No, he has opinions on language, not knowledge of linguistics. He is a science fiction writer. It's an actual academic discipline, you know, not just people harumphing in armchairs.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which underlies Arrival, has been debunked for years in academia, and the movie, if detached from that hypothesis, is more of a thought experiment on the effect of the linearity of time on human thought than a thought experiment on anything related to language itself.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which underlies Arrival, has been debunked for years in academia, and the movie, if detached from that hypothesis, is more of a thought experiment on the effect of the linearity of time on human thought than a thought experiment on anything related to language itself.