
George Orwell – Politics and the English Language (1946) - samaysharma
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit/
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merricksb
This has had significant discussion before, including 6 months ago:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=George%20Orwell%20%E2%80%93%20...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=George%20Orwell%20%E2%80%93%20Politics%20and%20the%20English%20Language&sort=byPopularity&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

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Animats
Orwell had a job with the British Ministry of Information during WWII. Part of
his job was translating news reports into 850-word Basic English [1] for radio
broadcasts to the Colonies. (India, mostly.) Once you know that, this essay,
and "1984", make more sense. Orwell discovered that translating into Basic
English is a political act. The evasions and prevarications of official
statements do not translate. Ambiguity has to be hammered out first to fit
into the forced plain style of Basic English. Hence, Newspeak.

His list of overused phrases is dated. A few to avoid today:

\- "very unique". "Unique" means there's only one. If there's more than one,
"unique" is the wrong word.

\- "a lot". Overused, but harmless.

\- "literally". Avoid unless "literally" is true; do not use for emphasis.

[1]
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Basic_English_word_l...](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Basic_English_word_list)

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
It has been pointed out to me that _literally_ has been used for emphasis
since at least around the time Shakespeare was thrashing it out with a quill.

The two dictionaries I have at hand both list some variation of _in effect; in
substance; very nearly; virtually_ as one definition of _literally_.

~~~
andai
Ah yes... but that is not what literally literally means.

~~~
yrro
English literally has no word for literally?

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kyleschiller
I loved this when I first read it in high school, mostly because it mocked
academic english for relying on pretentious jargon to obfuscate itself.

My second reading years later, the whole thing felt very pretentious itself,
if not downright authoritarian. Orwell acknowledges at the beginning that his
view might seem like "sentimental archaism", but properly enforced, archaism
isn't just sentimental, it's oppressive. Wanting things to remain the same, or
revert to the way they were before is, after all, a serious condemnation of
everyone fighting for progress along the way.

Reading it a third time today, and reading it as a tech worker, I'm drawn to
his note that "effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and
producing the same effect in an intensified form" as it relates to
technologies as new mediums for communication. For Twitter to establish 140
characters as the length of a tweet is also to establish it as the length of a
though, which in time makes tweeting the perfect way to broadcast thoughts.

I don't want to sound too conspiratorial here, I don't think any given medium
is bad. I also don't want to sound too inane and suggest that the only
important take way is the basic idea of McLuhan's Medium-as-Message.

I do think it's useful to think of the battle of dominance in medium as a
battle for dominance in message, and accept that victory may be as self-
perpetuating as it is self-normalizing.

EDIT: You might also enjoy DFW's related essay:
[http://wilson.med.harvard.edu/nb204/AuthorityAndAmericanUsag...](http://wilson.med.harvard.edu/nb204/AuthorityAndAmericanUsage.pdf)

~~~
hueving
>or revert to the way they were before is, after all, a serious condemnation
of everyone fighting for progress along the way.

True, but in any controversial topic one man's progress is another man's
regression.

~~~
andai
I was going to say, “Yes, but what if the progress is kind of shit?”, but you
put it much better.

------
andolanra
_Politics and the English Language_ is a pretty seductive essay, but on deep
examination, it doesn't really make its own case beyond some sentimental
appeals and rhetorical flourishes. In particular, its thesis seems to be
language has "declined", but never cites any older uses of language save a
line of the Bible, which he contrasts with bureaucrat-ese and journalistic
writing; he makes rough insinuations that the language can somehow affect (or
even _effect_ ) thought but doesn't bother justifying how or why beyond simple
rhetorical devices ("But if thought corrupts language, language can also
corrupt thought [citation needed]"); he insists on a few rules to keep your
language sharp, but these rules are ridiculously broad and, indeed, so hard to
follow while producing clear writing that he breaks most of them himself
_within the first two paragraphs_ :
[http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=992](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=992)

The idea that you can adopt simple rules and somehow come up with speech
that's not amenable to deception or fluffery is appealing for obvious reasons,
but that's just not how language works: you can follow Orwell's rules to the
letter, better than he does, and include just as much deceptive fluff; or you
can ignore his rules and write forceful, interesting prose. (Orwell himself
does!)

A rough analogue in the programming field would be the idea that you can
"enforce" good code by nothing more than enforcing style guidelines. The idea
that you can prevent lies in politics by banning the passive voice is roughly
as silly as the idea that you can prevent bugs in code by banning tab
characters.

~~~
Swizec
Linguistic relativity:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity)

> The principle of linguistic relativity holds that the structure of a
> language affects its speakers' world view or cognition. Popularly known as
> the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, the principle is often defined
> to include two versions. The strong version says that language determines
> thought, and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive
> categories, whereas the weak version says that linguistic categories and
> usage only influence thought and decisions.

> Currently, a balanced view of linguistic relativity is espoused by most
> linguists holding that language influences certain kinds of cognitive
> processes in non-trivial ways, but that other processes are better seen as
> arising from connectionist factors.

For a simple empirically shown example of linguistic relativity: you can see
more colors if you have names for them.

[https://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/6thfloor/2012/09/04/its-
not...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/6thfloor/2012/09/04/its-not-easy-
seeing-green/?referer=)

~~~
riprowan
... and therefore, if you actually do see more colors (since you were given
more names for them) then you're more likely to need a _new_ name for the
_new_ color that you just saw that nobody has named yet, leading to even more
color-names and even greater linguistically-enabled color vision among all
your peers.

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grabcocque
One of the worst things about Orwell's prescriptivist tone is how he
steadfastly refused to assume that any of his advice applied to himself. And
that's a good thing. His advice if followed would make anyone a less
interesting, more lumpen and bland writer. Thankfully Orwell payed no
attention to his own advice when writing.

Do as he does, not as he says, in this case.

~~~
vixen99
He followed his 6th rule:

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.

~~~
yrro
Thankfully! Rule 5, if taken too far, results in the dialect of English used
in tabloid newspaper headlines.

