Language, thought, and insight from a debunked hypothesis: Embassytown, by China Mieville (Part I?)

 Read this book.  I do not know if this one will continue into a second post (probably), but read this book.  It has been a while since I have tackled a China Mieville novel, since the third novel in the Bas-Lag trilogy was such a let-down, but Embassytown did not disappoint.  Let's get going here.  The theme for this morning is the concept of debunked hypotheses.  What good are they?  I actually find it interesting to read about intellectual history for many reasons.  It is important to understand the scientific process, and part of that process is how we got from there to here.  Doing so should also give us some humility about what we now think, understanding that this is not anything close to an endpoint.  Any explanation is subject to revision in the face of new evidence.  Moreover, seeing past models in their own light can help us understand where we might go wrong now.  But I'm blathering.  You should read the history of science.

And when you do, you may encounter a thing called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.  Sapir-Whorf is a debunked model of cognition and linguistics which states that you cannot conceive of that for which you lack the language because thought and language are intertwined.  In its softer form, one might pose the notion that the language you speak natively affects your thought process in some way, but the hard form of Sapir-Whorf is that language constrains your thought.

Sapir-Whorf has been the subject of other science fiction novels, most famously Babel 17, by Samuel Delaney, which lost out in the Hugos to Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress in 1967.  I think that Babel 17 was vastly overrated, but the premise was the military invention of the titular language, which allowed the speaker to think in advanced ways by compressing ideas efficiently, but which lacked a word for "I."  Consequently, the speaker was a perfect soldier, lacking any concept of self, but capable of tactical genius.  It was an interesting gimmick, but bullshit even at the time, and Delaney should have known it.  In fact, one should have taken Babel 17 as a reductio ad absurdum demonstration that the hard version of Sapir-Whorf was absurd.  Yes, you can conceive of your own individual self-- let's not get into what mindfulness has to say here-- even if some jackass tried to invent a language without "I."

Regardless, Mieville was not the first to write a novel with Sapir-Whorf as the central plot device.  He's just the best.  When Delaney did it, he tried to apply Sapir-Whorf to humans, and while the hypothesis hadn't been fully debunked yet... c'mon.  Even before full debunkings... c'mon.  Yeah, it was an interesting idea, but take it to that extreme, and it is so obviously bullshit.  Whatever.  Babel 17 was an interesting novel, and for its time, it was pretty cool, but the genre got better.

Here's how Mieville did it.  Way off at the edge of the "immer"  (subspace, basically), there is a weird planet populated by the Ariekei, or, the Hosts.  Non-humanoid, sentient beings who have allowed an embassy from one of the human spacefaring nations (Bremen) to set up in one of their cities, trade, and so forth.  The Ariekei are weird.  They have two mouths, and their language, "Language," is constructed through speech out of both mouths creating contrasting sounds.  OK, cool, whatever.  It means we cannot speak Language, physiologically.

But for the Ariekei, Sapir-Whorf is true.  Hard Sapir-Whorf.  Language is thought, thought is Language.

Mieville gets around the problem of Sapir-Whorf being bullshit by creating aliens for whom it is true.  In its most extreme form.  Then he can ask, what would follow?  How crazy would it be if Sapir-Whorf were true?

It'd be absolutely bonkers.

Like, they couldn't lie, because they could not conceive of an untruth, so they couldn't speak it.  Language and thought!

If we cannot speak Language because we lack the physiology, then we cannot have thought.  We're not sentient.  Theory of mind plus Sapir-Whorf!

Are you getting the picture here?  Sapir-Whorf is bullshit, but if it weren't, do you get a sense of just how much crazy shit would be true?  So Mieville writes the book, and it makes an insanely cool novel.

So here's the basic point.  A human settlement-- Embassytown-- is plopped down in the middle of an Ariekei city after a weird method of communication is eventually found.  Breed some clones, wire up their brains and train them to speak separate parts of Language.  Why not program a computer?  Theory of mind.  Sapir-Whorf.  So Embassytown is run largely by the Ambassadors.  Each Ambassador is a "they."  A pair of clones who each speak a part of Language.  Any other human is, according to the Ariekei, insignificant meat.

Your POV character, Avice, leaves Embassytown to travel, and then comes back later in life with her husband, because he wants to see the place and study Language.  Bad timing.  Two things are going on.  First, you have a group of Ariekei who are trying very hard to learn how to lie.

Sounds ominous, right?

Hold that thought.  [Ducks.]

(Which is also the nickname of a wannabe-liar Host.)

The other is that a new Ambassador arrives.  Arrive.  S.  Plural?  Singular?  Whatever.  Anyway, EzRa (Ez and Ra) are not actually clones.  Bremen, which theoretically has dominion over Embassytown created and sent their own Ambassador, rather than letting Embassytown breed a new one.  It's a power play.  But they aren't clones.

Weirdness happens.

Because Ez and Ra aren't clones, there is just the slightest dissonance in their speech.  That gets the Areikei high.  They all turn into junkies.  Everything goes to shit, and the only solution is trying to separate thought from language, which involves moving from simile to metaphor, which is technically...

...

lying.

Or at least, telling the truth with lies.

Which is kind of what literature is anyway.

Look, this is insane, but what is fascinating is the fact that Mieville took a debunked hypothesis of cognition and linguistics and asked, what if it were true?  There are a few ways to think about this.  One is a reductio ad absurdum evaluation of Sapir-Whorf.  From that perspective, it is kind of cool.

Especially since there are so many who seem to think that you can change thought by changing language.  If that sounds "Orwellian," well, yeah.  Orwell was pre-debunking.  The postmodern left has latched onto the idea that language is the battleground of power, and you can change thought by changing language.  Very Sapir-Whorf.  When you are told that you must change your language, that is an attempt to change your thought, Sapir-Whorf-style, and the left is enamored of the tactic these days.

Even though Sapir-Whorf is bullshit.  It's just annoying.

And Mieville does a reductio ad absurdum on the underlying, debunked hypothesis.

Next, there is the real insight on truth and lies.  I may do the follow-up post on this, unless I decide to write something else.  Mid-way through the book, you're hit with a kind of internal conflict between the Ariekei over the nature of lies, humans taking sides, and this creates weird politics in Embassytown.  You begin with the Hosts unable to lie, or even conceive of lying.  Hence, there is a "Festival of Lies," in which they try to tell minor lies, as something like a silly competition, being fascinated by the idea of a lie, but unable to do it.  Once you see a Host really going for it, and making progress, it sounds scary.

We don't like lies, right?  And it is presented to us as something of which to be scared.

And part of the brilliance of the novel is how the idea of lying becomes a way out of addiction to the dissonant vocal drug of non-cloned Ambassadorial speech.  Moreover, the observation of a metaphor as a kind of lie, used to tell truth shifts everything around.  You are given a set of characters among the Hosts as potentially ominous for their fascination with lying, and the shift in perspective is truly impressive.

Is a metaphor a lie?  Even if you use it to tell the truth?  Shades of Golden State, by Ben Winters.

I'm scratching the surface here.  I may need to return to Embassytown.  Read it.

Lafayette Gilchrist, "Can You Speak My Language," from Now.