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Research Article
12 January 2015

Reversals and Paradoxes: China Miéville’s Anti-Language

Publication: Extrapolation
Volume 56, Number 3
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Abstract

China Miéville’s Embassytown explores the nature of language through the warped mirror of an alien Language (capitalized). Human language and Ariekei’s Language share a number of properties but the latter does not allow its speakers to express anything contrary to fact. Nor does it allow for “real” thinking, which only emerges when the Ariekei transform from Language-speakers to language-speakers. Being an asemantic, asymbolic, non-signifying, and non-metaphorical system of communication, Language is claimed here to be an example of “anti-language” (in a redefined sense), a perversion of the very essence of natural human language. In an analogous, redefined non-evaluative sense, the Ariekei are “anti-humans,” a species lacking the very nature of humanness: free thought.

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Extrapolation
Volume 56Number 32015
Pages: 335 - 352

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Published in print: 2015
Published online: 12 January 2015

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  • Die Sprache der Anderen. Sprachphilosophische Gedankenexperimente in China Miévilles Embassytown, Zeitschrift für Fantastikforschung, 10.16995/zff.9604, 1, 1, (2024).
  • Translation and architecturally odd invented languages in science fiction, Translation Studies, 10.1080/14781700.2023.2261943, 17, 2, (265-281), (2023).
  • Language in Dystopia, The Language of Dystopia, 10.1007/978-3-030-93103-2_2, (33-60), (2022).
  • Speaking Fees: Capital, Colony, and Reference in China Miéville’s Embassytown , Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory, 10.1080/10436928.2020.1800138, 31, 3, (222-241), (2020).
  • Weird Collocations: Language as Infrastructure in the Storyworlds of China Miéville, Planned Violence, 10.1007/978-3-319-91388-9_17, (289-304), (2018).

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