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Politics and the English Language
"Politics and the English Language" (1946) is an essay by George Orwell that criticises the "ugly and inaccurate" written English of his time and examines the connection between political orthodoxies and the debasement of language. The essay focuses on political language, which, according to Orwell, "is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." Orwell believed that the language used was necessarily vague or meaningless because it was intended to hide the truth rather than express it.
20 pages, ebook
First published April 1, 1946
About the author
George Orwell
1,211 books44.2k followersEric Arthur Blair, better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist. His work is marked by keen intelligence and wit, a profound awareness of social injustice, an intense opposition to totalitarianism, a passion for clarity in language, and a belief in democratic socialism.
In addition to his literary career Orwell served as a police officer with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma from 1922-1927 and fought with the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War from 1936-1937. Orwell was severely wounded when he was shot through his throat. Later the organization that he had joined when he joined the Republican cause, The Workers Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), was painted by the pro-Soviet Communists as a Trotskyist organization (Trotsky was Joseph Stalin's enemy) and disbanded. Orwell and his wife were accused of "rabid Trotskyism" and tried in absentia in Barcelona, along with other leaders of the POUM, in 1938. However by then they had escaped from Spain and returned to England.
Between 1941 and 1943, Orwell worked on propaganda for the BBC. In 1943, he became literary editor of the Tribune, a weekly left-wing magazine. He was a prolific polemical journalist, article writer, literary critic, reviewer, poet, and writer of fiction, and, considered perhaps the twentieth century's best chronicler of English culture.
Orwell 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 1938 book Homage to Catalonia, an account of his experiences as a volunteer on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War, together with numerous essays on politics, literature, language, and culture, have been widely acclaimed.
Orwell's influence on contemporary culture, popular and political, continues decades after his death. Several of his neologisms, along with the term "Orwellian" — now a byword for any oppressive or manipulative social phenomenon opposed to a free society — have entered the vernacular.
In addition to his literary career Orwell served as a police officer with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma from 1922-1927 and fought with the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War from 1936-1937. Orwell was severely wounded when he was shot through his throat. Later the organization that he had joined when he joined the Republican cause, The Workers Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), was painted by the pro-Soviet Communists as a Trotskyist organization (Trotsky was Joseph Stalin's enemy) and disbanded. Orwell and his wife were accused of "rabid Trotskyism" and tried in absentia in Barcelona, along with other leaders of the POUM, in 1938. However by then they had escaped from Spain and returned to England.
Between 1941 and 1943, Orwell worked on propaganda for the BBC. In 1943, he became literary editor of the Tribune, a weekly left-wing magazine. He was a prolific polemical journalist, article writer, literary critic, reviewer, poet, and writer of fiction, and, considered perhaps the twentieth century's best chronicler of English culture.
Orwell 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 1938 book Homage to Catalonia, an account of his experiences as a volunteer on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War, together with numerous essays on politics, literature, language, and culture, have been widely acclaimed.
Orwell's influence on contemporary culture, popular and political, continues decades after his death. Several of his neologisms, along with the term "Orwellian" — now a byword for any oppressive or manipulative social phenomenon opposed to a free society — have entered the vernacular.
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January 20, 2023
Note the first word of the title: Politics. It's important.
“If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
This essay demonstrates how political writers use language to persuade, dissemble, and deceive, and conversely, how to write factual information in a way that is honest and clear. It is also a rant that is easily misapplied to perpetuate prescriptive nonsense, regardless of context. It’s a muddle.
I hate the opening:
“Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way.”
‘twas ever thus, going back to Chaucer and before.
But there are important and memorable examples and some good advice amid the angry fluff.
2016, 2017, and 1984
I revised this review when the UK was bombarded from all sides with vague, contradictory, and false arguments about the EU referendum. I amend it again in Trump’s new age of "Alternative Facts".
Nevertheless, 1984 has a far more powerful message. See my detailed review HERE - also recently updated.
Language to Persuade, Dissemble, and Deceive
“Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind… Writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic colour.”
“A demagogue must be neither an educated nor an honest man; he has to be an ignoramus and a rogue.” Demosthenes
Orwell sees “staleness of imagery” and “lack of precision” as common problems, especially in political writing. He says these are exacerbated by a trend from concreteness to abstraction, and a profusion of overly complex words and stock phrases, of which he gives many examples. The effects include being able to:
* “Dress up a simple statement and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgements.”
* “Dignify the sordid process of international politics.”
* “Give an air of culture and elegance.”
And yet for all that he wants concreteness, he advises
“Let the meaning choose the word… put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations”.
Other quotes:
“When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”
“Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’.... It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it… Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way.”
“Political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible… Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.”
The Infamous Six Rules
Unfortunately, many people focus on five of the six rules near the end and try to apply them regardless of context. That was not Orwell's intention, which is why he didn't follow them slavishly in his own writing: not in this essay, and not even this list. In fact, he explicitly states:
" 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. "
He also says:
“It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one's meaning clear.”
For the record, those rules (which he explicitly says are NOT for literary contexts) are:
(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 outright barbarous.
Rewriting this essay, let alone any of Orwell's novels, according to these six rules would have odd and sometimes ugly results.
To counter a rigid application of the six rules:
* Arrant Pedantry debunking grammar myths
* Prof Pullum’s take-down
Humour?
Orwell is self-aware enough to pre-empt the most obvious criticism:
“Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against.”
He was surely being satirical when he criticised writing in which “the passive voice is wherever possible used”. The passive isn’t always evil or confusing.
Orwell has particular ire for the “not un-” formation, which means “banal statements are given an appearance of profundity”. He suggests curing oneself of it by memorizing this sentence:
“A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field.”
Read the Essay
You can read the whole thing (12 pages), free, HERE.
Read Orwell's Review of Mein Kampf
You can read it (1 page), free, HERE. It includes mention of the use of photos as well as words.
"Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people 'I offer you a good time,' Hitler has said to them 'I offer you struggle, danger and death,' and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet."
Read about 21st Century Political Language
* Steven Pool's Unspeak: How Words Become Weapons, How Weapons Become a Message, and How That Message Becomes Reality from 2006, which I reviewed HERE.
* Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, which I reviewed HERE.
“If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
This essay demonstrates how political writers use language to persuade, dissemble, and deceive, and conversely, how to write factual information in a way that is honest and clear. It is also a rant that is easily misapplied to perpetuate prescriptive nonsense, regardless of context. It’s a muddle.
I hate the opening:
“Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way.”
‘twas ever thus, going back to Chaucer and before.
But there are important and memorable examples and some good advice amid the angry fluff.
2016, 2017, and 1984
I revised this review when the UK was bombarded from all sides with vague, contradictory, and false arguments about the EU referendum. I amend it again in Trump’s new age of "Alternative Facts".
Nevertheless, 1984 has a far more powerful message. See my detailed review HERE - also recently updated.
Language to Persuade, Dissemble, and Deceive
“Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind… Writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic colour.”
“A demagogue must be neither an educated nor an honest man; he has to be an ignoramus and a rogue.” Demosthenes
Orwell sees “staleness of imagery” and “lack of precision” as common problems, especially in political writing. He says these are exacerbated by a trend from concreteness to abstraction, and a profusion of overly complex words and stock phrases, of which he gives many examples. The effects include being able to:
* “Dress up a simple statement and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgements.”
* “Dignify the sordid process of international politics.”
* “Give an air of culture and elegance.”
And yet for all that he wants concreteness, he advises
“Let the meaning choose the word… put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations”.
Other quotes:
“When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”
“Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’.... It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it… Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way.”
“Political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible… Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.”
The Infamous Six Rules
Unfortunately, many people focus on five of the six rules near the end and try to apply them regardless of context. That was not Orwell's intention, which is why he didn't follow them slavishly in his own writing: not in this essay, and not even this list. In fact, he explicitly states:
" 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. "
He also says:
“It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one's meaning clear.”
For the record, those rules (which he explicitly says are NOT for literary contexts) are:
(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 outright barbarous.
Rewriting this essay, let alone any of Orwell's novels, according to these six rules would have odd and sometimes ugly results.
To counter a rigid application of the six rules:
* Arrant Pedantry debunking grammar myths
* Prof Pullum’s take-down
Humour?
Orwell is self-aware enough to pre-empt the most obvious criticism:
“Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against.”
He was surely being satirical when he criticised writing in which “the passive voice is wherever possible used”. The passive isn’t always evil or confusing.
Orwell has particular ire for the “not un-” formation, which means “banal statements are given an appearance of profundity”. He suggests curing oneself of it by memorizing this sentence:
“A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field.”
Read the Essay
You can read the whole thing (12 pages), free, HERE.
Read Orwell's Review of Mein Kampf
You can read it (1 page), free, HERE. It includes mention of the use of photos as well as words.
"Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people 'I offer you a good time,' Hitler has said to them 'I offer you struggle, danger and death,' and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet."
Read about 21st Century Political Language
* Steven Pool's Unspeak: How Words Become Weapons, How Weapons Become a Message, and How That Message Becomes Reality from 2006, which I reviewed HERE.
* Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, which I reviewed HERE.
June 27, 2014
This was an insightful and relevant lesson about the usage and analysis of English language in the Political context. Orwell with his sharp wit and influential prose has given us enough food for thought to mull over. It’s possible that next time while reading a newspaper or watching news channels, you’ll find yourself forming a critique about the manipulation of facts and trivializing of important matters in today’s times.
Here are some quotes which I found particularly wonderful:
- In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a ‘party line’. In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, ‘I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so’. Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:
‘While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.’
- The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. Politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.
April 17, 2024
“Political language”, says George Orwell: “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”.
Very true, we might say, and nod sagely with an air of cynicism. Inwardly we think there is a grain of truth in this, and that George Orwell is exaggerating for our entertainment, by using metaphors to describe what we know to be politicians’ typical “white lies”. But think of some of the phrases used in world politics, such as the “transfer of population” or “rectification of frontiers” or even the chilling “elimination of unreliable elements”. This is what George Orwell tells us can be the end product of such “white lies”. Whenever the language used is vague and unspecific, that is because it is intended to hide the truth about the atrocities committed, rather than express it honestly. This travestied use of language makes us shudder. Not in our country, we think. And particularly not in the party we support.
