Where Orwell Was Right

Fantastic article, with no obviating at all! ;)

I've seem the slow decay of our language persist ever since I decided to become more educated. This was after my formal public "education" of course.

Not many speak the way you do Celestina, always a pleasure... and I agree with every single word. Orwell was giving us a guide of what to avoid. Empires may fall, cities will crumble, and societies die out but words will always retain their value.

Celestina, I can only applaud the erudition with which you have argued a matter that has been close to my own heart for years. When we live in a society where it now appears that to be patriotic you must never question anything your government does, we are certainly living in a society where Newspeak is in full bloom!

I always learn something new after reading one of your articles. You are my favorite Newsvine Teacher! Here's a virtual apple for you :)

I think it goes even deeper than that, in that we as a society have "dumbed-down" our language so as not to offend the "lowest common denominator" or lowest educated level of comprehension. We use monosyllabic words and simple sentiments to be sure we not only get our ideas across to a larger constituency, but also so we don't offend anyone who may not understand our use of a more concise and illustrated manner of speech.

I often find myself falling into this same trap. I certainly have enough of a command of the language to write and speak more eloquently than I often demonstrate.

Bravo for taking on a subject near and dear to most everyone who ever sets out to find the perfect word or phrase for each occasion.

While I thoroughly agree with nearly everything you've said, I don't think that these developments are new. The majority of the population has always used colloquial language for the majority of dialogue. While it's true that new colloquial dialects have sprung up recently (AIMspeak), I don't think that the amount of colloquial speech has increased, relative to the size of the population. But that's not to say that I don't agree that it would be much better for all involved if "average Joe" had a larger vocabulary.

I also believe that if people read books instead of watching TV, the average vocabulary would skyrocket. However, few people are avid readers these days.

And normally, I'd let this go... but you misspelled "euphemism" as "euphamism" in the paragraph about the word "gay." :-)

I'd like to give you two vote for this the system doesn't allow it, what is more pernicious in my view is the way we seem to have slipped into sound-bite slogans, especially the black-white "for us - against us". Taking another tack the language that my children use when texting is creating a whole new subset which is both exciting and worrying, evolution in action I supose

Well, Ah think yew tawk real good.

I totally agree with the thought that with the "Johnny can't read but he feels good about it" mentality that is rampant today our population is becoming increasingly ignorant. I also agree that it seems that anyone nowadays (yeek! is that ok to use?) who uses a polysyllabic word is immediately suspect.

I think the thing to do is to get people in the NEA and the Department of Education who actually know how to teach and have the student's best interest at heart instead of bureaucrats who look at the bottom line test scores and care only about how much funding they get. So many people blame the current educational situation on teachers but I think the real culprit is administrative. Business can be taught but education is not a business. Education is a lifelong process. We must give our children the tools they need to continue the process, to want to continue the process, and to welcome the difficulty of the process.

Gosh, Celestina. You write more good than no other writer!

It's frustrating to live in a time when the most intelligent "news" program is the Daily Show and even news "analysts" are nothing more than partisan mouthpieces. It's heartbreaking to watch old footage of journalists like Edward R Murrow who managed to get through whole broadcasts without sensationalizing, condescending or engaging in frivolous banter. If I hear one more "news personality" use the word "bling".....

Today's media does very much sound and look like Orwell's Ministry of Truth. Except it's not a central authority who decides on truth; there are many, sometimes conflicting centres of truth.

As De Saussure pointed out, language is essentially an arbitrary system of signification. When I say, "Dog," there is nothing inherently canine about the phonemes "d" "o" and "g", it is simply that you and I, as English speakers, operate within a system of signification that assigns those syllables to four-legged, butt-sniffing domestic mammals. (If I made the same sounds to a Hebrew speaker, she might assume I was talking about a fish.)

As such, language is always changing -- there is always the possibility of the signifier/signified relationship to morph into something different. The classic example is when King Charles II saw Christopher Wren's design for St. Paul's Cathedral, he approvingly described it as "an awful and artificial edifice." Today he would probably have used the adjectives "awesome" and "monumental."

On the one hand, this opens the door for the type of linguistic social engineering that Orwell prophecied, and that we see happening in American politics and media. On the other hand, however, it also makes possible all sorts of creative linguistic acts of resistance, appropriation, and innovation. We are never forced to accept someone else's re-signification of our mother tongue passively.

Where Orwell Was Right

Implying there is somewhere he was wrong about?

