GEORGE ORWELL

Politics and the English Language



Politics and the English Language

Introduction

From his examination of how language is used and manipulated to perpetuate the status quo and achieve the goals of the powerful, Orwell realizes the necessity understanding the nature of language for interpreting political events. He would agree that language is the key creator of social worlds that people experience, and that language cannot be usefully understood as a tool for describing objective reality. Orwell characterizes himself as a democratic socialist and humanitarian. His preoccupation with the manipulation of language for political purposes are stemming from his observation of the rise of the totalitarian state. On the other hand, many of his articles seem to focus specifically on the threat of totalitarianism. It is clear that Orwell also understands the repercussions of the relations of power and language for general society. This underestimates what Orwell identifies as the political repercussions of the nature of language. He did identify both propaganda and censorship as tools of the political elite and further offers some "solutions." Often, these solutions appear to favour either expressionist or communicative language. Leading critics suggest that Orwell believes that our language is inadequate. Harris argues. For example that "Orwell's abhorrence of the way man's inhumanity to man can be concealed behind all kinds of verbal facades led him to make an erroneous diagnosis. He thought that there was something wrong with the English language of his day". "Politics and the English Language" is one of his most criticized pieces.

Discussion

In this essay, Orwell writes "Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way" and "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" . The flaws in "Politics and the English Language" are obvious and seemingly inconsistent with other ideas Orwell explicitly acknowledges about the way language works. He recognizes that language both provides form to non-linguistic thought while it imposes limits on how experience can be interpreted. As well, he understands that it must serve the needs of both individual expression of thought and the social communication of ideas. He understands that individual bias would play a role in interpretation just as the dominant culture defines the language we use. Clarity and simplicity in language use is offered as a solution to the manipulation of language, but this is misinterpreted by critics as a call for the "plain style." This implies that Orwell believes that a purely designative language is possible and desirable and ignores the complexities of language which Orwell identifies in "Politics and the English Language" and elsewhere (White, 1981, Pp 81).

Though the first five rules of good writing offered in "Politics and the English Language" could seemingly create a purely denotative language, such as Newspeak, it is clear that "Orwell recognized that a language of nearly pure denotation could not ...