WRITING

Politics and the English Language

Politics and the English Language

Introduction

The essay politics and the English language, written by the legendary George Orwell in the year 1946, criticises the bad habits in English writing that spread over the time owing to imitation. He focussed on the need for writers to think clearly as this in the eyes of the man was the first step towards political regeneration. The author talks of the five common mistakes listed hereunder (Orwell, 1964):

Dying metaphors

Catalogue of swindles and perversions

Operators or verbal false limbs

Meaningless words

Pretentious diction

He criticised the writers of his age for not using clear language. Unclear writing was most prominent in the genre of political writing. The political writing uses the inflated style of euphemism because it defends the indefensible. The relationship between thoughts and writing is a very sensitive one in that one can corrupt the other. In his essay, Orwell suggested six rules to be followed in order to avoid the errors that he pointed out in the writing of his time. However, the writer also comments that many a writers have the talent that they can follow the six rules given by him and yet not come up with an excellent piece of writing (Wallace, 2011).

The best part of the essay is where the author says that language should be used to express ideas and not conceal them. The author also has a sense of humour, where he admits that he himself has committed the same mistakes over and over in his essay that he has been asking for others to avoid.

Discussion

The six rules of quality writing given by George Orwell are written hereunder (Orwell, 1964).

The writer emphasizes the need for using short words. Most authors have the tendency to write long sentences where they can write short, to the point and concise sentences. Writing short sentences is an art, and not many writers are blessed with it. The famous Pakistani politician Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was famous for writing short sentences.

The word that is not needed should be cut out immediately. For instance, instead of writing essential one may write essential.

Active voice usage should be preferred over passive voice usage.

Simple writing is the best writing. Where a writer can find an easy, common English word, he may avoid using jargons and scientific words and phrases that make the writing ...