Exactly. If words or certain meanings of words are outlawed then existing words will be shanghai-ed to do double duty and if all modifications to words is verboten, gestures or facial movements or something less noticeable would develop.
I agree that that’s what Orwell is getting at, but I never thought it was terribly realistic. As long as there are words of some sort, they can be repurposed into a political context. I suspect that Newspeak can’t get rid of the verb “have,” so there will always be Haves and Have-nots. It probably still needs the words “dig” and “level,” so there can still be Diggers and Levelers. And Boxers, and Wobblies, and Roundheads, and Greens, and so forth.
(1) Not all of the elite are evil. I didn’t mean to imply that if I did. But not all intellectuals are good, either. Just like any other grouping of humans, you get both good and bad in the group.
(2) I am not a member of the intellectual elite. I object to dumbing things down as a matter of standard policy. I doubt I am alone in this.
RE post #26: What a shaky house of cards “civilization” seems to me, sometimes.
I always wondered about that. By O’Brien’s account, the whole point of the Oceanian state is to give Inner Party members the sadomasochistic thrill of breaking rebels like Winston. He emphasizes that what he is now going through with Winston will be replayed over and over and over with others, forever.
But not if Newspeak makes thoughtcrime impossible. Then all the fun goes out of it.
Kinda like Basic English only more so.
I must admit that the notion of words changing and evolving over time had not occurred to me. Ever. Not even once. Because Im dumb and clearly have no understanding of the language that I have been using - with some degree of success - for nearly 4 decades now. Thanks for the insight.
Whether you have heard a particular word used in a particular way has pretty much no effect on the fact that I have heard it used that way. Why did you ask for examnples of their misuse if your response amounts to little more than well I havent so neener neener neener.
I didnt suggest you were questioning the validity of Orwells neologisms but rather the notion that a man coins news words with specific meanings for a specific purpose but his definition and intent are irrelevant because language evolves and so just use them to mean whatever you like. The dangers of so slippery an approach to language is one of the fundaments of his philosophy (as far as I have been able to discern).
Take the real-life example of the Chinese government’s censorship of Weibo. There’s a list of forbidden words (that is updated often) that will make tweets disappear. It’s designed to prevent political speech the government doesn’t like. Except the speech still happens, because the speakers simply substitute another word for the forbidden one.
Any living language will generate the words its speakers need. If one can’t use “free” to mean “without coercion” then something else will gain that connotation. Maybe “unsliced”?
You should read Frindle.
Sorry, you don’t get to bizarrely misread my comments and then pretend I’m the one being condescending.
Well, I did ask for a cite, which is hardly unusual around here, hoping for some web-based article or editorial or blog or whatever that uses “thoughtcrime” or “doublethink” in a manner showing an utter ignorance of Orwell’s message. Of course, I don’t know what conversational circles you run in. Maybe every single one of your friends and acquaintances thinks “duckspeak” is just a fancy word for “quack”.
You’re reading way too much into my comment. I simply added a qualifer recognizing the possibility that some of Orwell’s phrases might have taken on secondary meanings in the 65 years since Nineteen Eighty-Four was published.
I’m actually being open to the idea of what you suggest - that Orwell’s words are being misused by people who have little or no idea what the original meaning was - I just don’t know of any examples offhand. If you know of some that I can read, I invite you to provide links. If not, well… neener, I guess.
Sure I do, in fact I did. Not the “bizarrely misreading bit” but certainly guilty of justified condescension. Glad to have cleared that up for you.
Sorry, I obviously wasn’t quite clear enough when I said I do not have a cite but I have heard them misused in the way that I described. But I guess I was wrong since you have never heard it must be a hallucination on my part. Thanks for sorting me out. Is there anything else that I’ve never heard or seen because you haven’t? If you think of any others please let me know.
You don’t know my friends, and you certainly wouldn’t condescend to speak to one of them.
Add whatever qualifier you like. You are still wrong. An unqualified wrong in point of
fact.
I’d invite you to get a clue.
I can’t say that I’ve found you enlightening but at least you’re irritating so you have that going for you.
Yeah… this is getting too immature for me.
We don’t have go farther than our TV or AM radio to get more ‘prolefeed’ than you can shake a stick at.
He’s not saying that you must not have heard what you did, but simply that he has not and cannot, therefore, join you in believing people misuse Orwell’s newspeak. This is what we call being evidenced-based.
I don’t understand the rest of your comments. Are you saying that Bryan Ekers is incontrovertibly wrong in leaving open the possibility that in colloquial speech, some words from 1984 have morphed in meaning? You realize that would require you to list every instance of one of those words being used and a single instance of a word being used in a new or different way would prove you wrong?
Acually, I can think of an example, likely familiar to many of the readers here, of a newspeak word being used incorrectly. It was an episode of MASH* (“The Late Captain Pierce”) in which Hawkeye has, though a bureaucratic error, been declared dead. An administrative officer, Captain Pratt, described the entensive and Kafka-esque paperwork necessary to “un-kill” Hawkeye, and at one point says something along the lines of:
“You are what George Orwell described in Nineteen Eighty-Four as an ‘unperson’.”
When I first saw this episode (it first aired in 1975, if I didn’t see it then it must have been soon after), I had no idea who George Orwell was or that “1984” was a novel and not a reference to the actual year, which would have been at least 30 years after the events of the episode itself, set in 1950 or so, adding to my confusion.
Anyway, an “unperson” as Orwell described is someone who never existed, i.e. all official records of their existence deleted. Hawkeye is merely (on paper) dead, his former existence is still on the books.
Just saying.
Bryan I haven’t read anything since my above quoted post. I did that intentionally because I got frustrated and needlessly and stupidly pissy.
My last post was over-the-top asshole for Café Society and I was out of line.
I’m sorry.
Zeke
Accepted.
I dunno about the PRC, but in Oceania, innovative word-substitution/code in Newspeak works only until the Thought Police realize it’s happening (which might well be long before it actually does happen, if you take my meaning) and then it becomes (or always was) a handy thoughtcrime-detection tool, because if they did not invent the code themselves they can soon and easily crack it, and stay ahead of the curve. (Newspeak’s sharply truncated vocabulary makes this easier still.)
That might work for a while, but eventually coded speech would become indistinguishable from utilitarian speech. Does “I’m going to the store for some bread” mean the obvious or does it mean I’m meeting with my subversive collaborators?
Of course that brings to mind the Ascian language in Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun. In that totalitarian state, nevermind words, only approved sentences are permitted to be spoken. (Amazing that there’s actually a Wikipedia entry on it.)
Something akin to that is mentioned in 1984, preprinted letters that contained long lists of phrases, the “writer” to strike out the ones that didn’t apply.
That’s the beauty of it!