But we are surrounded by inaccurate use of language. We may not intend to hide the truth, but when surrounded by such debased language, our thoughts become unclear. Then in a vicious circle, this further degrades the language we use. George Orwell says that this vagueness spreads like a “contagion”. He criticises the “ugly and inaccurate” written English he sees, arguing for concreteness and clarity instead of vagueness.
Politics and the English Language is one of George Orwell’s best-known essays. It was first published in the April 1946 issue of “Horizon”, having been turned down for “Contact” magazine. It was his last major article for the journal, and was published almost simultaneously with another of his essays: “The Prevention of Literature”. “Animal Farm” had been published the previous year. George Orwell was working full out, but was seriously ill, and desperate to get away from London to the island of Jura, Scotland, where he wanted to start work on his next novel: “Nineteen Eighty-Four”. This masterpiece sadly proved to be his last novel. The themes in Politics and the English Language clearly anticipate George Orwell’s development of “Newspeak” in “Nineteen Eighty-Four”.
Both this essay and “The Prevention of Literature” reflect George Orwell’s concern with truth, and how truth depends upon the use of language. But this one is not merely about the language of politics, as is sometimes inferred from the title, but about the misuse of language in all areas. Perhaps a more exact title might be “Politics as a Component of the English Language”, but admittedly this is rather wordy. Politics and the English Language may well be George Orwell’s most often misquoted essay. George Orwell probably never envisaged how his words might be used as memes, by those of any political persuasion, and taken to justify the very sort of processes which he abhorred.
The most common use of the word “politics” is in party politics, defined in the dictionary as “the activities associated with the governance of a country or area, especially the debate between parties having power.” But there is another dictionary definition: “the principles relating to or inherent in a sphere or activity, especially when concerned with power and status”. We talk of “playing politics”. This meaning is derogatory, and refers to the choosing of specific words with the deliberate intention to deceive and corrupt thoughts and actions. This is what George Orwell wants us to be aware of, both in others and in ourselves. He goes on to examine the connection between political orthodoxies and the debasement of language, identifying a link between the degraded English language of his time, and the degraded political situation of the 1940s.
George Orwell looks closely at the words we use, and observes that often we do not choose specific words for their exact meanings. As he says, our conversations are often a series of stock phrases jammed together:
“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.”
Even in our daily speech, it is easier to pick a platitude. We are inclined to use a comfortable familiar phrase, rather then create our sentences afresh, carefully choosing the precise meaning of words. But this is lazy, can lead to misunderstandings, and also can lead to muddled thinking.
George Orwell then gives five examples of what he considers to be bad writing. With typical fairness, he has selected them from across the spectrum of writing. They are by the English political theorist and economist Harold Laski, the English experimental zoologist and medical statistician Lancelot Hogben, an essay on psychology by the American writer on social criticism Paul Goodman (which he calls “simply meaningless”), a communist pamphlet which he dismisses as “an accumulation of stale phrases”, and a reader’s letter in the newspaper “Tribune”, in which he scornfully says “words and meaning have parted company”. He draws attention to two faults which all five passages share: staleness of imagery and lack of precision. It could be that the writers of these passages had a clear meaning to convey, but were unable to express it clearly, or it could be they simply didn’t care whether they communicated any particular meaning at all: they were simply saying things for the sake of it.
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”
George Orwell identifies this as a common problem in the current political writing of his time. He then elaborates on the key faults of modern English prose, namely:
Dying Metaphors:
These are the figures of speech which writers lazily reach for, even though such phrases are worn-out and can no longer convey a vivid image. George Orwell cites a number of examples, including “ring the changes”, “no axe to grind”, “Achilles’ heel”, “hotbed” and “swansong”. His objection to such dying metaphors is that writers use them without even thinking about what the phrases actually mean, such as when people misuse “toe the line” instead writing it as “tow the line”, indicating that they have an incorrect visual image in their mind. Mixing metaphors, too, happens because people are not thinking clearly and are not interested in what those images evoke.
I have included two of his original metaphors in brief quotations: the “prefabricated henhouse” and a “cuttlefish spurting ink”. In both cases George Orwell has invented them for the specific point he wants to make, rather than reaching for some tired old metaphor. These grab our attention, and help us remember the point.
Operators or Verbal False Limbs:
This is when a longer and rather vague phrase is used in place of a one-word verb, which would be more direct. For example: “make contact with someone”, instead of “contact” someone. Another is the artificial construction of “not un_”. Something might be said to be “not unclear” rather then simply “clear”. The extra words are annoying and pointless. The passive voice is also common, for example: “by examination of” instead “examining”. To use the passive voice is less direct.
An example on Goodreads is the rather odd convention of speaking of oneself in the third person, as if one were writing a reference. Perhaps members who are also authors believe this adds a more professional, objective tone, but when it is clearly written by a person describing themselves, the effect is most odd.
Another example is the newsletters or “round robins”, families increasingly send to their friends and relations. These are intended as chatty informative letters, designed to share news of what they have been up to since the previous year’s. They are often sent within Christmas cards, or at the end of the calendar year. I have heard these referred to as “boasting letters”, as proud parents tell of all the exams, and successes their children have made, news of latest acquisitions, foreign holidays, and so on. They are written in the passive voice, so they read more like company reports: a boring list such as “Alex is continuing his computer studies”, “little Laura learned to play the bassoon” and “darling Desmond starred in the school play again”. The parents might be added at the end as an afterthought, by their first name, but this does not always happen. Invariably though, who actually wrote the letter remains a mystery. It is a disembodied voice.
George Orwell says that in these cases where the third person is used, the thought or idea being conveyed is not particularly striking, and the sentences are saved from fizzling out by largely meaningless closing platitudes such as “greatly to be desired” or “brought to a satisfactory conclusion”. We have probably seem examples of this in letters from companies, committees or in government plans. (Personal “round robins” have their own commonly used excruciating endings too, of which I probably don’t need to give examples.)
Pretentious Diction:
George Orwell draws attention to several areas where the author or speaker is merely being pretentious. He maintains that words such as “objective”, “basis”, and “eliminate” are chosen to dress up simple statements, in order to make the author’s subjective opinion sound like scientific fact. Adjectives like “epic”, “historic”, and “inevitable” are used about international politics, while writing which glorifies war is full of old-fashioned words like “realm”, “throne”, and “sword”. Foreign words, or Latin and phrases such as “deus ex machina” and “mutatis mutandis” are used to convey an air of culture and elegance. Many literary English writers will select Latin or Greek words in the belief that they are “grander” than the more direct Anglo-Saxon ones. George Orwell gives examples of such Latinate words as “expedite” and “ameliorate” scathingly decrying their use as pretentious. He gives these examples as further proof of the “slovenliness and vagueness” which he detects in modern political prose.
My personal bugbear here is the overuse of Latinate words in the American Education system, such as “summa cum laude” instead of simply saying “honours”. The use of Latin, bafflingly seems to persist in describing aspects of American schools, although the language itself rarely seems to be taught. Then there are the American Greek-letter organisations, the “fraternities and sororities”. George Orwell does not go into American English in this essay, but I do believe he too would be irritated by such pretentious terms. The oldest and most traditional of universities, founded in 1214, Oxford University sees no need to use Latin in order to artificially inflate the importance of their awards. Contrary to common UK practice, Oxford University does not even award bachelor’s degrees (B.A.) with honours, although they are considered “to have achieved honours status”.
I also believe that George Orwell may be astounded at our modern job descriptions in the UK and other countries: particularly any which you have to mentally translate to yourself into simple language. Genuine examples include “Beverage Dissemination Officer” (bartender), “Associate to the Executive Manager of Marketing and Conservation efforts” (sales assistant) and “Pneumatic device and machine optimizer” (factory worker). Such overly grand titles are merely ridiculous.
Meaningless Words:
We all come across this type of language, and some words lend themselves to being used without any meaning at all, out of context. George Orwell argues that:
“In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.”
I too have come across overly verbose and opinionated books of art criticism, full of words such as “living”, or “romantic”. I would add “beautiful”, “luminous” and “spiritual” as other words overused in art criticism. He identifies the word “fascism”, as losing all meaning in the political writing of his time, effectively meaning “something not desirable”. Modern usage of the word “fascist” as a derogatory expletive has proved his point!
To illustrate meaningless prose, George Orwell rewrites a passage from the Holy Bible (Ecclesiastes 9:11) putting it into modern English, complete with all our contemporary vagueness of language, saying: “The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness.” He draws attention to the everyday images such as the words “bread” and “riches” in the original Bible passage, and the lack of any such images in his own rendering in the modern idiom. The problem, he says, is that it is too easy, and too tempting, to reach for these off-the-peg phrases, rather than to be direct, original and precise in our own speech and writing.
George Orwell advises every writer to ask themselves four simple questions:
1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? and
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
He then suggests two further optional questions:
1. Could I put it more shortly? and
2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?
Political orthodoxy, he observes, encourages a “lifeless, imitative style”. It is a rebellious act to not parrot the “party line”, and to write in a more clear and direct style. This is because such obfuscating language serves a purpose:
“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.”
He points to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan, which was just one year earlier. Describing it in a euphemistic way means that the ordinary reader will find it more palatable. If your aim is to make such atrocities excusable, it is better to use language which does not evoke any horrific clear mental image, for example the burning bodies in Hiroshima. He indicates too, the continuance of British rule in India, and the Russian purges and deportations. Because the truth is too “brutal” for most people to face, and does not square with the professed aims of political parties:
“political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness”.
No doubt George Orwell would be saddened to know that his analysis remains relevant today. We can easily think of events and examples from our own time.
Anyone writing under a dictatorship evidently cannot write or speak freely, but we also see another important truth. Those defending totalitarian rule in any country, have to bend and abuse language in order to make ugly truths sound more attractive to the general public. A modern euphemism we see popping up is the phrase “collateral damage”. This is a highly objectionable phrase used about war, which hides the ugly reality. George Orwell would understand as we do, that this refers to civilians: ordinary people who are the innocent victims of violence, but who—we are implicitly told—are somehow viewed as a justifiable price to pay for the “greater good” of the ruling regime.
