# 1984 - More about linguistic tyranny than totalitarianism **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 1, 2013, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1984-more-about-linguistic-tyranny-than-totalitarianism/662379 "2013-07-01T18:18:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2013, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1984-more-about-linguistic-tyranny-than-totalitarianism/662379/21 "2013-07-01T21:54:39Z")
To me Orwellian cases in real life are pieces of legislation or organizations that have names that obfuscate or imply the opposite of their actual goal. So if I wanted to bring back prohibition I’d start the Alcohol Freedom Institute. Are you against freedom? Other examples would be blatant historical revisionism and the doctoring of quotes, photos, facts, whatever. Basically old school propaganda. This was a big part of the book too, just taken to 11. > [@1984](#): > > And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed-if all records told the same tale-then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past. > [@mlees](#): > > “Follow the money”. > > Who benefits from artificially modifying (or dumbing down) language (I believe language shapes thought)? > > Politicians, journalists, lawyers, novelists. The intellectual elite. 🙂 But in 1984 the Party is the intellectual elite. The proles are most of the population but no one with power cared too much about them since they were just manual labor and were easily distracted with sports, pornography, and other bread and circuses. But it’s important that educated people think the right thoughts since they actually direct the ship of state. ---
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2013, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1984-more-about-linguistic-tyranny-than-totalitarianism/662379/22 "2013-07-01T22:29:10Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > If he expressed it through a metaphor of language control He didn’t. Newspeak isn’t even a very large part of the book. The longest mention is a conversation Winston has with one of his colleagues at Minitru about it (because the colleague in question is involved with the Newspeak project). Winston’s sex life, and the implications it has, are a much larger part of the story than Newspeak. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2013, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1984-more-about-linguistic-tyranny-than-totalitarianism/662379/23 "2013-07-01T23:42:35Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > “Plato walks with the Macedonian swineherd, Confucius with the head-hunting savage of Assam.” Edward Sapir. Not at all surprising in Plato’s case, but Confucius! You naughty bit-o’-rough-diggin’ ol’ sage, you! ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2013, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1984-more-about-linguistic-tyranny-than-totalitarianism/662379/24 "2013-07-01T23:50:13Z")
> [@Kamino\_Neko](#): > > He didn’t. Newspeak isn’t even a very large part of the book. The longest mention is a conversation Winston has with one of his colleagues at Minitru about it (because the colleague in question is involved with the Newspeak project). > > Winston’s sex life, and the implications it has, are a much larger part of the story than Newspeak. My point was that the Oceania regime had control over people’s lives in hundreds of ways. Orwell wasn’t going to catalog all of them. He chose a representative handful, one of which was the regime’s control over language. Orwell most likely chose this example because, as a writer, he worked with language - not because he felt the language control was any worse than the other things Big Brother was doing. For similar reasons, Kafka, a lawyer, wrote _The Trial_ and Zemyatin, an engineer, wrote _We_. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1984-more-about-linguistic-tyranny-than-totalitarianism/662379/25 "2013-07-02T00:01:12Z")
> [@Zeke\_N.Destroi](#): > > … the importance of language and the danger of limiting its use. … This, and it’s misuse, particularly obfuscatory language, > [@marshmallow](#): > > … historical revisionism and the doctoring of quotes, photos, facts, whatever. … and this. There are a lot a things to come away from 1984 with, but if you don’t get these two (language and history) you need to reread it. CMC fnord! ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1984-more-about-linguistic-tyranny-than-totalitarianism/662379/26 "2013-07-02T00:11:13Z")
