Meaning and words in China Mieville's Embassytown

China Mieville's 2011 novel Embassytown imagines a world where a non-human species can only understand language if it represents a real thing. In this video, I talk about why that premise didn't work for me, and it involves a little thing called "semiotics."

[@janiyahtaylor9553]

thanks this help with my 5 pg paper which i did not read embassytown because my professor gave a lesson on semiotics for a week str8 and kept repeating that a tree is not a tree without the word "tree' AND embassytown was a book full of trees without the word "trees" and i said .....no.

[@drowsyZot]

Cicadas in the background!

[@sfflinguistics1480]

I wasn't sure if you could hear those! When I was editing the video, I heard the ambient cicada noise through my headphones XD We were at peak Brood X that week. Some folks on twitter were reporting 90+ dB outside!

[@drowsyZot]

@@sfflinguistics1480 There were times here when it was physically painful to be outside because they were so loud! Don't worry, they were pretty quiet in the video, which was awesome, by the way. I'm really enjoying your work.

[@sfflinguistics1480]

@@drowsyZot Thank you! Thanks for watching!