George Orwell argues that just as thought corrupts language, language can corrupt thought, with these ready-made phrases preventing writers from expressing anything meaningful or original. We should get rid of any word which has outworn its usefulness and should aim to use “the fewest and shortest words that will cover one’s meaning”. The meaning should choose the word, rather than vice versa.
He concludes Politics and the English Language with six rules for everyone to follow in any writing which is intended to communicate clearly:
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.
He stipulates that these rules are not intended to include any works of poetry, or where a particular effect is intended in literary writing, emphasising that he is not “considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought”.
I personally think they are excellent rules, and realise that I consciously observe all but the first one, which had not really occurred to me. I have spent many years, in different contexts, simplifying language making sure to convey the original meaning, without all the waffle. What I admire most about George Orwell’s nonfiction writing, is his clarity of thought and expression.
In fact my opening sentence was going to be “What many people admire most …”, and so on, but I realised that that would be inadvertently using one of the devices George Orwell talks about in this essay. I would be artificially inflating my first statement, in order to add a veneer of authenticity. Hopefully I have got through this piece without breaking too many of his essential rules for communication. But after all, they are just aims to bear in mind. As George Orwell himself says:
“Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against.”
He knew that this is a little idealistic. Nevertheless my default with for example, reviews on Goodreads, is to simplify and distil the facts, and opinions. Would that this was everyone’s aim in writing them, or in composing any document whose purpose is to inform. It is not only with political prose that we all need to be more self-questioning. But hopefully we will never be guilty of writing what George Orwell identifies in contemporary political writers, as a “catalogue of swindles and perversions”. We just need to be aware of the temptation to use meaningless or hackneyed phrases, which George Orwell warns us are like a “packet of aspirins always at one’s elbow”.
Very true, we might say, and nod sagely with an air of cynicism. Inwardly we think there is a grain of truth in this, and that George Orwell is exaggerating for our entertainment, by using metaphors to describe what we know to be politicians’ typical “white lies”. But think of some of the phrases used in world politics, such as the “transfer of population” or “rectification of frontiers” or even the chilling “elimination of unreliable elements”. This is what George Orwell tells us can be the end product of such “white lies”. Whenever the language used is vague and unspecific, that is because it is intended to hide the truth about the atrocities committed, rather than express it honestly. This travestied use of language makes us shudder. Not in our country, we think. And particularly not in the party we support.
But we are surrounded by inaccurate use of language. We may not intend to hide the truth, but when surrounded by such debased language, our thoughts become unclear. Then in a vicious circle, this further degrades the language we use. George Orwell says that this vagueness spreads like a “contagion”. He criticises the “ugly and inaccurate” written English he sees, arguing for concreteness and clarity instead of vagueness.
Politics and the English Language is one of George Orwell’s best-known essays. It was first published in the April 1946 issue of “Horizon”, having been turned down for “Contact” magazine. It was his last major article for the journal, and was published almost simultaneously with another of his essays: “The Prevention of Literature”. “Animal Farm” had been published the previous year. George Orwell was working full out, but was seriously ill, and desperate to get away from London to the island of Jura, Scotland, where he wanted to start work on his next novel: “Nineteen Eighty-Four”. This masterpiece sadly proved to be his last novel. The themes in Politics and the English Language clearly anticipate George Orwell’s development of “Newspeak” in “Nineteen Eighty-Four”.
Both this essay and “The Prevention of Literature” reflect George Orwell’s concern with truth, and how truth depends upon the use of language. But this one is not merely about the language of politics, as is sometimes inferred from the title, but about the misuse of language in all areas. Perhaps a more exact title might be “Politics as a Component of the English Language”, but admittedly this is rather wordy. Politics and the English Language may well be George Orwell’s most often misquoted essay. George Orwell probably never envisaged how his words might be used as memes, by those of any political persuasion, and taken to justify the very sort of processes which he abhorred.
The most common use of the word “politics” is in party politics, defined in the dictionary as “the activities associated with the governance of a country or area, especially the debate between parties having power.” But there is another dictionary definition: “the principles relating to or inherent in a sphere or activity, especially when concerned with power and status”. We talk of “playing politics”. This meaning is derogatory, and refers to the choosing of specific words with the deliberate intention to deceive and corrupt thoughts and actions. This is what George Orwell wants us to be aware of, both in others and in ourselves. He goes on to examine the connection between political orthodoxies and the debasement of language, identifying a link between the degraded English language of his time, and the degraded political situation of the 1940s.
George Orwell looks closely at the words we use, and observes that often we do not choose specific words for their exact meanings. As he says, our conversations are often a series of stock phrases jammed together:
“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.”
Even in our daily speech, it is easier to pick a platitude. We are inclined to use a comfortable familiar phrase, rather then create our sentences afresh, carefully choosing the precise meaning of words. But this is lazy, can lead to misunderstandings, and also can lead to muddled thinking.
George Orwell then gives five examples of what he considers to be bad writing. With typical fairness, he has selected them from across the spectrum of writing. They are by the English political theorist and economist Harold Laski, the English experimental zoologist and medical statistician Lancelot Hogben, an essay on psychology by the American writer on social criticism Paul Goodman (which he calls “simply meaningless”), a communist pamphlet which he dismisses as “an accumulation of stale phrases”, and a reader’s letter in the newspaper “Tribune”, in which he scornfully says “words and meaning have parted company”. He draws attention to two faults which all five passages share: staleness of imagery and lack of precision. It could be that the writers of these passages had a clear meaning to convey, but were unable to express it clearly, or it could be they simply didn’t care whether they communicated any particular meaning at all: they were simply saying things for the sake of it.
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”
George Orwell identifies this as a common problem in the current political writing of his time. He then elaborates on the key faults of modern English prose, namely:
Dying Metaphors:
These are the figures of speech which writers lazily reach for, even though such phrases are worn-out and can no longer convey a vivid image. George Orwell cites a number of examples, including “ring the changes”, “no axe to grind”, “Achilles’ heel”, “hotbed” and “swansong”. His objection to such dying metaphors is that writers use them without even thinking about what the phrases actually mean, such as when people misuse “toe the line” instead writing it as “tow the line”, indicating that they have an incorrect visual image in their mind. Mixing metaphors, too, happens because people are not thinking clearly and are not interested in what those images evoke.
I have included two of his original metaphors in brief quotations: the “prefabricated henhouse” and a “cuttlefish spurting ink”. In both cases George Orwell has invented them for the specific point he wants to make, rather than reaching for some tired old metaphor. These grab our attention, and help us remember the point.
Operators or Verbal False Limbs:
This is when a longer and rather vague phrase is used in place of a one-word verb, which would be more direct. For example: “make contact with someone”, instead of “contact” someone. Another is the artificial construction of “not un_”. Something might be said to be “not unclear” rather then simply “clear”. The extra words are annoying and pointless. The passive voice is also common, for example: “by examination of” instead “examining”. To use the passive voice is less direct.
An example on Goodreads is the rather odd convention of speaking of oneself in the third person, as if one were writing a reference. Perhaps members who are also authors believe this adds a more professional, objective tone, but when it is clearly written by a person describing themselves, the effect is most odd.
Another example is the newsletters or “round robins”, families increasingly send to their friends and relations. These are intended as chatty informative letters, designed to share news of what they have been up to since the previous year’s. They are often sent within Christmas cards, or at the end of the calendar year. I have heard these referred to as “boasting letters”, as proud parents tell of all the exams, and successes their children have made, news of latest acquisitions, foreign holidays, and so on. They are written in the passive voice, so they read more like company reports: a boring list such as “Alex is continuing his computer studies”, “little Laura learned to play the bassoon” and “darling Desmond starred in the school play again”. The parents might be added at the end as an afterthought, by their first name, but this does not always happen. Invariably though, who actually wrote the letter remains a mystery. It is a disembodied voice.
George Orwell says that in these cases where the third person is used, the thought or idea being conveyed is not particularly striking, and the sentences are saved from fizzling out by largely meaningless closing platitudes such as “greatly to be desired” or “brought to a satisfactory conclusion”. We have probably seem examples of this in letters from companies, committees or in government plans. (Personal “round robins” have their own commonly used excruciating endings too, of which I probably don’t need to give examples.)
Pretentious Diction:
George Orwell draws attention to several areas where the author or speaker is merely being pretentious. He maintains that words such as “objective”, “basis”, and “eliminate” are chosen to dress up simple statements, in order to make the author’s subjective opinion sound like scientific fact. Adjectives like “epic”, “historic”, and “inevitable” are used about international politics, while writing which glorifies war is full of old-fashioned words like “realm”, “throne”, and “sword”. Foreign words, or Latin and phrases such as “deus ex machina” and “mutatis mutandis” are used to convey an air of culture and elegance. Many literary English writers will select Latin or Greek words in the belief that they are “grander” than the more direct Anglo-Saxon ones. George Orwell gives examples of such Latinate words as “expedite” and “ameliorate” scathingly decrying their use as pretentious. He gives these examples as further proof of the “slovenliness and vagueness” which he detects in modern political prose.
My personal bugbear here is the overuse of Latinate words in the American Education system, such as “summa cum laude” instead of simply saying “honours”. The use of Latin, bafflingly seems to persist in describing aspects of American schools, although the language itself rarely seems to be taught. Then there are the American Greek-letter organisations, the “fraternities and sororities”. George Orwell does not go into American English in this essay, but I do believe he too would be irritated by such pretentious terms. The oldest and most traditional of universities, founded in 1214, Oxford University sees no need to use Latin in order to artificially inflate the importance of their awards. Contrary to common UK practice, Oxford University does not even award bachelor’s degrees (B.A.) with honours, although they are considered “to have achieved honours status”.
I also believe that George Orwell may be astounded at our modern job descriptions in the UK and other countries: particularly any which you have to mentally translate to yourself into simple language. Genuine examples include “Beverage Dissemination Officer” (bartender), “Associate to the Executive Manager of Marketing and Conservation efforts” (sales assistant) and “Pneumatic device and machine optimizer” (factory worker). Such overly grand titles are merely ridiculous.
Meaningless Words:
We all come across this type of language, and some words lend themselves to being used without any meaning at all, out of context. George Orwell argues that:
“In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.”
