本論文探討瑪麗．雪萊《科學怪人》（1831）中語言、身分認同與承認之間的關係。本文以巴赫汀的對話理論為主要架構，透過文本細讀分析怪物的語言學習、直接對話，以及小說的框架敘事結構。本文主張，怪物的悲劇並不在於他無法說話，而在於他的言說始終無法獲得真正的回應與承認。
怪物透過觀察德拉西一家與閱讀《失樂園》、《少年維特的煩惱》、《希臘羅馬名人傳》及《帝國廢墟》等文本，逐漸發展出自我意識、道德想像與情感理解。然而，這種教育並未使他進入人類社群，反而加深他對自身孤立的認識。當他嘗試與德拉西、威廉及維克多對話時，失敗的原因並非語言能力不足，而是聽者的恐懼、拒絕與缺乏回應。小說的框架敘事也進一步限制他的聲音，使他的敘述必須經由維克多與華頓的轉述才抵達讀者。
本文最後指出，《科學怪人》中的沉默並不只是無法說話，而是一種結構性的未被聽見。怪物能夠學習、閱讀、思考並敘述自己的痛苦，但人類社會與敘事框架卻拒絕給予他真正的回應。因此，小說中的人性並非與生俱來的本質，而是一種透過回應、承認與關係所形成的狀態。

This thesis examines the relationship between language, identity, and recognition in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1831). Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism, it analyzes the Creature’s acquisition of language, his attempts at direct dialogue, and the novel’s framed narrative structure. This study argues that the Creature’s tragedy does not lie in an inability to speak, but in the repeated failure of his speech to receive meaningful response and recognition.
Through observing the De Lacey family and reading Paradise Lost, The Sorrows of Werter, Plutarch’s Lives, and Volney’s Ruins of Empires, the Creature develops self-consciousness, moral imagination, and emotional understanding. Yet this education does not secure his place within human society; instead, it deepens his awareness of exclusion. His encounters with De Lacey, William, and Victor show that dialogue fails not because he lacks eloquence, but because his listeners respond with fear, refusal, or violence. The novel’s framed narrative structure further limits his voice, as his story reaches the reader only through Victor’s account and Walton’s letters.
Ultimately, this thesis argues that Frankenstein presents silencing not simply as the absence of speech, but as a structural failure of listening. The Creature can speak, read, reason, and narrate, yet his voice repeatedly fails to enter a sustained relation of answerability. His exclusion reveals that the status of being recognized as human is granted or withheld through response, but a relational category granted or withheld through response.

Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Edited by Michael Holquist, translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, University of Texas Press, 1981.
---. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Edited and translated by Caryl Emerson, University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
---. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Edited by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, translated by Vern W. McGee, University of Texas Press, 1986.
Baldick, Chris. In Frankenstein’s Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity, and Nineteenth-Century Writing. Oxford University Press, 1987.
Britton, Jeanne M. “Novelistic Sympathy in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 48, no. 1, 2009, pp. 3–22.
Brooks, Peter. “Godlike Science/Unhallowed Arts: Language and Monstrosity in Frankenstein.” New Literary History, vol. 9, no. 3, Spring 1978, pp. 591–605.
Bugg, John. “‘Master of Their Language’: Education and Exile in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 68, no. 4, 2005, pp. 655–666.
Clemit, Pamela. “Frankenstein, Matilda, and the Legacies of Godwin and Wollstonecraft.” The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley, edited by Esther Schor, Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 26–44.
Halmari, Helena. “The Monster’s Language Acquisition in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: How Far Is Fiction from Fact?” Handle Proxy, 1 Sept. 2016, hdl.handle.net/20.500.11875/2418.
Johnson, Barbara. “My Monster/My Self.” Diacritics, vol. 12, no. 2, 1982, pp. 2–10.
Joseph, M. K. Introduction. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley, Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. v–xiii.
Levine, George. “The Ambiguous Heritage of Frankenstein.” The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley’s Novel, edited by George Levine and U. C. Knoepflmacher, University of California Press, 1979, pp. 3–30.
Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters. Methuen, 1988.
---. “Making a ‘Monster’: An Introduction to Frankenstein.” The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley, edited by Esther Schor, Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 9–25.
O’Rourke, James. “The 1831 Introduction and Revisions to Frankenstein: Mary Shelley Dictates Her Legacy.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 38, no. 3, 1999, pp. 365–385.
Parrino, Maria. “Signs for Speech: Language Learning in Frankenstein.” Dal gotico al fantastico: Tradizioni, riscritture e parodie, 2015, pp. 21–32.
Pon, Cynthia. “‘Passages’ in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: Toward a Feminist Figure of Humanity?” Modern Language Studies, vol. 30, no. 2, Autumn 2000, pp. 33–50.
Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen, University of Chicago Press, 1984, pp. 114–142.
Robinson, Charles E. “Percy Bysshe Shelley and Frankenstein: The Text of 1818.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 36, no. 3, 1997, pp. 341–360.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. 1831 text, edited by M. K. Joseph, Oxford University Press, 2008.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 12, no. 1, 1985, pp. 243–261.
Vargo, Lisa. “Contextualizing Sources.” The Cambridge Companion to Frankenstein, edited by Andrew Smith, Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp. 26–40.