Nice article.

As someone that rarely wears flannel, I too have had little success in dating goth chicks.

Well done Celestina. Language is a powerful tool or a dangerous weapon. Nothing better than a good article on the power and pitfalls of language.

As an aside:
One of the 6 or 7 books I am currently reading, is a detailed account of the Spanish Civil War, with Orwell making occasional appearances .... his experience in this brutal conflict made him an anti-Stalinist and helped inspire Animal Farm.

An amazing guy

Excellent article Celestina - I too object to the perversion of our language. Indeed I have advanced a neologism to definitively deal with the Doublespeak and spin of our times, specifically "slies" (spin-based untruths; and thence sliar, slied, slying) and a very English ruling class version of "blies" (blather-based untruths and hence bliar - already with us - blied, blying) (e.g. see: "Lies, slies & media breakthrough over 9/11" ).

A great resource i the Newspeak Dictionary (see: Newspeak dictionary ) which also has a fantastic Doublespeak dictionary from which one is reminded that Doubelspeak is in the spirit of 1984 but it doesn't actually appear there:

doublespeak - It is important to note that this term does not appear anywhere within Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. I mention it here only due to its similarity to other Newspeak terms such as doublethink, duckspeak, Newspeak, and Oldspeak. And even though it appears that the term was not actually created by Orwell himself, it does carry a very Orwellian meaning of "Deliberately ambiguous or evasive language; any language that pretends to communicate but actually does not."

Topical Doublespeak Dictionary entry:

Attack / Retaliation - When our allies suffer a loss of life/property at the hands of an enemy, it is called a cold-blooded attack. When our enemies suffer a loss of life/property at the hands of an ally, it is called retaliation. And when that enemy retaliates for the attack it just suffered, it is again referred to as a cold-blooded attack -- never as retaliation. No matter how often this cycle continues, our side is always said to be retaliating to the other side's attack. This effect is most apparent in the Israeli / Palestinian war. The Palestinians will launch a surprise attack, and Israel will retaliate. The Palestinians will launch another surprise attack, and Israel will retaliate again. The Palestinians launch yet another surprise attack, and Israel... well, you get the idea.

Of course the contemporary Bush-ite, neocon Orwellian perversion extends beyond language to the now-realized 1984 Big Brother mantra of "ignorance is strength, war is peace, slavery is freedom and 2 plus 2 does not equal 4" - and horribly so in relation to the Bush War on Terror (actually a horrendous War on Women and Children) (see: US terror & occupation - war crimes & huge infant deaths ). Thus the "2 plus 2 does not equal 4" perversion is generally realized in lying, genocide-ignoring, holocaust-denying mainstream media who will simply not report the simple but shocking mathematical conclusion from the latest top medical and UN data that the post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Iraq now (February 2007) total 1.0 million and the under-5 infant deaths 0.6 million (see: Iraqis' massacre continues - one million post-invasion excess deaths ).

I completely agree with your final plea:

If we are not to wallow forever in a glut of confusion and external manipulation, we must steel ourselves to embrace our language.. In language we find one of our strongest tools for personal freedom, if only we are undaunted enough to use it.

Great article! Is this an academic paper you had to do at some point?

Read for yourself the classic Orwell essay, Politics and The English Language. A choice paragraph:

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.

A suggestion for writing well: Write Tight: How to Keep Your Prose Sharp, Focused and Concise by William Brohaugh. This gem prizes clear, concise, prose--such as Celistina's.

Celestina, excellent :-)

You reminded me of a little question I have. For quite a while now I've been wanting to ask someone who lives in the USA to explain a little irritating habit you seem to have. When watching some of your recent films ("movies", as you would say, or "filims" as me mates in Ulster pronounce it :-), it is common to hear people make a statement, yet with the intonation you'd normally expect to hear in a question.

Mike asks Jane: "What will you be doing tonight?"
And Jane answers: "Sleeping" (but with the "question" intonation).

Is that a common North-American custom, or is it limited to some part of the USA (or some age-group)?

And sorry for going off-topic, but it is related (vaguely, I know :-)

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And while we're at it, a little joke (based on true facts). In the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast, Mrs Sally (all 120 kilos of her) was complaining to the new doctor, fresh in from London: "Doctor, the window broke right in front of me, spraying little bits of glass all over me. Believe me, I have some in me yet" (pronounced as "some in meeit"). Confused, the young doctor whispers to an older colleague: "Excuse me, but what part of your anatomy is your eit?"

