Politics and the English Language by Orwell

[Kai]

http://www.ourcivilisation.com/decline/orwell1.htm

Summary: Never use a fancy word when an simple one will do. This is not possible when you need to speak in scientific language with precision, but everywhere else it is useful.

As Vonnegut said, pity the reader.

[Nast]

I can agree with this. There is an certain banality and dishonesty that pervades language, especially in political propaganda. The cliches, the buzz words, the dogwhistles only serve to turn language into a tool to get a specific reaction out of people. Language becomes yet another form of manipulation, another veil separating us from the Troof.

I don't know how avoidable this is, as the flexibility of language means that doublespeak can and will always be use by those who intend to. Changing this requires a dramatic shift in either language or human nature, which sadly, is probably not possible.

[Verbal Mike]

I recently read the second half of this (after having read the first half a few months ago) and it really makes you think. How much of the way we talk today is the result of modern politics hijacking language to its own ends?

At work (in customer service) I notice how twisted the formulations we are expected to use really are. The reason is usually that we want to be utterly polite and at the same time not divulge too much information, but the overall quality of our language is all the worse for it.

[Jenne]

Oh, nothing is more pervasive than the use of language to sell.  My god.  I spent 5 hours of my life one time in this bullshit seminar on:  yes, bullshitting.  How to bullshit your way into people's graces, so that they buy what you are selling, whether they want it or not.

How do you do this?  You twist words around their brain, and you handfeed them the bullshit.  Morsel by morsel.  And when they ask what that nugget is stuck between their teeth, you lie and say it's just the tasty goodness of satisfaction.

I'm a people person, so a lot of this made sense.  But I'm not good at selling shit with the full knowledge that this person doesn't need to buy it.  And I also hate that shit-eating grin you have to give when the customer is WRONGWRONGBADWRONG.

But yeah...politics is definitely a sort of whoring, so words are a tool to do that, and do it effectively.

[LMNO]

So, "This shit is fucked" is better than "The American Political System is in serious need of an overhaul"?

[Verbal Mike]

Neither is that great. I think Orwell would prefer "America's political system direly needs an overhaul". It's more direct than the second, and more specific than the first.

[Jenne]

So, "This shit is fucked" is better than "The American Political System is in serious need of an overhaul"?

Depends on which linguistic community you come from. /anthropological linguist answer

[fomenter]

Neither is that great. I think Orwell would prefer "America's political system is in dire need of an overhaul". It's more direct than the second, and more specific than the first.

more common use??

[LMNO]

Fuck that.  This fuckin' shit is fuckin' fucked.

[AFK]

Fuck that.  This fuckin' shit is fuckin' fucked.

You need a TV show.  Has MacLaughlin kicked the bucket yet? 

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

So, "This shit is fucked" is better than "The American Political System is in serious need of an overhaul"?

How about "American politics is totally fucked. Somebody needs to fix it."


Btw, what I never got about this essay (I've read it a number of times over the years -- it was in the back of the version of 1984 I read in 7th grade) is that Orwell never followed his own advice. In fact, in 1984, he demonstrated via newspeak how his own advice could be followed WHILE controlling language and politics through language. Language has a lot of bandwidth, more than you'd think -- his suggestion is to remove half the bandwidth by speaking overly simply, but the bandwidth is there whether or not you want to use it, and if you don't use it, the content that isn't there will have artifacts imposed upon it.

Plus, Kurt Vonnegut's novels give a good example of using the full bandwidth while seeming like you're not using much at all. William Gibson's novels are a good example of using half the bandwidth while seeming like you're using several hundred times the maximum.

[Honey]

Every so often I like to re-read this essay.  I also appreciated the replies above about it.

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 towards political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. . . .

Each of these passages has faults of its own, but quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of WORDS chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of PHRASES tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house. I list below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks by means of which the work of prose-construction is habitually dodged: . . .