I too have come across overly verbose and opinionated books of art criticism, full of words such as “living”, or “romantic”. I would add “beautiful”, “luminous” and “spiritual” as other words overused in art criticism. He identifies the word “fascism”, as losing all meaning in the political writing of his time, effectively meaning “something not desirable”. Modern usage of the word “fascist” as a derogatory expletive has proved his point!
To illustrate meaningless prose, George Orwell rewrites a passage from the Holy Bible (Ecclesiastes 9:11) putting it into modern English, complete with all our contemporary vagueness of language, saying: “The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness.” He draws attention to the everyday images such as the words “bread” and “riches” in the original Bible passage, and the lack of any such images in his own rendering in the modern idiom. The problem, he says, is that it is too easy, and too tempting, to reach for these off-the-peg phrases, rather than to be direct, original and precise in our own speech and writing.
George Orwell advises every writer to ask themselves four simple questions:
1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? and
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
He then suggests two further optional questions:
1. Could I put it more shortly? and
2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?
Political orthodoxy, he observes, encourages a “lifeless, imitative style”. It is a rebellious act to not parrot the “party line”, and to write in a more clear and direct style. This is because such obfuscating language serves a purpose:
“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.”
He points to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan, which was just one year earlier. Describing it in a euphemistic way means that the ordinary reader will find it more palatable. If your aim is to make such atrocities excusable, it is better to use language which does not evoke any horrific clear mental image, for example the burning bodies in Hiroshima. He indicates too, the continuance of British rule in India, and the Russian purges and deportations. Because the truth is too “brutal” for most people to face, and does not square with the professed aims of political parties:
“political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness”.
No doubt George Orwell would be saddened to know that his analysis remains relevant today. We can easily think of events and examples from our own time.
Anyone writing under a dictatorship evidently cannot write or speak freely, but we also see another important truth. Those defending totalitarian rule in any country, have to bend and abuse language in order to make ugly truths sound more attractive to the general public. A modern euphemism we see popping up is the phrase “collateral damage”. This is a highly objectionable phrase used about war, which hides the ugly reality. George Orwell would understand as we do, that this refers to civilians: ordinary people who are the innocent victims of violence, but who—we are implicitly told—are somehow viewed as a justifiable price to pay for the “greater good” of the ruling regime.
George Orwell argues that just as thought corrupts language, language can corrupt thought, with these ready-made phrases preventing writers from expressing anything meaningful or original. We should get rid of any word which has outworn its usefulness and should aim to use “the fewest and shortest words that will cover one’s meaning”. The meaning should choose the word, rather than vice versa.
He concludes Politics and the English Language with six rules for everyone to follow in any writing which is intended to communicate clearly:
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.
He stipulates that these rules are not intended to include any works of poetry, or where a particular effect is intended in literary writing, emphasising that he is not “considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought”.
I personally think they are excellent rules, and realise that I consciously observe all but the first one, which had not really occurred to me. I have spent many years, in different contexts, simplifying language making sure to convey the original meaning, without all the waffle. What I admire most about George Orwell’s nonfiction writing, is his clarity of thought and expression.
In fact my opening sentence was going to be “What many people admire most …”, and so on, but I realised that that would be inadvertently using one of the devices George Orwell talks about in this essay. I would be artificially inflating my first statement, in order to add a veneer of authenticity. Hopefully I have got through this piece without breaking too many of his essential rules for communication. But after all, they are just aims to bear in mind. As George Orwell himself says:
“Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against.”
He knew that this is a little idealistic. Nevertheless my default with for example, reviews on Goodreads, is to simplify and distil the facts, and opinions. Would that this was everyone’s aim in writing them, or in composing any document whose purpose is to inform. It is not only with political prose that we all need to be more self-questioning. But hopefully we will never be guilty of writing what George Orwell identifies in contemporary political writers, as a “catalogue of swindles and perversions”. We just need to be aware of the temptation to use meaningless or hackneyed phrases, which George Orwell warns us are like a “packet of aspirins always at one’s elbow”.
November 8, 2016
The essay, in its entirety, can be found here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/ombudsman/Po...
This essay measures in at just 24 pages and yet manages to convey so much in it's punchy and impactful style. As the title so aptly describes, this concerns the politics surrounding the usage of the modern English language. Orwell's view is that Modern English has become a mess of abstractness, inaccuracies and slovenliness and this essay attempts to relay exactly where we all went so wrong.
Instead of using fresh and individual terms, we pepper our writing with well-known phrases, "which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves." Language has also suffered from inadequate storytelling, which has more to do with the subject of the story than the teller of the tale. Political writing, in particular, relies on an abstract style to make any commentary as diplomatic as possible. This leads to meaning buried in amongst reams of pointless imagery and unnecessarily elongated prose, where "the whole tendency... is away from concreteness."
I found this a scarily accurate portrayal of contemporary writing, despite this being penned some decades ago. Its relativity means that I can, hopefully, supply this to my own non-fictional writing and can now longer watch any news channel without continual criticism using my new-found heightened awareness.
This essay measures in at just 24 pages and yet manages to convey so much in it's punchy and impactful style. As the title so aptly describes, this concerns the politics surrounding the usage of the modern English language. Orwell's view is that Modern English has become a mess of abstractness, inaccuracies and slovenliness and this essay attempts to relay exactly where we all went so wrong.
Instead of using fresh and individual terms, we pepper our writing with well-known phrases, "which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves." Language has also suffered from inadequate storytelling, which has more to do with the subject of the story than the teller of the tale. Political writing, in particular, relies on an abstract style to make any commentary as diplomatic as possible. This leads to meaning buried in amongst reams of pointless imagery and unnecessarily elongated prose, where "the whole tendency... is away from concreteness."
I found this a scarily accurate portrayal of contemporary writing, despite this being penned some decades ago. Its relativity means that I can, hopefully, supply this to my own non-fictional writing and can now longer watch any news channel without continual criticism using my new-found heightened awareness.
March 3, 2014
Orwell is a man after my own heart. This essay is basically about people using the English language incorrectly and why all political writing is bad, plus, a review of Mein Kampf! Orwell's stance on the English language is the same as mine, the language is fine the way it is, stop changing it! However, I do disagree with Orwell on one thing. Orwell states that one should should never use complicated words. He says that if you think if writing a big, complicated word but there is a plain simple English version of the word, you should use the simple version, e.g. if I were to use the word "perambulate" (which means walking back and forwards) in a composition, I should just use "walk back and forwards" as "perambulate", is to Orwell, pretentious and unnecessary. However, I find that if we stopped using all of the big, unusual, complicated, words and used plain, simple prose instead, we would lose such a beautiful and interesting part of the language. That's my only criticism of the essay. I agree with Orwell on all other points.
The review of Mein Kampf at the end is just brilliant, it's really quite reminiscent of Chaplin's put-down of Hitler in The Great Dictator.
The review of Mein Kampf at the end is just brilliant, it's really quite reminiscent of Chaplin's put-down of Hitler in The Great Dictator.
June 25, 2022
It was better the first time!
January 22, 2018
Not a long book, yet it’s packed with instructions and ideas of how Modern English is regressing and devolving and being absurd.
Orwell stats that one must not use foreign words, or use verbal false limbs
And the use of meaningless words
He wants the English used to be assessable, concise.
Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Never use a long word where a short one will do
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out
Never use the passive where you can use the active
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Orwell stats that one must not use foreign words, or use verbal false limbs
And the use of meaningless words
He wants the English used to be assessable, concise.
Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Never use a long word where a short one will do
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out
Never use the passive where you can use the active
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
June 4, 2022
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.”
I didn’t know what to expect from this essay going into it, and thought Orwell would be calling me on my grammar. Far from it. This is really about clear, honest, thinking.
Anyone who reads or listens to the news knows how often the same phrases are used, over and over and over again until they are meaningless. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who has stopped in the middle of an article or news commentary and said to myself, “Wait, does he or she even know what that word means?”
Sure, many writers intentionally mislead us, but Orwell explains how this kind of writing can occur from laziness--letting phrases pop in our minds instead of coming up with true ones. Whether purposeful or not, this type of writing (especially the amount of it we consume on a daily basis now) can give a dangerous vagueness to our thinking.
“… the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”
He offers practical suggestions though, and hope. He ends the essay with six rules, and my favorite is his first one: “Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.”
You can read it here: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-...
I didn’t know what to expect from this essay going into it, and thought Orwell would be calling me on my grammar. Far from it. This is really about clear, honest, thinking.
Anyone who reads or listens to the news knows how often the same phrases are used, over and over and over again until they are meaningless. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who has stopped in the middle of an article or news commentary and said to myself, “Wait, does he or she even know what that word means?”
Sure, many writers intentionally mislead us, but Orwell explains how this kind of writing can occur from laziness--letting phrases pop in our minds instead of coming up with true ones. Whether purposeful or not, this type of writing (especially the amount of it we consume on a daily basis now) can give a dangerous vagueness to our thinking.
“… the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”
He offers practical suggestions though, and hope. He ends the essay with six rules, and my favorite is his first one: “Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.”
You can read it here: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-...
June 2, 2022
George Orwell gives examples of imprecise and overly complicated political writing in his essay "Politics and the English Language." He also has a list of suggestions for clear, concise writing. Readers are confused by convoluted writing full of political jargon. The essay was originally published in the journal Horizon in 1946, but his ideas still have lots of merit today.
July 27, 2019
Before I get to Orwell and the essay, I must do something I never thought I would do--quote the Leviathan: With Selected Variants from the Latin Edition of 1668 in a positive manner:
I apologize for the long quote to start with, but it does help explain, in an abridged way, what Orwell is partly getting at. This essay was written in response to a trend that is still with us, about how bad writing, in English, is caused by and causes the negative effects of our political/economic environments.
"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."
I do not know where to begin talking about this essay because he hits on so many relevant points at the same time that I am amazed that I had made it this far in school and never read this. He lists almost every trick or error that people use, in the English language, when they don't want to structure their words or phrases properly. This essay has hit home especially hard for me as I have just finished a series of final exam essays that may have broken every rule Orwell listed.
He lists such transgressions such as dying metaphors, operators or false verbal limbs, pretentious diction, and meaningless words as the cornerstone on which all bad English grammar is built on. One of my favorite examples that he gives is using a quote from the biblical Ecclesiastes as an example, from the "good" English example:
By covering the basics of how the English language is routinely violated in sociology, science, and of course, politics we get to the main point of this essay--how political extremist on both ends of the spectrum take advantage of people using these kinds of tricks.
"In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a 'party line.' Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech."
This essay was written in-between Animal Farm & 1984 and it shows. Many of the examples of bad and deceptive writing in English would show up again in 1984. He wants to show how "Party fundamentalist" and propagandist take advantage of peoples imaginations using these tricks. "Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers." This sort of thing has not gone away but intensified since the turn of the millennium.
Another device that Orwell talks about is using Latin, Greek, Russian and French words to keep from having to clearly express your point. This was a favorite device of Marxists, and while he was socialist himself, he was no lover of Soviet propaganda (much less the Soviet Union itself). While I do think that using foreign words ad hoc nauseam(I could have easily have said haphazardly-which is also foreign) is a problem, today's globalized world may now have made more exceptions to this rule. Orwell discourages using the word cul-de-sac because it is a French word and there are already Anglo-Saxon words for it (e.g. blind alley or dead-end street. Tolkien went further in his criticism of "cul-de-sac" and names the Hobbits "Bag End" which is the literal translation of cul-de-sac).
"So," you ask, "does Mr. Orwell offer some advice to help us not make these errors?" Well, of course he does! Orwell offers a set of questions we should ask ourselves: "A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: 1. Could I put it more shortly? 2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you -- even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent -- and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear."
The other, more famous, "rules" that he gives are at the end of the essay: "...one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. 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 outright 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." Notice that the last rule is what saves this essay from being totally obsolete as Orwell recognized that the English language is forever changing by nature and some of the rules must be modified or discarded according to the times. Also, barbarous is a Greek word.
In the future, I will try to put Orwell's advice to practice and try to catch myself when making these mistakes. Ironically enough, in the middle of the essay he point out that he has been making some of the mistakes that he criticizes as a testament to how pervasive this problem is. I hope this gives me even a slight edge in my work for next semester. I should note that Orwell is not talking about simply banning word or phrases, but to carefully recognize what we are actually saying and to be very mindful of every single word we use.
"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...
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."
I will start using a thesaurus because of this essay.
"Special uses of speech are these: first, to register what by cogitation we find to be the cause of anything, present or past; and what we find things present or past may produce, or effect; which, in sum, is acquiring of arts. Secondly, to show to others that knowledge which we have attained; which is to counsel and teach one another. Thirdly, to make known to others our wills and purposes that we may have the mutual help of one another. Fourthly, to please and delight ourselves, and others, by playing with our words, for pleasure or ornament, innocently.
To these uses, there are also four correspondent abuses. First, when men register their thoughts wrong by the inconstancy of the signification of their words; by which they register for their conceptions that which they never conceived, and so deceive themselves. Secondly, when they use words metaphorically; that is, in other sense than that they are ordained for, and thereby deceive others. Thirdly, when by words they declare that to be their will which is not."
I apologize for the long quote to start with, but it does help explain, in an abridged way, what Orwell is partly getting at. This essay was written in response to a trend that is still with us, about how bad writing, in English, is caused by and causes the negative effects of our political/economic environments.
"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."
I do not know where to begin talking about this essay because he hits on so many relevant points at the same time that I am amazed that I had made it this far in school and never read this. He lists almost every trick or error that people use, in the English language, when they don't want to structure their words or phrases properly. This essay has hit home especially hard for me as I have just finished a series of final exam essays that may have broken every rule Orwell listed.
He lists such transgressions such as dying metaphors, operators or false verbal limbs, pretentious diction, and meaningless words as the cornerstone on which all bad English grammar is built on. One of my favorite examples that he gives is using a quote from the biblical Ecclesiastes as an example, from the "good" English 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 favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."Now here is how Orwell (correctly) guesses I would have would have written that a few days ago for my POLI 254 final exam:
"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."I can't think of the times I have had to read painful sentences like that and then write painful sentences like that.
By covering the basics of how the English language is routinely violated in sociology, science, and of course, politics we get to the main point of this essay--how political extremist on both ends of the spectrum take advantage of people using these kinds of tricks.
"In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a 'party line.' Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech."
This essay was written in-between Animal Farm & 1984 and it shows. Many of the examples of bad and deceptive writing in English would show up again in 1984. He wants to show how "Party fundamentalist" and propagandist take advantage of peoples imaginations using these tricks. "Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers." This sort of thing has not gone away but intensified since the turn of the millennium.
Another device that Orwell talks about is using Latin, Greek, Russian and French words to keep from having to clearly express your point. This was a favorite device of Marxists, and while he was socialist himself, he was no lover of Soviet propaganda (much less the Soviet Union itself). While I do think that using foreign words ad hoc nauseam(I could have easily have said haphazardly-which is also foreign) is a problem, today's globalized world may now have made more exceptions to this rule. Orwell discourages using the word cul-de-sac because it is a French word and there are already Anglo-Saxon words for it (e.g. blind alley or dead-end street. Tolkien went further in his criticism of "cul-de-sac" and names the Hobbits "Bag End" which is the literal translation of cul-de-sac).
"So," you ask, "does Mr. Orwell offer some advice to help us not make these errors?" Well, of course he does! Orwell offers a set of questions we should ask ourselves: "A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: 1. Could I put it more shortly? 2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you -- even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent -- and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear."
The other, more famous, "rules" that he gives are at the end of the essay: "...one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. 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 outright 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." Notice that the last rule is what saves this essay from being totally obsolete as Orwell recognized that the English language is forever changing by nature and some of the rules must be modified or discarded according to the times. Also, barbarous is a Greek word.
In the future, I will try to put Orwell's advice to practice and try to catch myself when making these mistakes. Ironically enough, in the middle of the essay he point out that he has been making some of the mistakes that he criticizes as a testament to how pervasive this problem is. I hope this gives me even a slight edge in my work for next semester. I should note that Orwell is not talking about simply banning word or phrases, but to carefully recognize what we are actually saying and to be very mindful of every single word we use.
"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...
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."
I will start using a thesaurus because of this essay.
December 22, 2023
« feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them »
This jumped out at me, I’m instantly reminded of 1984. It’s clear the themes and ideas of the debasement of language discussed here serve as a foundation to his magnum opus. Orwell cooked but it’s too late I fear. I await the day when language is obsolete in favor of emojis. God bless 🤤🤤💅‼️🙏😈💋
This jumped out at me, I’m instantly reminded of 1984. It’s clear the themes and ideas of the debasement of language discussed here serve as a foundation to his magnum opus. Orwell cooked but it’s too late I fear. I await the day when language is obsolete in favor of emojis. God bless 🤤🤤💅‼️🙏😈💋
June 6, 2015
Fresh on the heels of 1984, I read Will Self's shoddy argument against all things Orwell replete with every logical fallacy in the book. Considering what a short essay this is, it seemed like a good time to read it.
Orwell's rules for writing here are specifically with respect to politics and not the literary use of language. He states it so clearly that it's surprising how anyone could think otherwise. Orwell even confesses that he tends to do the same things that he writes against in this essay. Orwell knows the value of nuance and that's not what he opposes, it is deliberate misinformation through vagueness and familiar imagery that he is against. A passage will assume a domineering quality if littered with jargon or if one uses metaphor the way I just used the word "littered". The impact of the passive voice, ornate language and dense vocabulary on political commentary is that it enables a person to exercise doublethink, where an idea can be right when applied to one thing and wrong to when applied to another thing. It seems that this goes against the subjective acceptance of right and wrong but that isn't the case here. The purpose of political commentary is to disseminate cause and effect, and vagueness in that context is to pander to popular moral/ethical stands.
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Link to the essay: http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/p...
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June 6, 2015
Orwell's rules for writing here are specifically with respect to politics and not the literary use of language. He states it so clearly that it's surprising how anyone could think otherwise. Orwell even confesses that he tends to do the same things that he writes against in this essay. Orwell knows the value of nuance and that's not what he opposes, it is deliberate misinformation through vagueness and familiar imagery that he is against. A passage will assume a domineering quality if littered with jargon or if one uses metaphor the way I just used the word "littered". The impact of the passive voice, ornate language and dense vocabulary on political commentary is that it enables a person to exercise doublethink, where an idea can be right when applied to one thing and wrong to when applied to another thing. It seems that this goes against the subjective acceptance of right and wrong but that isn't the case here. The purpose of political commentary is to disseminate cause and effect, and vagueness in that context is to pander to popular moral/ethical stands.
Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties.Orwell gives his five rules at the end of his essay. He's taken a few bad phrases and brought out the reasons that they're harmful in political commentary (or helpful depending on which side of the situation you are). He's then gone on to generate rules, to be used as a guide more than a rulebook, to ensure political text doesn't deceive. The reason that I haven't included them in this review is because it take the rules out of context. Orwell clearly states that the rules are for when instinct fails. He doesn't state anywhere that they are hard and fast, to be followed with unerring precision as Will Self suggests. Recognising that is essential when reading this essay. To readers who want to know when language is deceiving you, highly recommended.
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Link to the essay: http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/p...
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June 6, 2015
June 29, 2017
One of the greatest essays I have ever read about the relation between language and politics. A must-read for writers, and any one interested in deconstructing political discourse.
Orwell's precise, clear and simple language is an example of how theoretical and political discourse should be rather than the meaningless and pretentious endless formations of misused jargon we encounter nowadays in newspapers and books.
Orwell's precise, clear and simple language is an example of how theoretical and political discourse should be rather than the meaningless and pretentious endless formations of misused jargon we encounter nowadays in newspapers and books.
January 21, 2019
"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 the appearance of solidarity to pure wind."
September 12, 2015
Sentence 1 : I had this burning sensation of shame while absorbing myself in this essay.
Sentence 2 : I was ashamed of myself while reading this essay.
Which sentence do you find easier to understand?
This essay is like a simple term paper with objective analyses and conclusions. Or I’d rather say that George Orwell was like a psycho-linguist studying the words we usually use as specimens. First, he presented five passages he picked from articles. Second, he discussed the theories of phraseology. Third, to understand the theories he discussed , he applied them to real situations in modern English. Finally, he drew his own conclusion.