The OP is half-right. Yes, Orwell was very deeply concerned about the political clarity of language as such – see [“Politics and the English Language”](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part42) (1946) - but _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ is only incidentally about that. It is mainly about a more abiding theme of Orwell’s: that control of all records and communications and public discourse by a determined government, or even a fanatical organization controlling the minds of its followers, can erode the very concept of objective truth. The Newspeak language is only one tool in the kit, and less important here than Winston Smith’s daily editing of the historical record in the Ministry of Truth. See [“Inside the Whale”](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part12) (1937): > [@](#): > > The Communist movement in Western Europe began, as a movement for the violent overthrow of capitalism, and degenerated within a few years into an instrument of Russian foreign policy. This was probably inevitable when this revolutionary ferment that followed the Great War had died down. So far as I know, the only comprehensive history of this subject in English is Franz Borkenau’s book, THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL. What Borkenau’s facts even more than his deductions make clear is that Communism could never have developed along its present lines if any revolutionary feeling had existed in the industrialized countries. In England, for instance, it is obvious that no such feeling has existed for years past. The pathetic membership figures of all extremist parties show this clearly. It is, only natural, therefore, that the English Communist movement should be controlled by people who are mentally subservient to Russia and have no real aim except to manipulate British foreign policy in the Russian interest. Of course such an aim cannot be openly admitted, and it is this fact that gives the Communist Party its very peculiar character. The more vocal kind of Communist is in effect a Russian publicity agent posing as an international socialist. It is a pose that is easily kept up at normal times, but becomes difficult in moments of crisis, because of the fact that the U.S.S.R. is no more scrupulous in its foreign policy than the rest of the Great Powers. Alliances, changes of front etc., which only make sense as part of the game of power politics have to be explained and justified in terms of international socialism. Every time Stalin swaps partners, ‘Marxism’ has to be hammered into a new shape. This entails sudden and violent changes of ‘line’, purges, denunciations, systematic destruction of party literature, etc., etc. Every Communist is in fact liable at any moment to have to alter his most fundamental convictions, or leave the party. The unquestionable dogma of Monday may become the damnable heresy of Tuesday, and so on. This has happened at least three times during the past ten years. It follows that in any Western country a Communist Party is always unstable and usually very small. Its long-term membership really consists of an inner ring of intellectuals who have identified with the Russian bureaucracy, and a slightly larger body of working-class people who feel a loyalty towards Soviet Russia without necessarily understanding its policies. Otherwise there is only a shifting membership, one lot coming and another going with each change of ‘line’. [“Looking Back on the Spanish War”](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part16) (1942): > [@](#): > > 1. > > The struggle for power between the Spanish Republican parties is an unhappy, far-off thing which I have no wish to revive at this date. I only mention it in order to say: believe nothing, or next to nothing, of what you read about internal affairs on the Government side. It is all, from whatever source, party propaganda–that is to say, lies. The broad truth about the war is simple enough. The Spanish bourgeoisie saw their chance of crushing the labour movement, and took it, aided by the Nazis and by the forces of reaction all over the world. It is doubtful whether more than that will ever be established. > > I remember saying once to Arthur Koestler, ‘History stopped in 1936’, at which he nodded in immediate understanding. We were both thinking of totalitarianism in general, but more particularly of the Spanish civil war. Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’. Yet in a way, horrible as all this was, it was unimportant. It concerned secondary issues–namely, the struggle for power between the Comintern and the Spanish left-wing parties, and the efforts of the Russian Government to prevent revolution in Spain. But the broad picture of the war which the Spanish Government presented to the world was not untruthful. The main issues were what it said they were. But as for the Fascists and their backers, how could they come even as near to the truth as that? How could they possibly mention their real aims? Their version of the war was pure fantasy, and in the circumstances it could not have been otherwise. > > The only propaganda line open to the Nazis and Fascists was to represent themselves as Christian patriots saving Spain from a Russian dictatorship. This involved pretending that life in Government Spain was just one long massacre (VIDE the CATHOLIC HERALD or the DAILY MAIL–but these were child’s play compared with the Continental Fascist press), and it involved immensely exaggerating the scale of Russian intervention. Out of the huge pyramid of lies which the Catholic and reactionary press all over the world built up, let me take just one point–the presence in Spain of a Russian army. Devout Franco partisans all believed in this; estimates of its strength went as high as half a million. Now, there was no Russian army in Spain. There may have been a handful of airmen and other technicians, a few hundred at the most, but an army there was not. Some thousands of foreigners who fought in Spain, not to mention millions of Spaniards, were witnesses of this. Well, their