Embassytown Discussion: Question about Embassytown

[Vera]

I'm reading Embassytown for a course on 'truth and authority', where I am to give an presentation on truths and lies in literature based partiality on Embassytown. Can you please tell me which chapters are the most relevant on this subject, and even if it is possible to read onlysome chapters to understand the book? Because I don't think I have the time to read the entire book before my presentation...
Thanks a lot!

[Traveller]

Vera, if you don't mind about spoilers, we had an in-depth discussion of the book here starting with this thread: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

and following on the threads that are marked Thread 1, thread 2, thread 3 and so on.

Personally I'd say you'd probably need to read most of the book, but you could always skim through our discussions to give you an idea of the themes that are dealt with in each chapter.

If you're extremely pressed for time, you could always click on each thread in turn (we dealt with the book progressively in sections) and just quickly read the intro to see what that section of the book is about. I'd say the themes of truth and authority become strongest about halfway through the book, but since its quite a complex book, I'm not too sure you'd know what was going on without reading the whole book. You'd have to at least read some notes.

Basically we're dealing with some pretty complex issues here; I'm not sure what your background is; is it for linguistics or are you covering the philosophical or literary angles?

The book has a strong semiotic focus, highlighting the relationships between signifier, referent and signified. It deals with humans vs a species of alien who cannot lie, and how this species of aliens learn to 'lie'.

I guess we'd be able to help more if you gave more background as to exactly in which context you need to discuss 'truth and authority'? Is the course a literature course, philosophy, linguistics, other cultural studies?