language Portal of Canada  – Linguistic superstar
• Nautil.us – “The scientist who helped Amy Adams talk to aliens in Arrival“
• Popular Science – “If aliens invaded, how would we talk to them?”
• PCMag – “In Arrival, the aliens have landed; we talk to their interpreter”
• New York Observer – “In Arrival, aliens just don’t understand (and neither do humans)”
• LanguageLog – “The making of a cinematic linguistics office”
• Montreal Gazette – “Denis Villeneuve’s new film Arrival gets to the heart of language”
• Le Journal de Montréal – “Comprendre le langage extraterreste”
• La Presse – “Dialogues du troisième type”
• McGill News – “A translator for E.T.”

International

• The Independent – “Arrival: Linguist behind film talks speaking to aliens and how Donald Trump is affecting language”
• La Jornada – “Lingüista consultora de Arrival advierte contra la extinción de cientos de idiomas”
• Straits Times Singapore  – “If aliens come to Earth, call a linguist”
• Deutsche Welle – “I had never thought about communicating with aliens before”
• Wired U.K. – “If aliens ever come to Earth, how will we talk to them?”
• Galeria  – “La llegada”
• El Español – “Los extraterrestres han llegado: ¿En qué idioma hablamos con ellos?”
• Non-Exist Daily China – “Arrival linguistics consultant is the real alien exchange ambassador“
• Heart of Machine (Synced) – “A better understanding of the world of the linguist in Arrival“

Video

• Huffington Post  – “Amy Adams explains her relationship with the aliens in Arrival“
• Science vs. Cinema – “Arrival”
• CTV National news – “The McGill prof who taught filmmakers to speak alien”
• The Ling Space – “The Linguistics of Arrival”

Radio

• NPR’s Short Wave Podcast – “Science Movie Club: Arrival”
• Science(ish) Podcast – “Arrival”
• BBC Radio 4’s The Film Programme – “Arrival’s Linguist”
• CBC Radio’s The Current – “If there are aliens, how can we communicate?”
• Scientifica Radio, CKUT – “The science behind Arrival: A conversation with Dr. Jessica Coon”; minute 3:15
• Pop Culture Confidential – “Arrival”
• What She Said – Radio show; minute 29:00
• Viewpoints Podcast – Radio show; minute 30:00

Public Lectures

• UK Biennial of Contemporary Art, October 2018
• LangFest, August 2018
  • “Multilinguisme: Le Montréal des Langues”
• Princeton University Translation Series, December 2017
• Synced Bejing, May 2017
• Silicon Valley Comic Con, April 2017
  • “A bigger Silicon Valley Comic Con searches for Planet B”
  • “Universal Language: The science behind Arrival at Silicon Valley Comic Con”
  • “At Silicon Valley Comic Con, the scientists are the stars”
• McGill Public AstroNight, March 2017
• National Integrative Research Conference, March 2017
• McMaster University, January 2017

Want to know more about linguistics? Check out this page for more information and further linguistics resources by internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch!