linguistics

ARRIVAL and the False Dichotomy of Free Will vs Determinism

ARRIVAL and the False Dichotomy of Free Will vs Determinism

ARRIVAL has been hailed for carving a space for the “literary science fiction movie,” and rightly so. Director Denis Villeneuve achieved the nearly impossible feat of making a compelling, relatively crowd-pleasing movie about linguistics, complete with a new alien language composed of 100 logograms, while also weaving in themes of international cooperation, humanism, and empathy.

The Evolution of the Style Guide: An Interview with Psycholinguist Steven Pinker

The Evolution of the Style Guide: An Interview with Psycholinguist Steven Pinker

  Steven Pinker is a cognitive scientist and psychologist whose work focuses on language–how it works and how it breaks down. Drawing upon his nearly forty years of research, as well as his experiences on the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, Pinker has developed a new guide to writing good prose called The…