The Hosts In George Orwell's Embassytown

Throughout the novel, Embassytown, the Hosts have had an interesting relationship with their Language and the differences between it and the language of humans. As we know from the entirety of the novel, the Hosts are very literal creatures. The Hosts can only reference things they have seen first hand rather than manifest ideas in their minds like the humans can. When Spanish Dancer speaks to the crowd of addicted Hosts on the first page (335) of Part 9, it explains how it's transition from thinking in terms of "like" to terms of "is" or "are" or "am" has changed the concept of speech and thought all together. "You have never spoken before. You will. You'll be able to say how the city is a pit and a hill and a standard and an animal that hunts...",

The language that Spanish Dancer learns to speak, with the inclusion of the self and the use of metaphors is actually something human beings have yet to experience. Think of it like this, "right now I am feeling hungry" could easily be rearranged to read "right now it feels like I am hungry". Any sentence that can be rearranged with the word like is not necessarily a true statement. It can be doubted that you are actually feeling hungry. We have all head the sentence "Cogito, ergo sum" or "I think, therefore I am", from the famous philosopher Descartes. That is the only thing a human being can ever truly know, just like the Hosts before Spanish Dancer transforms their minds. In Embassytown, Mieville is using this idea to explain to readers that they are like the Hosts, unaware of anything but their own existence, and that there is some dimension of speaking in true language, with a lower case l, that humans have yet to tap into. Humans, the ones like you and I, removed from the novel, have yet to, and may never, live in a reality where they can actually know for a fact that they are living in the true reality they experience. We are all speaking