Orwell argued that it is important we write clearly .He believed that the main purpose of writing is to express and share our ideas and thoughts with readers . Also, he pointed out that writing English is worth reading without using metaphors, similes, idioms, or obsolete words which vague the meanings of our sentences. Rather, we can simplify them in the sense that we understand what we really think of a certain thing. He believes, thus, that in doing so can prevent “the slovenliness of our language “as he put it bluntly.
Orwell may have some points. However, affected I am, I want to raise some questions, intentionally to rebut his ideas:
(1) If Orwell believed with the conjunction of other educated grammarians and writers as well that we should not use the words he mentioned in the essay , what are the words coined for? Are we going to throw them into a dust bin? How about the jargons or the technical terms?
(2) The real standard of an award-winning piece is based on the norms drawn by people. What is a universal literature? What is a real classic? How could laymen recognize that a piece is a masterpiece? Everybody has different tastes for literature. For ordinary readers, a simple book is enough. May be for entertainment value. But for readers whose intentions are the same: to develop their intelligence, they elevate literature to a higher level of thinking. That is the art of writing.
(3) Are archaic or obsolete words beyond readers? Probably, it depends on a reader’s intelligence.
(4 ) Why should not we use foreign words? It depends on what kinds of readers a writer targets. Besides, readers are not inside the box; they can explore the world of literature. Literature is flexible in character.
May be I would agree with his points that sometimes we have to consider the meanings of words . Are these words applicable to situations? Probably yes or no. In addition, since language is decadent, there are “times” that we have to adjust to the existing social conditions and changes. Could people still understand them? Probably yes or no.
No doubt. Orwell knew the psychology and mathematics of words. He understood what people think of the words used in society- let alone in politics. So what is this essay all about after all? I would believe that what he really wants to point out in this essay is that connection with readers is the most important elements of writing regardless of what concept you have got. He manifested this belief in his works. Mostly, politics is bad when the language is corrupt as it is the conspicuous undertone of his essays.
If I were George Orwell’s professor, just for fun, I would give it A+, but , in my humble opinion as a reader on GR, I regret to give it 2 stars .
Sentence 2 : I was ashamed of myself while reading this essay.
Which sentence do you find easier to understand?
This essay is like a simple term paper with objective analyses and conclusions. Or I’d rather say that George Orwell was like a psycho-linguist studying the words we usually use as specimens. First, he presented five passages he picked from articles. Second, he discussed the theories of phraseology. Third, to understand the theories he discussed , he applied them to real situations in modern English. Finally, he drew his own conclusion.
Orwell argued that it is important we write clearly .He believed that the main purpose of writing is to express and share our ideas and thoughts with readers . Also, he pointed out that writing English is worth reading without using metaphors, similes, idioms, or obsolete words which vague the meanings of our sentences. Rather, we can simplify them in the sense that we understand what we really think of a certain thing. He believes, thus, that in doing so can prevent “the slovenliness of our language “as he put it bluntly.
Orwell may have some points. However, affected I am, I want to raise some questions, intentionally to rebut his ideas:
(1) If Orwell believed with the conjunction of other educated grammarians and writers as well that we should not use the words he mentioned in the essay , what are the words coined for? Are we going to throw them into a dust bin? How about the jargons or the technical terms?
(2) The real standard of an award-winning piece is based on the norms drawn by people. What is a universal literature? What is a real classic? How could laymen recognize that a piece is a masterpiece? Everybody has different tastes for literature. For ordinary readers, a simple book is enough. May be for entertainment value. But for readers whose intentions are the same: to develop their intelligence, they elevate literature to a higher level of thinking. That is the art of writing.
(3) Are archaic or obsolete words beyond readers? Probably, it depends on a reader’s intelligence.
(4 ) Why should not we use foreign words? It depends on what kinds of readers a writer targets. Besides, readers are not inside the box; they can explore the world of literature. Literature is flexible in character.
May be I would agree with his points that sometimes we have to consider the meanings of words . Are these words applicable to situations? Probably yes or no. In addition, since language is decadent, there are “times” that we have to adjust to the existing social conditions and changes. Could people still understand them? Probably yes or no.
No doubt. Orwell knew the psychology and mathematics of words. He understood what people think of the words used in society- let alone in politics. So what is this essay all about after all? I would believe that what he really wants to point out in this essay is that connection with readers is the most important elements of writing regardless of what concept you have got. He manifested this belief in his works. Mostly, politics is bad when the language is corrupt as it is the conspicuous undertone of his essays.
If I were George Orwell’s professor, just for fun, I would give it A+, but , in my humble opinion as a reader on GR, I regret to give it 2 stars .
December 28, 2016
People love this essay and frankly I have no idea why; it is densely written, painfully abstruse, obnoxiously drawn-out. Orwell is capable of some great stuff, like Homage to Catalonia, Shooting an Elephant, and Such, Such Were the Joys. But then he goes and pulls shit like 1984 and this dung pile and I'm left wondering.
October 14, 2021
"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them."
March 9, 2021
This short essay by George Orwell is as relevant today as it was when he wrote it in 1946. Alarmed at the debasement of language, at the use of words divorced from any meaning, this essay howls into the wind — but the storm of propaganda and corporate speak (the foggy meaningless bafflegab of memos and public relations) has continued unabated.
Orwell say the process is reversible; that getting rid of the habit of bad language enables you to think more clearly. One can only hope.
Orwell say the process is reversible; that getting rid of the habit of bad language enables you to think more clearly. One can only hope.
June 2, 2013
This pamphlet-sized publication contains George Orwell’s superb 1945 essay “Politics and the English Language” and his 1941 review of Adolf Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf”.
What seems at first a pedantic viewpoint of railing against bad language, grammar, and so on, like a 1940s version of Lynne Truss, becomes far more complex and thoughtful - while still being accessible to the general reader. Orwell objects to the bad use of the English language firstly as a writer himself and then moves onto a different kind of misuse of language - political language which deliberately utilises over-complicated words in an effort to mask its true intent.
At its worst, bad language, such as political language, can be used to manipulate events and ideas from sounding less heinous and corrupt than they are - he uses the example of the Soviet regime’s practice of murdering dissenters to remain in power.
“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.” (p.20)
Orwell also sets out his rules for good writing which centres around his idea of simplifying language to make what you are trying to say more clear and understood to the reader.
The book review of “Mein Kampf” is interesting in itself, but also serves to underline Orwell’s point in the essay preceding it. Hitler manipulates language for self-serving purposes and ends which hide his true intent of bloody murder and a dearth of real thought. He also makes several intelligent observations, one of which is that Hitler was elected on a platform that was the opposite of Soviet Russia’s utopian ideals, revealing “the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life” (p.23) that the West assumed was the object of most peoples’ lives.
Reading Orwell is like mentally breathing in fresh air on a crisp morning. The writing is superbly clear and direct, the ideas are fresh - still after so much time - and inspiring, and these essays are a reminder of why Orwell is such a revered figure in literature. Christopher Hitchens said it best: “Orwell told the truth”. Read some truth today.
What seems at first a pedantic viewpoint of railing against bad language, grammar, and so on, like a 1940s version of Lynne Truss, becomes far more complex and thoughtful - while still being accessible to the general reader. Orwell objects to the bad use of the English language firstly as a writer himself and then moves onto a different kind of misuse of language - political language which deliberately utilises over-complicated words in an effort to mask its true intent.
At its worst, bad language, such as political language, can be used to manipulate events and ideas from sounding less heinous and corrupt than they are - he uses the example of the Soviet regime’s practice of murdering dissenters to remain in power.
“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.” (p.20)
Orwell also sets out his rules for good writing which centres around his idea of simplifying language to make what you are trying to say more clear and understood to the reader.
The book review of “Mein Kampf” is interesting in itself, but also serves to underline Orwell’s point in the essay preceding it. Hitler manipulates language for self-serving purposes and ends which hide his true intent of bloody murder and a dearth of real thought. He also makes several intelligent observations, one of which is that Hitler was elected on a platform that was the opposite of Soviet Russia’s utopian ideals, revealing “the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life” (p.23) that the West assumed was the object of most peoples’ lives.
Reading Orwell is like mentally breathing in fresh air on a crisp morning. The writing is superbly clear and direct, the ideas are fresh - still after so much time - and inspiring, and these essays are a reminder of why Orwell is such a revered figure in literature. Christopher Hitchens said it best: “Orwell told the truth”. Read some truth today.
March 9, 2024
George Orwell - Politics and the English Language
A linguagem como expressão política e a sua interdependência. Um opúsculo rico em ensinamentos e orientações.
Neste ensaio Orwell desafia à reflecção sobre o poder da linguagem enquanto ferramenta capaz de moldar a sociedade, a política e a cultura. A clareza e honestidade linguísticas é para ele uma ferramenta essencial na manipulação da sociedade, mas também se assume como um pilar para uma sociedade mais transparente e democrática.
Esta manipulação pode ser observada ao nível do discurso político quando jargões técnicos são usados para condicionar o debate e eventualmente a verdade; na intoxicação e excesso de informação que frequentemente resulta na dificuldade de se distinguir entre o falso, e o verdadeiro quer absolutos, quer nas suas várias graduações; na manipulação da clareza do pensamento crítico, uma clareza que menorizada pelos jargões e pelo efeito castrador do politicamente correto; uma manipulação igualmente observada junto de activistas e seus movimentos, que através de imagens impactantes, mas descontextualizadas acabam manipulando a verdade e a opinião pública; uma manipulação da linguagem que promove interesses obscuros tanto de corrupção como de projectos políticos de poder pessoal mais ou menos inconfessáveis.
A deterioração da linguagem pode ser vista como uma consequência da deterioração política mas tem sobre esta um efeito de retroatividade positiva o que lhe potencia a causa e o efeito.
Um bom discurso não alicerça uma boa política, mas seguramente um mau discurso tem muitas menos probabilidades de resultar numa boa prática.
"Politics and the English Language" de George Orwell é um texto seminal que continua a influenciar a discussão sobre linguagem, política e ética. Em Orwell e para Orwell a clareza, precisão e honestidade da linguagem são características críticas da mesma, mas também simultaneamente factores cuja manipulação resulta na distorção da verdade.
XXX
George Orwell - Politics and the English Language
Language as a political expression and its interdependence. A pamphlet rich in teachings and guidance.