Great article. We gain nothing by abandoning language.

Irritating anecdote from college: I attended art school. One of the advertising design classes had classwork on display in one of the hallway showcases. I noticed a blatant typo in one of the ads and was amazed: how could a misspelled ad be considered worthy of display?

I brought the subject to the instructor's attention. She dismissed it, saying she graded assignments based on concept and execution, not spelling.

I'm still mystified by that situation to this day.

Hence, a list of Seven Commandments, originally structured to keep all animals on the farm safe and happy, is eventually pared down, under the uncomprehending gaze of the illiterate, to:All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others

Actually, Orwell's famous phrase, was considered the seventh commandment, and was only changed after all of the travesties took place on the farm. The other commandments were also broken in many cases throughout the book. Originally, the commandment stated, "All animals are equal."

Many publishers did not want to publish Animal Farm because many were in support of socialism at the time. Orwell's book was the first to point out the cons of socialism, and possibly sparked beginning of The Cold War.

Wow! This is one of the best things I've read on the vine. I think you really understand the issue here, and what it means for America.

AHH and i thought this was going to be on the rise of NLP like saying things like tax relief rather than tax cut. One implies correcting an injustice where as the other has a more negative connotation. NO, BUT it must be very hard for you to read my comments as grammar has little meaning with me. And i spell so bad more often than knot i spell something write but with the wrong words. But i gave up on english when i found out there wasn't an "r" in colonel. Live and live, sound totally different and yet spelt exactly the same, guess which one i wrote first? Wait and weight sound exactly alike and what happened to i before e except after c? As a man of science these things confuse me, so i asked my neighbour, in house number eight. Weird foreign fellow, an heir to a sheik, wife wears a veil. Well he didnt know either and i need a breather from all the frequencies of all these exceptions to i-before-e's. LOL and you expect me to learn this nonsense, you have more exceptions than rules!!

On communication i say the opposite of you, it doesnt matter what is said or how it is spelled. AS long as you communicate that is the key. Like this example below actually doesnt say anything but gibberish and yet all of you can understand what is said.

Aoccdrnig to rseearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is that the frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.

The hodge podge of English and non descriptive words has always bothered me. You have to say too much to convey too little, as easily shown by chat speak. And all the rules and exceptions of standard english are enough to make me wanna wrap myself in a ball surrounded by numbers. MMM pi times you by x or by y you are still pi

Since I have a BA in philosophy, with equivalent credits to a minor in second language studies, this is a subject that I actually know something about. Back in the early decades of the 20th century, the positivists believed that an unambiguous language could be developed. They struggled unsuccessfully with the problem, but in the end, most philosophers of communication came to the conclusion that ambiguity is inherent in language, due to its richness, and the only way to remove the ambiguity from language is to simplify it to the point where it becomes barely useful for communication, e.g. programming languages.

Every person has a unique version of their native language, due to the way that language is acquired. Rather than being taught their language, every child actually synthesizes it from experience, creating their own version from the relatively small number of sentences (relative to the infinite number of possible sentences) that they are exposed to, and the reactions that they get from their experiments with the language they are building. Due to the individual nature of natural language, it is always in flux. Only dead languages are stable. This flux is a good thing, since it allows language to change in response to the changing world.

Orwell theorized that by controlling language, you could control thought. However, social experiments along those lines have generally been failures. When words were omitted from official language, new words sprang up for the concepts that were supposed to be suppressed. Because of the changeable nature of language, attempts to use it to control thought are doomed.

Objections to changing language are reactionary. They are symptomatic of a yearning for the past and a rejection of the present. Rather than dreaming of a utopia where words mean only what I want them to mean, I'd live in a world where people use words creatively to convey both more and less meaning than they intend.

Excellent article Celestina. There is hope for English language when young and educated people as you take the initiative of defending knowledge and correct use of language.

Excellent article, Celestina! And the excellence of the article has been enhanced by the tone and caliber of the comments. However, this comment will not measure up to the high standard set so far, but I offer it just the same:

Television sports announcers are just bursting with the need to use slang or to use common words in new "sporty" ways. For example, "In the last seconds of the game, Little Timmy took the pill (or rock) to the house scoring the winning points on an easy slam", translates into "In the last seconds of the game, Little Timmy took the ball (or basketball) down the floor scoring the winning points on an easy dunk."