testimony made no impression at all upon the Franco propagandists, not one of whom had set foot in Government Spain. Simultaneously these people refused utterly to admit the fact of German or Italian intervention at the same time as the Germany and Italian press were openly boasting about the exploits of their’ legionaries’. I have chosen to mention only one point, but in fact the whole of Fascist propaganda about the war was on this level. > > This kind of thing is frightening to me, because it often gives me the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. After all, the chances are that those lies, or at any rate similar lies, will pass into history. How will the history of the Spanish war be written? If Franco remains in power his nominees will write the history books, and (to stick to my chosen point) that Russian army which never existed will become historical fact, and schoolchildren will learn about it generations hence. But suppose Fascism is finally defeated and some kind of democratic government restored in Spain in the fairly near future; even then, how is the history of the war to be written? What kind of records will Franco have left behind him? Suppose even that the records kept on the Government side are recoverable–even so, how is a true history of the war to be written? For, as I have pointed out already, the Government, also dealt extensively in lies. From the anti-Fascist angle one could write a broadly truthful history of the war, but it would be a partisan history, unreliable on every minor point. Yet, after all, some kind of history will be written, and after those who actually remember the war are dead, it will be universally accepted. So for all practical purposes the lie will have become truth. > > I know it is the fashion to say that most of recorded history is lies anyway. I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history COULD be truthfully written. In the past people deliberately lied, or they unconsciously coloured what they wrote, or they struggled after the truth, well knowing that they must make many mistakes; but in each case they believed that ‘facts’ existed and were more or less discoverable. And in practice there was always a considerable body of fact which would have been agreed to by almost everyone. If you look up the history of the last war in, for instance, the ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, you will find that a respectable amount of the material is drawn from German sources. A British and a German historian would disagree deeply on many things, even on fundamentals, but there would still be that body of, as it were, neutral fact on which neither would seriously challenge the other. It is just this common basis of agreement, with its implication that human beings are all one species of animal, that totalitarianism destroys. Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as ‘the truth’ exists. There is, for instance, no such thing as ‘Science’. There is only ‘German Science’, ‘Jewish Science’, etc. The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but THE PAST. If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’–well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five–well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs–and after our experiences of the last few years that is not a frivolous statement. [“The Prevention of Literature”](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part46) (1946): > [@](#): > > The organized lying practiced by totalitarian states is not, as is sometimes claimed, a temporary expedient of the same nature as military deception. It is something integral to totalitarianism, something that would still continue even if concentration camps and secret police forces had ceased to be necessary. Among intelligent Communists there is an underground legend to the effect that although the Russian government is obliged now to deal in lying propaganda, frame-up trials, and so forth, it is secretly recording the true facts and will publish them at some future time. We can, I believe, be quite certain that this is not the case, because the mentality implied by such an action is that of a liberal historian who believes that the past cannot be altered and that a correct knowledge of history is valuable as a matter of course. From the totalitarian point of view history is something to be created rather than learned. A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened. Then again, every major change in policy demands a corresponding change of doctrine and a revelation of prominent historical figures. This kind of thing happens everywhere, but is clearly likelier to lead to outright falsification in societies where only one opinion is permissible at any given moment. Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth. The friends of totalitarianism in this country usually tend to argue that since absolute truth is not attainable, a big lie is no worse than a little lie. It is pointed out that all historical records are biased and inaccurate, or on the other hand, that modern physics has proven that what seems to us the real world is an illusion, so that to believe in the evidence of one’s senses is simply vulgar philistinism. A totalitarian society which succeeded in perpetuating itself would probably set up a schizophrenic system of thought, in which the laws of common sense held good in everyday life and in certain exact sciences, but could be disregarded by the politician, the historian, and the sociologist. Already there are countless people who would think it scandalous to falsify a scientific textbook, but would see nothing wrong in falsifying an historical fact. It is at the point where literature and politics cross that totalitarianism exerts its greatest pressure on the intellectual. The exact sciences are not, at this date, menaced to anything like the same extent. This partly accounts for the fact that in all countries it is easier for the scientists than for the writers to line up behind their respective governments. > > \ > > Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable. It can never permit either the truthful recording of facts or the emotional sincerity that literary creation demands. But to be corrupted by totalitarianism one does not have to live in a totalitarian country. The mere prevalence of certain ideas can spread a kind of poison that makes one subject after another impossible for literary purposes. Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy–or even two orthodoxies, as often happens–good writing stops. This was well illustrated by the Spanish civil war. To many English intellectuals the war was a deeply moving experience, but not an experience about which they could write sincerely. There were only two things that you were allowed to say, and both of them were palpable lies: as a result, the war produced acres of print but almost nothing worth reading. And in 1948 he published _Nineteen-Eighty Four._ ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1984-more-about-linguistic-tyranny-than-totalitarianism/662379/27 "2013-07-02T00:34:13Z")
> [@mlees](#): > > “Follow the money”. > > Who benefits from artificially modifying (or dumbing down) language (I believe language shapes thought)? > > Politicians, journalists, lawyers, novelists. The intellectual elite. 🙂 > > So yes, I think it is a warning about not letting others control you, too. Some of the tools won’t be so obvious, like jackboots and billy clubs. Bear in mind that (1) Orwell was part of the intellectual elite, and (2) the intellectual elite are practically the only ones in the world who object even in theory to dumbing things down. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1984-more-about-linguistic-tyranny-than-totalitarianism/662379/28 "2013-07-02T00:47:34Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > My point was that the Oceania regime had control over people’s lives in hundreds of ways. Orwell wasn’t going to catalog all of them. He chose a representative handful, one of which was the regime’s control over language. Orwell most likely chose this example because, as a writer, he worked with language - not because he felt the language control was any worse than the other things Big Brother was doing. For similar reasons, Kafka, a lawyer, wrote _The Trial_ and Zemyatin, an engineer, wrote _We_. Well, that’s part of it. But, if Ayn Rand was going to write an Objectivist novel about an alienated-genius artist, _The Fountainhead,_ it was probably a predetermined choice that the artist would be an architect, not a painter or sculptor or musician – because the message/theme of the book is essentially sociopolitical, and architecture is the most public of all the arts, the art in which governments and authorities take the most interest, and the art whose results shape our public daily environment. She had to make him an architect to make the point that society has no claim to stifle or steer the creativity of any artist, even an architect. Similarly, Orwell did not make his alienated-rebel-in-totalitarian society a factory worker, or a soldier, but a writer of a kind, with sufficient education and imagination to be something of an independent thinker. Orwell had a special view of the role of the writer in society and culture, and figured that writers – of prose, specifically – would always be the first artists affected by totalitarianism. See [“The Prevention of Literature”](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part46). ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1984-more-about-linguistic-tyranny-than-totalitarianism/662379/29 "2013-07-02T03:35:46Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > In other words, I’m going to come up with a list of rules that I will expect you to follow but if you catch me breaking one, it’s ok. That’s how English works. You learn a bunch of rules in school, but then learn when you can violate them. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1984-more-about-linguistic-tyranny-than-totalitarianism/662379/30 "2013-07-02T03:37:34Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > That’s how English works. You learn a bunch of rules in school, but then learn when you can violate them. Dat’s wizdum an’ poetry, dat iz! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1984-more-about-linguistic-tyranny-than-totalitarianism/662379/31 "2013-07-02T11:53:39Z")
In Oceania, grammar rules violate YOU! ---
