Die Sprache der Anderen. Sprachphilosophische Gedankenexperimente in China Miévilles <em>Embassytown</em>

Abstract

China Miéville’s Embassytown is a political science fiction novel about a remote planetary colony that is home to both humans and aliens – and about their initial failure to communicate. But Embassytown is also a novel both about language and linguistics. A central element of the plot is the language of the aliens: They speak simultaneously with two mouths and, at the beginning of the novel, they are unable to lie or use metaphors. Communication with their human neighbours is almost impossible, only ›Ambasssadors‹, pairs of clones specifically raised for the task, succeed in speaking the alien language. Over the course of the novel a violent language-induced crisis disrupts the colony’s social order and changes the alien language, so that communication with ordinary humans becomes possible. The paper shows how Miéville uses the plot and worldbuilding of Embassytown to reference specific theories about language, from Hegel to Ogden/Richards’ semiotic triangle. The text sets up a kind of thought experiment to disprove certain linguistic conceptions and uses different narrative strategies to illustrate, test and elucidate others. Embassytown merges narrative and theoretical modes of writing to address a number of linguistic and philosophical subjects such as metaphor and truth, language and religion, and voice and identity. In this way, the novel blends theory and narration to form a kind of ›narrative experiment‹.