-DYING METAPHORS. A newly-invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image.
-OPERATORS, or VERBAL FALSE LIMBS. These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry.
-PRETENTIOUS DICTION.
-MEANINGLESS WORDS.  Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like MARSHAL PÉTAIN WAS A TRUE PATRIOT, THE SOVIET PRESS IS THE FREEST IN THE WORLD, THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS OPPOSED TO PERSECUTION, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: CLASS, TOTALITARIAN, SCIENCE, PROGRESSIVE, REACTIONARY BOURGEOIS, EQUALITY.

. . .   As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. . . .

I think the following rules will cover most cases:

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are
used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you
can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous.

These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English, but one could not write the kind of stuff that I quoted in these five specimens at the beginning of this article.

I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought. Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political quietism. Since you don't know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language-and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists--is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase--some JACKBOOT, ACHILLES' HEEL, HOTBED, MELTING POT, ACID TEST, VERITABLE INFERNO or other lump of verbal refuse--into the dustbin where it belongs.

If someone were to ask me to summarize 1984 in 1 sentence it would be (quoted above):
(He was) not considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought.

Someone pointed me toward the article below.  It made me think, amongst other things, of Politics and the English Language by George Orwell.

Idiom Shortage Leaves Nation All Sewed Up In Horse Pies

WASHINGTON—A crippling idiom shortage that has left millions of Americans struggling to express themselves spread like tugboat hens throughout the U.S. mainland Tuesday in an unparalleled lingual crisis that now has the entire country six winks short of an icicle.

Since beginning two weeks ago, the deficit in these vernacular phrases has affected nearly every English speaker on the continent, making it virtually impossible to communicate symbolic ideas through a series of words that do not individually share the same meaning as the group of words as a whole. In what many are calling a cast-iron piano tune unlike any on record, idiomatic expression has been devastated nationwide.

Related Media
"This is an absolute oyster carnival," said Harvard University linguistics professor Dr. Howard Albright, who noted that the 2008 idiom shortage has been the country's worst.  I don't know any other way to describe it."

Albright said that citizens in the South and West have been hit by the dearth of idioms like babies bite the bedpost, with people in those colorful expression–heavy regions unable to speak about anything related to rain storms, misers, sensations associated with nervousness, difficult or ironic predicaments, surprise at a younger relative's rapid increase in height, or love. In some areas, what few idioms remain are being bartered or sold at exorbitant prices. And, Albright claims, unless something is done before long to dry out the cinnamon jars, residents of Texas may soon cease speaking altogether.

"These people are desperate," said Albright, gesturing with his hands to indicate the severity of the problem there.  We've never seen anything like it. Some are being forced to choose between feeding their family and praising especially talented professional athletes. It's as if—it's really—it is bad."

With an emergency measure to release a pepper-stack of backup idioms into everyday speech still being debated in committee, Congress has been criticized for its inability to respond to the crisis. Moreover, a number of Beltway insiders have accused members of both houses of abusing their positions to gain access to hundreds of 1920s-era idioms that have been kept in reserve for decades.

"Well, bully," said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), who claimed that the Capitol was not expecting a shipment of fresh idioms for weeks. "Americans have to collar all their jive, and take us cats at our word: Everything's copacetic, daddy-o, so don't flip your lids."

The White House has not yet issued a comment on the crisis.

While it has been difficult to determine the overall mood of average Americans, anecdotal evidence points to a growing discontent that ranges from trudging down the pudding skin to outright anger. In Philadelphia, 71-year-old Melvin Hatcher said he has found himself "egg-hooked" in conversation on a daily basis.

"These politicians want us to believe that throwing a few mud thrones at the problem is going to make it go away," said Hatcher, a retired African-American boxing trainer and World War II veteran. "They can make all the promises they want, but they will always remain a collection of deceitful people, if you'll pardon the expression."

Authorities said they expect the shortage to subside by April, but in the meantime, they urge citizens to skip shy the rickshaw until such time as the flypaper marigolds have a chance to waterfall—with or without a pole dragon's cottage—unless the cork and the bubble-truck tumble from the mountaintop, at which point, of course, old birds could light up every tuba tent and walleyed river king from 44 to the roller coaster.

« The Onion | February 29, 2008
http://mobile.theonion.com/content/node/74896

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

 

[Kai]

O.o

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

One of the funniest and most on-topic things I've read in weeks.