**Author:** ![Zeke\_N.Destroi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/4af34b/32.png) [@Zeke\_N.Destroi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeke_N.Destroi)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1984-more-about-linguistic-tyranny-than-totalitarianism/662379/32 "2013-07-02T12:10:55Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > 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. Newspeak consists of three vocabularies, technical words (potassium for instance), joiner words (and, in, etc) and everything else. It is the everything else category that I’m concerned with here. The underlying principle of Newspeak is to constrict the “everything else” group as much as possible. What words can be scrapped would be - in 1984 the process isn’t complete yet - and what words couldn’t be scrapped would be stripped of all meaning beyond the most superficial and simplistic. One example that Orwell uses in the book is the word _free_. It cannot be scrapped - at present - because the idea of “without cost” is still useful. The other senses of free (political freedom, personal freedom, unencumbered etc) would cease to exist. Scrap what words you can and narrow the definition of those you can’t. The end result being that the entirety of Declaration of Independence would read, “Thoughtcrime.” As for implementation, IngSoc controls all media, all information all publications. As Newspeak develops it will be reflected in all media. As people die off and the process continues fewer and fewer people will know, to use the above example, that “free” used to mean anything other than without cost. Those few that still know of the other definitions wouldn’t matter because they couldn’t make themselves meaningfully understood. But what you’re missing is that the whole point of Newspeak wasn’t just to render political **thought** impossible but rather to render political **discourse** impossible. The idea being that by reducing the vocabulary people’s ability to discuss anything will be likewise reduced. As the people come to know fewer and fewer words they become less able to express any dissident thoughts they may have. Essentially it was a way of ensuring that should there be another “revolution” it would be a revolution of one because the one would be unable to meaningfully communicate any idea simply because the words don’t exist. Refer back to the entire Declaration of Independence (UN Charter on Human rights, Gettysburg Address take your pick) being reduced to the single word “Thoughtcrime” ---
**Author:** ![Zeke\_N.Destroi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/4af34b/32.png) [@Zeke\_N.Destroi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeke_N.Destroi)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1984-more-about-linguistic-tyranny-than-totalitarianism/662379/33 "2013-07-02T12:13:43Z")
> [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](#): > > Are you aware of the Doublespeak Award? > [Doublespeak Award - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak_Award) > > " 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.” No, never heard of either. But now that I have I’ll be wasting far too much time on them lol. ---
**Author:** ![Zeke\_N.Destroi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/4af34b/32.png) [@Zeke\_N.Destroi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeke_N.Destroi)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1984-more-about-linguistic-tyranny-than-totalitarianism/662379/34 "2013-07-02T12:30:03Z")
> [@](#): > > But how were they misused? I have heard “doublethink” used to mean “reconsider” and Newspeak to describe neologisms. Doublethink means to hold to mutually contradictory ideas at once and accept them both as true depending on circumstance. Newspeak is a top to bottom revision of the language - actually you could almost say it is its own language but uses English words as the base. And if you really don’t see how politicians, lawyers and journalists benefit from the dumbing down of the language then I’m not sure what to say that would be of value to you. _Poets, priests and politicians / all have words to thank for their positions"_ - The Police ---
**Author:** ![Zeke\_N.Destroi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/4af34b/32.png) [@Zeke\_N.Destroi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeke_N.Destroi)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1984-more-about-linguistic-tyranny-than-totalitarianism/662379/35 "2013-07-02T12:34:56Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > 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.” I must disagree with you about your take on the book. He would not have spent so much time and energy devoted to the importance of language in maintaining liberty as he quite demonstrably did. I also believe that 1984 is the non-allegorical sequel to Animal Farm. Animal Farm shows how such a government can slip into place, 1984 shows what happens after. ---
**Author:** ![Zeke\_N.Destroi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/4af34b/32.png) [@Zeke\_N.Destroi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeke_N.Destroi)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1984-more-about-linguistic-tyranny-than-totalitarianism/662379/36 "2013-07-02T12:41:14Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > 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. It seems somewhat