In this critique, Orwell challenges reflection on the power of language as a tool capable of shaping society, politics, and culture. Linguistic clarity and honesty are, for him, an essential tool in the manipulation of society but also stand as a pillar for a more transparent and democratic society.
This manipulation can be observed at the level of political discourse when technical jargon is used to manipulate the debate and eventually the truth; in the intoxication and excess of information that often results in the difficulty of distinguishing between the false and the true, both absolute and in their various gradations; in the manipulation of the clarity of critical thinking, a clarity that is diminished by jargons and the castrating effect of political correctness; a manipulation equally observed among activists and their movements, who through impactful but decontextualized images end up manipulating the truth and public opinion; a manipulation of language that promotes obscure interests both of corruption and of personal political power projects more or less unconfessable.
The deterioration of language can be seen as a consequence of political deterioration but has a positive retroactivity effect on it, which enhances its cause and effect.
A good speech does not ground good policy, but surely a bad speech is much less likely to result in good practice.
"Politics and the English Language" by George Orwell is a seminal text that continues to influence the discussion on language, politics, and ethics. In and for Orwell, clarity, precision, and honesty of language are critical characteristics of the same, but also simultaneously factors whose manipulation in politics results in the distortion of truth.
A linguagem como expressão política e a sua interdependência. Um opúsculo rico em ensinamentos e orientações.
Neste ensaio Orwell desafia à reflecção sobre o poder da linguagem enquanto ferramenta capaz de moldar a sociedade, a política e a cultura. A clareza e honestidade linguísticas é para ele uma ferramenta essencial na manipulação da sociedade, mas também se assume como um pilar para uma sociedade mais transparente e democrática.
Esta manipulação pode ser observada ao nível do discurso político quando jargões técnicos são usados para condicionar o debate e eventualmente a verdade; na intoxicação e excesso de informação que frequentemente resulta na dificuldade de se distinguir entre o falso, e o verdadeiro quer absolutos, quer nas suas várias graduações; na manipulação da clareza do pensamento crítico, uma clareza que menorizada pelos jargões e pelo efeito castrador do politicamente correto; uma manipulação igualmente observada junto de activistas e seus movimentos, que através de imagens impactantes, mas descontextualizadas acabam manipulando a verdade e a opinião pública; uma manipulação da linguagem que promove interesses obscuros tanto de corrupção como de projectos políticos de poder pessoal mais ou menos inconfessáveis.
A deterioração da linguagem pode ser vista como uma consequência da deterioração política mas tem sobre esta um efeito de retroatividade positiva o que lhe potencia a causa e o efeito.
Um bom discurso não alicerça uma boa política, mas seguramente um mau discurso tem muitas menos probabilidades de resultar numa boa prática.
"Politics and the English Language" de George Orwell é um texto seminal que continua a influenciar a discussão sobre linguagem, política e ética. Em Orwell e para Orwell a clareza, precisão e honestidade da linguagem são características críticas da mesma, mas também simultaneamente factores cuja manipulação resulta na distorção da verdade.
XXX
George Orwell - Politics and the English Language
Language as a political expression and its interdependence. A pamphlet rich in teachings and guidance.
In this critique, Orwell challenges reflection on the power of language as a tool capable of shaping society, politics, and culture. Linguistic clarity and honesty are, for him, an essential tool in the manipulation of society but also stand as a pillar for a more transparent and democratic society.
This manipulation can be observed at the level of political discourse when technical jargon is used to manipulate the debate and eventually the truth; in the intoxication and excess of information that often results in the difficulty of distinguishing between the false and the true, both absolute and in their various gradations; in the manipulation of the clarity of critical thinking, a clarity that is diminished by jargons and the castrating effect of political correctness; a manipulation equally observed among activists and their movements, who through impactful but decontextualized images end up manipulating the truth and public opinion; a manipulation of language that promotes obscure interests both of corruption and of personal political power projects more or less unconfessable.
The deterioration of language can be seen as a consequence of political deterioration but has a positive retroactivity effect on it, which enhances its cause and effect.
A good speech does not ground good policy, but surely a bad speech is much less likely to result in good practice.
"Politics and the English Language" by George Orwell is a seminal text that continues to influence the discussion on language, politics, and ethics. In and for Orwell, clarity, precision, and honesty of language are critical characteristics of the same, but also simultaneously factors whose manipulation in politics results in the distortion of truth.
July 8, 2011
Orwell describes how language can affect thought. The essay is full of examples about how vague expressions convey much more unclear meanings than "simple" expressions, and how frequently used phrases can even do the thinking for you.
I believe what Orwell is talking about is true for more than just politics and for more than just the English language. Fictional and non-fictional writings are also suffering from the use of bad language. The two languages that I speak fluently (i.e. Armenian and Arabic) also suffer from needless metaphors and vague expressions.
I think this essay should have been called "Language and Thought." It will appeal to those who have interest in linguistics and "know what they are talking about".
I believe what Orwell is talking about is true for more than just politics and for more than just the English language. Fictional and non-fictional writings are also suffering from the use of bad language. The two languages that I speak fluently (i.e. Armenian and Arabic) also suffer from needless metaphors and vague expressions.
I think this essay should have been called "Language and Thought." It will appeal to those who have interest in linguistics and "know what they are talking about".
September 10, 2015
Language is important, it is not just a combination of sounds as I used to think. A poor language implies poor ideas which imply a weak society, and poor ideas lead to a poor language... Orwell will always make me think, this is my first essay by him and surely not the last. Read it read it read it !
November 10, 2017
Este livro chegou exactamente hoje às minhas mãos e li-o com imenso prazer. Não só porque o tema que o Orwell aqui desenvolve me é familiar, como é um tema intemporal. Através de 23 páginas Orwell relembra-nos o poder da escrita clara, concisa e metódica. De como a linguagem terá sempre um propósito e de como as palavras devem ser tratadas com respeito e em consideração pelo seu significado.
Encontro-me neste momento em vias de iniciar a escrita de uma tese. Curiosamente, fui apelidada de "prosaica" por uma das minhas colegas num dos meus seminários. Isto porque, parece que recorro a uma linguagem comum. Ora, a escolha de o fazer foi e será sempre consciente. Porém, parece que os académicos (especialmente os de língua portuguesa) julgam que para um trabalho ser intelectualmente sólido e relevante, este deve estar dependente da sua complexidade e ornamentação linguística. Eu, pessoalmente discordo completamente. Gosto de acreditar que escrevo para todos. Escrevo para revelar a minha verdade e gosto que esta seja clara. Todos nós já nos deparámos com textos "importantíssimos" que eram simplesmente incompreensíveis e, por saber o quão frustrante isso é, escolho com toda a racionalidade que reside em mim escrever da forma mais simples e prosaica (se lhe quiserem chamar assim) que conseguir.
Obrigada Orwell por reforçares as minhas crenças e por me motivares a continuar a escrever!!
Encontro-me neste momento em vias de iniciar a escrita de uma tese. Curiosamente, fui apelidada de "prosaica" por uma das minhas colegas num dos meus seminários. Isto porque, parece que recorro a uma linguagem comum. Ora, a escolha de o fazer foi e será sempre consciente. Porém, parece que os académicos (especialmente os de língua portuguesa) julgam que para um trabalho ser intelectualmente sólido e relevante, este deve estar dependente da sua complexidade e ornamentação linguística. Eu, pessoalmente discordo completamente. Gosto de acreditar que escrevo para todos. Escrevo para revelar a minha verdade e gosto que esta seja clara. Todos nós já nos deparámos com textos "importantíssimos" que eram simplesmente incompreensíveis e, por saber o quão frustrante isso é, escolho com toda a racionalidade que reside em mim escrever da forma mais simples e prosaica (se lhe quiserem chamar assim) que conseguir.
Obrigada Orwell por reforçares as minhas crenças e por me motivares a continuar a escrever!!
October 24, 2014
“Politics and the English Language” is an essay written by the novelist George Orwell and published in 1946. It criticizes the written English of his time. Orwell argues for a writing style that is plain and transparent. The most important thing in writing is to make one’s meaning clear.
Orwell brings up numerous problems that plague writers’ works. The most important of these issues is the use of canned phrases. Many writers do not take the time to craft new sentences with select words that specifically get the writer’s meaning across. Many writers rely on phrases, these phrases are then “tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse”, the result being poor writing. By the use of phrases the writer loses precision and his or her own voice. Orwell also suggests avoiding pretentious and inappropriate words. Writers often fail to visualize the words used; they often favour abstract meaningless words over concrete. He suggests that writers should avoid using everyday, well-known metaphors.
This decline in language is not permanent and can be prevented by the writer if he or she strives to write good English. Orwell suggests reasons for this deterioration of English. These poor writing habits spread by imitation. The decline of language can be explained by political and economic factors. Political writing often strives to be vague; it uses this as a technique to obscure the details. In this sense, I would argue, political writing is effective. It accomplishes what it intended to do, even if its intent is hardly virtuous. When writing I always begin with what I want to accomplish, how I wish my audience to react, or what I want them to feel or learn. However, Orwell points out that political writing is often mechanical and ineffective.
The “fix” does not entail setting up a Standard English. Orwell notes that the issue does not lie in grammar or syntax. Good writing is writing that best gets the writer’s meaning across to his or her reader. The writer should use the fewest and shortest words required and have the intended meaning already mapped before the writing process begins. Bad writing occurs because the writer is rushed and lazy. If the writer is willing to take the time to truly craft original sentences with active selection of appropriate words his or her writing will improve.
The biggest impact that this essay had on me was Orwell’s critique of phrases. I will often use canned phrases when writing, I acknowledge that this occurs due to economic reasons; it simply takes more effort and time to write well. Since reading the essay I have also begun to analyze the phrases that I use in daily speech, it would be very difficult to craft original sentences for everything that I say. There are a few key differences between writing and speaking. Speaking allows the receiver of the message to have instantaneous feedback, if the meaning is not clear the receiver can alert the speaker. In person communication also allows other aspects of communication such as body language and intonation, which are extremely important for accurate communication. The writer does not have these supporting components. The writer must ensure meaning through the use of words alone. The lack of feedback means that the writer must have an understanding of his or her target audience and write for that audience.
