POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

 AUTHOR/ESSAY BACKGROUND : Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950),  better known by his pen name George Orwell, was a British author and journalist. His work is marked by keen intelligence and wit, a profound awareness of social injustice, an intense, revolutionary opposition to totalitarianism, a passion for clarity in language and a belief in democratic socialism.Considered perhaps the twentieth century's best chronicler of English culture, Orwell wrote fiction, polemical journalism, literary criticism and poetry. He is best known for the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (published in 1949) and the satirical novella Animal Farm (1945). They have together sold more copies than any two books by any other twentieth-century author. His Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences as a volunteer on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War, together with his numerous essays on politics, literature, language and culture, are widely acclaimed.Orwell's influence on contemporary culture, popular and political, continues. Several of his neologisms, along with the term Orwellian, now a byword for any draconian or manipulative social phenomenon or concept inimical to a free society, have entered the vernacular.During his lifetime he was well known for the political positions he laid out in his essays. Orwell demonstrates that political writing need not be narrowly topical - it can speak to enduring issues and concerns.


CENTRAL IDEA :  underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.


PATTERN OF DEVELOPMENT : This essay follows an argumentative format.

 “Politics and the English Language” (510).

    Politics and the English language, written by George Orwell, is an argumentative essay that argues against the forms and methods in which English language seen in political writings and speeches  is been modernized and fashioned just for desired purposes. Orwell explains how our thoughts most times happen to cause this fashioned-language creation, describing that our thoughts are foolish and so therefore leads to the negligence in such language, For example “a man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks”. According to him, neglecting these habits/thoughts and start thinking clearly will lead to political regeneration.

      In his essay he picks out five passages to display mental vices from which political writings now suffer from.  From the passage he states that there are two qualities common to the five passages .they are staleness of imagery and lack of precision. He states that the reason for which writings are of those two qualities is based on the writer himself, either he has a meaning and cannot express it, or in a different kind of way says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. 

    Means of which the work of prose-construction is habitually dodged
1.    Dying metaphors e.g. stand shoulder to shoulder with.

2.    Operators or verbal false limbs e.g. cannot be left out of account.

3.    Pretentious diction: e.g. phenomenon, element, liquidate are used to give simple statements an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgments.

4.    Meaningless words e.g.  Sentimental, natural. 

More Causes.

1.    Modern translation. For example…..

     I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

     In modern English: 

     Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

First sentence:?

Second sentence:?

2.    Defense of the indefensible:  why?

Rules to rely on:

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

2.    Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3.    If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4.    Never use the passive where you can use the active.

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

6.    Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.


In conclusion he quotes:

       “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”.