odd to me that you would question the validity of the definition of words given them by the man who coined them. In fact to suggest that any word can mean anything that anyone wants (the logical extension of your comment) is to fall into the very trap that Orwell was warning about and we have been discussing. The only difference is that instead of reducing the language to the point of incomprehensibility this is a dilution of it with the same result. ---
**Author:** ![Zeke\_N.Destroi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/4af34b/32.png) [@Zeke\_N.Destroi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeke_N.Destroi)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1984-more-about-linguistic-tyranny-than-totalitarianism/662379/37 "2013-07-02T12:58:42Z")
> [@Kamino\_Neko](#): > > He didn’t. Newspeak isn’t even a very large part of the book. The longest mention is a conversation Winston has with one of his colleagues at Minitru about it (because the colleague in question is involved with the Newspeak project). > > Winston’s sex life, and the implications it has, are a much larger part of the story than Newspeak. I have to disagree with you. The volume of pages dedicated to the discussion of Newspeak (the appendices, the discussion with his friend who is revising the dictionary and various other places in passing) argue against your assertion that Newspeak isnt important to the book. His sex life is important in that he is having enjoyable sex as opposed to the do-your-duty kind he had been accustomed to and that is bad. Other than that the sex is completely unimportant. Much more important - if you want to include Julia - are the trappings of the relationship and what they say about both IngSoc and people themselves by implication. I truly cant recall reading anything by him that had any real sexual component. Sex appears in his works (rarely) but it is never lingered over. Ive always had the feeling that Orwell was sexually awkward and thus somewhat of a prude. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1984-more-about-linguistic-tyranny-than-totalitarianism/662379/38 "2013-07-02T13:08:47Z")
> [@Zeke\_N.Destroi](#): > > It seems somewhat odd to me that you would question the validity of the definition of words given them by the man who coined them. > > In fact to suggest that any word can mean anything that anyone wants (the logical extension of your comment) is to fall into the very trap that Orwell was warning about and we have been discussing. The only difference is that instead of reducing the language to the point of incomprehensibility this is a dilution of it with the same result. Oh? It seems odd to me to not recognize that word meanings can change and expand over time (and through normal linguistic evolution and not some conscious effort at deception), and it had been over 60 years since that book was published. It’s odder still to me that you seem to be under the impression I was questioning the validity of Orwell’s neologisms. That said, I can honestly say I’ve never seen anyone use “doublethink” to mean “reconsider”, for what it’s worth. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1984-more-about-linguistic-tyranny-than-totalitarianism/662379/39 "2013-07-02T14:15:26Z")
> [@Zeke\_N.Destroi](#): > > But what you’re missing is that the whole point of Newspeak wasn’t just to render political **thought** impossible but rather to render political **discourse** impossible. The idea being that by reducing the vocabulary people’s ability to discuss anything will be likewise reduced. As the people come to know fewer and fewer words they become less able to express any dissident thoughts they may have. Yeah, I really don’t think that’s the way that language or people work, but I imagine it makes for a nifty storyline. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1984-more-about-linguistic-tyranny-than-totalitarianism/662379/40 "2013-07-02T14:37:53Z")
I admit it would be an ambitious idea to, by the year 2050, replace English entirely with a politically-sanitized vernacular, but a technology-dependent totalitarian superstate like Oceania is going to need neologisms to continue, just to keep innovating. Orwell doesn’t spend a lot of time discussing his “C Vocabulary” (Newspeak’s technical and engineering words), possibly because he was not himself a technician or an engineer, but it seems likely to me that sooner or later some Inner Party official will decide that since he can’t understand what electrical engineers are talking about, it must be crimethink, and if that official has enough factional support, Oceania is going to vaporise the people it needs to run and maintain the telescreen network. And if this is not possible, the engineers and technicians will be able to use their jargon for political talk. “Did you goodfix telescreen?” “Doubleplusgoodfix inductorwise.” [wink] (i.e. “I ‘fixed’ it to fail randomly.”) If Orwell expected innovation was not necessary, then simple decay will undermine Oceania long before 2050, given his description of London. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1984-more-about-linguistic-tyranny-than-totalitarianism/662379.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1984-more-about-linguistic-tyranny-than-totalitarianism/662379.md?page=3)