I think that being more active and dedicated in the writing process will lead to more effective writing where the thoughts in my mind are more accurately transferred to the reader. Words should be selected that give imagery and not vagueness. Sentences should be unique and meaningful.
http://miffedinclifton.blogspot.ca/
Orwell brings up numerous problems that plague writers’ works. The most important of these issues is the use of canned phrases. Many writers do not take the time to craft new sentences with select words that specifically get the writer’s meaning across. Many writers rely on phrases, these phrases are then “tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse”, the result being poor writing. By the use of phrases the writer loses precision and his or her own voice. Orwell also suggests avoiding pretentious and inappropriate words. Writers often fail to visualize the words used; they often favour abstract meaningless words over concrete. He suggests that writers should avoid using everyday, well-known metaphors.
This decline in language is not permanent and can be prevented by the writer if he or she strives to write good English. Orwell suggests reasons for this deterioration of English. These poor writing habits spread by imitation. The decline of language can be explained by political and economic factors. Political writing often strives to be vague; it uses this as a technique to obscure the details. In this sense, I would argue, political writing is effective. It accomplishes what it intended to do, even if its intent is hardly virtuous. When writing I always begin with what I want to accomplish, how I wish my audience to react, or what I want them to feel or learn. However, Orwell points out that political writing is often mechanical and ineffective.
The “fix” does not entail setting up a Standard English. Orwell notes that the issue does not lie in grammar or syntax. Good writing is writing that best gets the writer’s meaning across to his or her reader. The writer should use the fewest and shortest words required and have the intended meaning already mapped before the writing process begins. Bad writing occurs because the writer is rushed and lazy. If the writer is willing to take the time to truly craft original sentences with active selection of appropriate words his or her writing will improve.
The biggest impact that this essay had on me was Orwell’s critique of phrases. I will often use canned phrases when writing, I acknowledge that this occurs due to economic reasons; it simply takes more effort and time to write well. Since reading the essay I have also begun to analyze the phrases that I use in daily speech, it would be very difficult to craft original sentences for everything that I say. There are a few key differences between writing and speaking. Speaking allows the receiver of the message to have instantaneous feedback, if the meaning is not clear the receiver can alert the speaker. In person communication also allows other aspects of communication such as body language and intonation, which are extremely important for accurate communication. The writer does not have these supporting components. The writer must ensure meaning through the use of words alone. The lack of feedback means that the writer must have an understanding of his or her target audience and write for that audience.
I think that being more active and dedicated in the writing process will lead to more effective writing where the thoughts in my mind are more accurately transferred to the reader. Words should be selected that give imagery and not vagueness. Sentences should be unique and meaningful.
http://miffedinclifton.blogspot.ca/
May 15, 2023
Patrząc na część moich wpisów na tym portalu po lekturze eseju o degradacji języka czuję si�� winny zarzucanych czynów. Postanawiam poprawę.
O ile można zastanawiać się nad sensem wydawania akurat tego artykułu po polsku, to muszę przyznać, że autor przekładu wybrnął że swojego zadania i czyta się to niesamowicie gładko i bez żadnego problemu można zrozumieć o co chodziło autorowi oryginału - z resztą te zasady które wygłasza można uznać za uniwersalne i adekwatne do każdego tekstu kultury, nie ważne w jakim języku stworzonego.
Prawdopodobnie właśnie popełniłem komentarz do lektury nad którym z obrzydzeniem pastwiłby się Orwell.
O ile można zastanawiać się nad sensem wydawania akurat tego artykułu po polsku, to muszę przyznać, że autor przekładu wybrnął że swojego zadania i czyta się to niesamowicie gładko i bez żadnego problemu można zrozumieć o co chodziło autorowi oryginału - z resztą te zasady które wygłasza można uznać za uniwersalne i adekwatne do każdego tekstu kultury, nie ważne w jakim języku stworzonego.
Prawdopodobnie właśnie popełniłem komentarz do lektury nad którym z obrzydzeniem pastwiłby się Orwell.
February 26, 2010
You know when you stumble onto a passage in writing that articulates your thoughts for you better than you are able? In fact, helps those thoughts to grow to adult height? This essay was one of those for me, in its entirety.
It discusses our chronic lack of clarity in writing and the muddled and vague thinking unclarity props up. Now working in development, the essay feels like some combination of vaccination, antidote and prescription sunglasses.
An excerpt:
"Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:
'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 favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.'
Here it is 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."
It discusses our chronic lack of clarity in writing and the muddled and vague thinking unclarity props up. Now working in development, the essay feels like some combination of vaccination, antidote and prescription sunglasses.
An excerpt:
"Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:
'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 favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.'
Here it is 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."
June 6, 2022
За никой, който се интересува от съвременния световен политически и културен климат не е тайна, че езикът бива използван като оръжие не само за разпространяване на политическа и военна пропаганда, но и на обществена и културна такава.
"Специалната военна операция" на Русия в Украйна тече в момента и някои български политици правят какви ли не интелектуални и словесни салта, само и само да не я нарекат война - защото не искат да рискуват рублите да спрат да текат към джобовете им.
В света на информацията, думите имат значение. Това, разбира се, не е новост, както е забелязал Джордж Оруел. Всъщност, той много неща е забелязвал по принцип, но Politics and the English Language е специално по темата за... политиката и използването на езика. Да, по онова време заглавията на книгите са били изчерпателно информативни :Р
Както всяка книга на Оруел и тази заслужава да се прочете, макар че тук специално полезното е по-скоро епизодично, доколкото възмутеното му и подробно описание на политиката в езика и езика в политиката е силно периодо-специфично и извън контекста на точното време и точната политическа ситуация (да не говорим без перфектно познаване на английския език от периода) е трудно да го разберем в детайли.
"Специалната военна операция" на Русия в Украйна тече в момента и някои български политици правят какви ли не интелектуални и словесни салта, само и само да не я нарекат война - защото не искат да рискуват рублите да спрат да текат към джобовете им.
В света на информацията, думите имат значение. Това, разбира се, не е новост, както е забелязал Джордж Оруел. Всъщност, той много неща е забелязвал по принцип, но Politics and the English Language е специално по темата за... политиката и използването на езика. Да, по онова време заглавията на книгите са били изчерпателно информативни :Р
Както всяка книга на Оруел и тази заслужава да се прочете, макар че тук специално полезното е по-скоро епизодично, доколкото възмутеното му и подробно описание на политиката в езика и езика в политиката е силно периодо-специфично и извън контекста на точното време и точната политическа ситуация (да не говорим без перфектно познаване на английския език от периода) е трудно да го разберем в детайли.
March 12, 2016
......to make pretentiousness unfashionable.
The very essence of this majestic essay of George Orwell is to elucidate and help the general (interested) mass to understand how far language as a tool is used repeatedly to manipulate, subvert and to lie in the realm of politics. Or, if one needs to be more precise, this essay is about how language is being used by those in power to gain their desired ends, which in most cases is morally unjust, without ever irking the masses whom they profess to serve.
History and contemporary politics stand witness to all the injustice, violence that is done by glossing it over under a veneer that appeases the conscience of the larger mass. Language is used, again and again in the annals of history, to change the very identity of an violence by labelling it with a different color. And, Orwell has tried to capture it succinctly, and has succeeded too.
One of the main contentions of Orwell is that any insincere motive always tries to corrupt the language. He makes it very clear by saying,
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms,
like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.
And, he continues to point out, rightly, that when language is corrupted, as a consequence, it also corrupts the thoughts of people who are consuming it, en masse.
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can
spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.
Jean-Paul Sartre argued in Portrait of the Anti-Semite that,"The Jew is a man, whom other men look upon as a Jew....it is the anti-semite who makes the Jew". Language directed by prejudice, insincerity and an ill motive could comfortably alter and reduce the identity of person - which, if not reduced, would remain multi-dimensional. And,in order to inflict any hurt on a person and make it appear just, a person is always reduced to a single identity in politics. Consider this: I am a woman, an athiest, A.R.Rahman Fan, a non-brahmin, bibliophile, street food lover, a feminist, a good daughter and many more. But, if need be, to suit political needs, I could be reduced to nothing but to the identity of my religion, Hindu. Similarly, someone from across the border could be identified as a Pakistani, Muslim, and as nothing else. Add to that, such a person could be labelled as an enemy or infiltrator or terrorist or, as Orwell notes in an example, an undesirable element. And, by labelling and spreading wrong identities done by manipulating the language, it would be much easier to inflict violence upon him or on me. Any ordinary human would never hurt another human, but he would if the another human is identified not as a human at all. And, it is this corruption of the language by politics which Orwell talks in this essay.
'Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against', Orwell says this to admit that he could himself be a victim of this corruption in language, which was widely prevalent in his times. Yet, he gives us a prescient essay, still fresh and relevant, that should be read as a device to decode the language of mass lies and hypocrisy of the politicians and other related commentators in that field. There could be no better weapon to question and to check those in power by a citizen, than a clear, well-constructed thought which is a precedent to the right action, Orwell seems to say. And, in this way, it is Orwell's guide to progress and freedom from orthodoxy, oppression and dirty complex ill-constructed sentences with much felonious motives.
P.S:If one considers the larger context of this essay, the rules of Orwell should take a backseat. It is not a must-follow rule like that of a dictator. He makes it quite clear that where one cannot think clear and needs a guidance, then the rules must be followed. To talk much about the rules, is to create a fuss over nothing.
P.S.S: ** If you are a student of political science, and interested in how far language and other identities is being used as a ploy in politics, I recommend the magnum opus (but a full blown book unlike this essay) by the contemporary economist, Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny.
** In one of the essays written on what actually prevents a healthy political debate in India (as that is a country close to me and much available to my knowledge) Keshava Guha writes how labelling and whataboutery acts a prominent role. I am providing its link here to just show how much Orwell's analysis remains very much relevant and true. scroll.in/article/768687/ten-factors-...
December 15, 2020
Such an amazing and important writing. Very helpful advice on the lack of beauty/clarity/strength in today's English and how to avoid it. This was written back in 1046, yet it is as timely today as it ever was!
January 27, 2021
4.5 Stars! It's a great read, very insightful and relevant. This actually made me question the way I speak and write.
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