

Orwell Essay: Politics And The English Language - astrec
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/decline/orwell1.htm

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MaysonL
I love the way he roasts the dying metaphors, spicing their remains with his
own novel images:

...like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes.

...phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.

...gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order
by someone else...

...an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like tea-leaves blocking a
sink.

A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow,...

...give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

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Alex3917
Modern politics consists of framing, soundbites, talking points, context
shifting, and statistics. The political essay died along with Orwell's
elephant.

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kaens
This is a great read, especially for anyone who's involved in any sort of
"activist" stuff.

I point all my friends who do any sort of political writing - which is mainly
things like small local zines and such - at this. It does a great job of
showing how to make a point effectively, and showing how a lot of political
writing fails to do much of anything but preach to the choir.

Glad to see it on here.

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13ren
I read this a decade ago, and tried to practice it. The only problem is that
people pay less attention because you don't sound as impressive...

OTOH maybe I can recommend it: using this approach, I did win a prize for an
essay-based subject (non-computer science)... And there was another essay I
wrote that one lecturer gave to another lecturer to read because it was so
"stimulating".

BTW: Orwell mentions "dead metaphors". There's a really cool rhetorical device
called "reviving a dead metaphor". A simple way to do this is to take mixed
(dead) metaphors and _unmix them_. The impact can be strikingly visceral.

 _\EDIT_ {it's all coming back to me now... when I used metaphors in this way,
they became true isomorphisms, revealing a much deeper and more informative -
and even predictive - correspondence. For an example, note that the _desktop
metaphor_ is itself a dead metaphor that is also an isomorphism.}

Finally: Orwell did not do well romantically. It makes one think twice about
emulating him. I try to remember this test before following advice :-)

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astrec
_The only problem is that people pay less attention because you don't sound as
impressive..._

But as the brothers Heath show us in "Made to Stick", nobody will recall what
you actually said.

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revorad
Here's a good collection of Orwell's essays:

[http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79e/in...](http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79e/index.html)

When I first read 'Politics and the English Language', I was pleased to see
the similaities between pg's essays and Orwell's thoughts about language,
metaphors and good writing.

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astrec
Looking at my inbox this rings true: _The whole tendency of modern prose is
away from concreteness._

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noonespecial
Thats really cool. I had never read that. In doing so, its easy to see now why
Orwell created short powerful books. He really was concentrating on his craft
and using a systematic approach to his writing.

Thanks for sharing.

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astrec
My pleasure. I had reservations about submitting it to a hacker forum, but a
second reading left no doubt.

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jsmcgd
For me this is the best article I have read on Hacker News in a while. More of
this please!

ps I got a perverse enjoyment from being scolded from beyond the grave.

pps I think that's my first ironic pun

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danw
Orwell's diary is being republished in blog form at
<http://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/>

