1984 is one of the most personally influential novels I have ever read but I disagree with the standard interpretation of it.
Now I doubt I’m saying anything that hasn’t been said before but what the hell. I believe that the main warning / lesson that Orwell wanted to impart was the importance of language and the danger of limiting its use.
My basis for saying this is threefold:
The lengthy appendix devoted to Newspeak and the strategic deconstruction of the English language.
The amount of time that Orwell spends inside the narrative explaining the horrors of Newspeak.
Reading his other writing you see that the language, its usage and purity is of primary importance to him.
I’m not suggesting that the other themes don’t exist but I believe that fundamental to his conception, both prescient and Cassandraesque, of a nightmare future is the belief that language defines the limits of thought and by limiting language itself you render thought and discussion of thought impossible. Thereby you make dissent impossible.
I don’t have a copy in front of me right now so I can’t quote exactly but I’ll paraphrase what I consider to be one of the most important parts of the book.
The purpose of Newspeak is to make discussion of political ideas impossible. Free is stripped of all meaning except for the sense of without cost. Eventually a phrase such as “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal” can only be expressed by the word “thoughtcrime” *
So what do you folks think? Valid position or wingnut theory?
I just Sapir-Whorfed all over myself.
Edit: Linguistic determinism has not demonstrated any great validity as a hypothesis. And I joke but even with Sapir-Whorf, one of them said something to the effect of “Plato walks with the macedonian goatherd.” Eliminating a word for a concept does not eliminate the ability to think of the concept. How do you think we got words for things in the first place?
Prof Thank you. It is cool to know that I’m not completely out in left field. I really don’t have anyone I can discuss Orwell with so I’ve mostly been reading in a vacuum.
“Plato walks with the Macedonian swineherd, Confucius with the head-hunting savage of Assam.” Edward Sapir.
That’s what it is. Orwell wrote an essay, Politics and the English Language that, among other things advocated an extreme aversion to the passive voice. When analyzed, that essay comes out with about 20% passivity, which is about 7% higher than the average professional piece of text. I have very little faith in Orwell’s linguistic acumen.
I have often thought the same as the OP. In fact, I argued with one of my instructors in linguistics as an undergraduate about this very issue. I think that the usage of the novel as a vehicle for a linguistical idea is also applicable to Professor Tolkien’s saga as it appears to be subordinate to his creation of the Elvish languages.
The massive increase in governmental surveillance predicted in *1984 *was first imagined in the Russian novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin, We. Although, this theme is the one that most people remember from 1984, it is Mr. Orwell’s use of language as a tool of the state that sets this scarily prescient dystopian novel apart from its genre. The fact that any of the Newspeak words have made their way into general usage (albeit among the geekier members of our fragmented culture) is telling. Thoughtcrime and doubleplusgood come to mind immediately. In fact, neither of these words were marked incorrect by my online spellchecker.
I don’t completely buy the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. I think there is a core level truth to it but as you pointed out it fails because phrases can be used in place of a single word. Schadenfreude (sp?) for example exists as a concept in English but can’t be expressed in a single word.
But whether or not Sapir-Whorf is valid or not is, while an interesting discussion potentially, sort of tangential.
The thrust of the OP was not the validity of Sapir-Whorf but rather what was Orwell’s true warning about in the book. I feel that what he was truly trying to warn people about was primarily the dangers of allowing the language to become atrophied.
I think this differs from Sapir-Whorf in that the idea isn’t that a concept with no word cannot be contemplated but rather if you remove all but the most essential words (the A, B and C vocabularies) then it becomes impossible to express the idea.
As in the example in the OP basically the entirety of the US Declaration of Independence could only be translated as “thoughtcrime” not because people could not conceptualize such a thing but because they would have no words with which to meaningfully discuss it.
That was the stated purpose of Newspeak and you’ll recall a character (can’t recall the name) who was working on the Newspeak dictionary rejoicing about how many words they’ve destroyed and how many more they are going to.
In fact, it is kind of the opposite of Sapir-Whorf. It is not can’t have an idea without the word but rather you may have the idea but it can’t be expressed or discussed. Again, you would only be able to discuss political freedom with someone by saying, “thoughtcrime.”
Shortly there after you’d become intimately acquainted with room 101.
I read We and hated it lol - too mathematical. My math geek brother loved it however.
What I find depressingly ironic is that many of the Newspeak words that have come into common usage are misused and misunderstood - much like the novel.
Have they? I only ever see “ungood” and “doubleplusungood” used sarcastically, but with an implicit understanding of Orwell’s meaning. “Unperson” comes up now and then, usually in a more serious context.
He also said, in the same essay, that not only was he guilty of every crime he named but that violating the rules he laid out is not only acceptable but expected when aesthetics demand.
But it is both interesting and germane that you bring this essay up because it really does support my initial point. Orwell’s main complaint in * Politics…* is the imprecision of the usages of English and the notion that sesquipedalianism is a legitimate substitute for substance. <– see what I did there?
Well, I’ve never read 1984, so I dunno about the mechanics within the story and I don’t really get what you mean by all but the most essential words.
A nearly omnipotent government could, I suppose, mandate as nearly a non-figurative language as is possible and by restricting schooling, free time and access to materials, prevent people from by-and-large thinking of anything but the most quotidian affairs but you would need to keep them almost perpetually oppressed because you’re not actually keeping them from conceiving of stuff, you’re just keeping them from talking about them. If Room 101 were eliminated and Newspeakers weren’t punished or eliminated for modifying language, all the concepts that were previously eliminated would reappear as people think about them and write them down and share them with their peers.
" The Doublespeak Award is an “ironic tribute to public speakers who have perpetuated language that is grossly deceptive, evasive, euphemistic, confusing, or self-centered.” It has been issued by the National Council of Teachers of English since 1974.
Its opposite number is the Orwell Award for authors, editors, or producers of a print or nonprint work that “contributes to honesty and clarity in public language.”
Personally, I think Orwell meant 1984 as a warning against totalitarianism - sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. If he expressed it through a metaphor of language control it’s because he was a writer and he used language. An engineer or a lawyer or a physician would have expressed the horrors of Big Brother’s regime through the particular viewpoint of their professions as well.
My personal view is that the best way to look at 1984 is to see it as entirely an epilogue. Orwell is describing a situation where all hope has been lost and there’s no chance for progress. Smith, the protagonist, was doomed for the first page and there was nothing he could have done to avoid his fate.
The unwritten story to Orwell were the current events happening around him. He was warning people that if they didn’t change what was happening now, they would end up living in Oceania - and once they got there, they wouldn’t be able to get back. He was telling his readers, “This is how our story is going to end if we keep going the way we’re going.”
Shaping language. It’s called spin, nowadays. I am not asserting that current levels of expertise in propoganda is perfect or abosolute… some spin works, some doesn’t.
As has been mentioned, “surveillance” was also a major concern for Orwell. Nothing he had to say about language restrictions (in the world of 1984) would have been of any moment, if not for those omnipresent video screens/cameras.
As for the power of language restriction to restrict thought: research on semantic priming shows how vulnerable our minds are to being influenced by the words we hear or see.
(This article isn’t recent, but it is full-text-for-free, and reasonably authoritative:
Like Bozuit, I ask how these terms are misused, or betray a misunderstanding of their original meaning.
I feel I have to qualify by saying “original” meaning since just because Orwell used some new words in a particular way doesn’t limit them to his intended meanings.
