Orwell's job during WWII was translating news into Basic English, the 1000 word vocabulary, for radio transmission to the colonies. (India, Hong Kong, etc.) He had to take out ambiguity, euphemisms, and verbosity to hammer news into that limited vocabulary. He discovered that this is a political act. Removing ambiguity from political writing changes the meaning. It cannot be done neutrally, because reducing the ambiguous to the concrete requires making a decision.
This is also at core the problem with the current movements against "making moderation political." Moderation is inherently ideological for the same reasons; there is no neutral position from which to do it because it involves making decisions about what may be included. A specific moderation policy may be terrible but "it's political" can't be the reason, because it applies to all of them.
Same thing with "correct" dialects of english, norms around hospitality, civility, showing respect etc. You can establish what is most common and demand people adhere to it, but that doesn't make it neutral.
That's one way to frame the issue, but the other side of it would be that they want moderation to be more inclusive so as not to further other somewhat less than half the population and worsen the political divide.
It isn't neutral in either direction, of course, and is part of a growing push-back against the sort of ideology that rejects all names for and criticism of itself.
attempts are laudable, but ... towards which "neutral"?
(this is where a closed forum, like a mailing list, has an easier time: one can aim for "what is generally acceptable among the known readership". To Kill A Mockingbird has a wonderful illustration of code switching, but was recently unacceptable to quote on a forum dealing with under- and over-class biases, both explicit and implicit, exactly because it literally used the n-word, and not only did it use it, but needed to do so, demonstrating the lines between in- and out-group usage. When it came to forum policy, the distinction between use and mention was lost.)
You're intentionally muddying the waters by conflating common-sense rules like "you can't say the-n-word", with the kind of political moderation that's problematic ("you can't share articles about lab leak theory").
If speech is political enough that you're not sure if it's political, it's political.
I mean first off you don't have any particularly privileged insight into my intentions so let's just stick to what I am saying here today alright?
But that said, "muddying the waters" is a particular view of it but yes I am pointing out that they are qualitatively the same. What is or isn't common sense is a value judgement you make based off of experiences and your estimation of who shares them and to what degree. It's not inherently neutral.
The two examples you mention are excellent demonstrations! 80 years ago that sort of language would have been expected, 50 it would have been tolerated, now it isn't. Because of changing political reality, which moderation polices are a part of.
This has a lot of implications for translations and translators that attempt to "disambiguate" the original because it contains difficult to translate meanings.
It makes me rethink all the translated political speeches I've ever read.
Some of the most salient phrases of political speech are the Rorschach meanings: deliberately ambiguous in hopes each supporting audience will ascribe their own preferred interpretation to the speaker's intent.
Probably the most intelligent political comedy of all time, used to be a must-watch, and still highly regarded for the intelligentsia in multiple countries.
Even the books and essays he wrote before WWII have the same lucid style and clarity of thought: so it may be fair to say Orwell was always interested in clear (seeing and thinking and) communication, even before noticing how much of the opposite there was everywhere.
i think it's really funny how many of his examples of dead metaphors are still used
> Ring the changes on, take up the cudgels for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles’ heel, swan song, hotbed.
the whole essay is hilariously savage. also this observation back in 1946:
> The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’.
and finally
> You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you – even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent – and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself.
reminds me of the capabilities of a certain chatbot as well.
i ultimately disagree because i'm too taken by descontructionists. orwell's assertion of finding pure, simple meaning in clear language, well i don't believe in that.
> When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualising, you probably hunt about till you find the exact words that seem to fit it.
"Fascist" is one of those curious words when - used outside serious history - it says more about the person using it than it does about what the person is describing.
IIRC the official stance of the USSR at that time was that Trotsky of all people was a fascist - a very modern usage of the word. I imagine Orwell - as a non-Stalinist socialist - was aware of it.
The KPD (German communist party) held the official stance that the SPD (Social Democrats) were fascist. This was when the actual NSDAP were still a fringe minority. After the war, when the Berlin Wall was constructed, its official name in East Germany was “Antifascist Protection Rampart”.
It’s hard not to notice that in official Communist usage even before WWII, the term “fascist” typically meant nothing other than “enemy”, which is how a lot of modern leftists use the term today. I can even find instances of anti-Stalinist leftists calling Stalin a fascist, which is fair enough to me!
Even before: it's been a long time since I read "Homage..." but I would not be surprised if POUM had been calling the anarchists fascists at some point.
Are you an aphantasiac? (Lacking of the capacity to mentally "see" or generate imagery).
That would be the only reason why I'd think this would not be self-evident. If I think of a concrete sidewalk, I literally imagine a suburban sidewalk composed of squares of poured concrete. I have a mental image of it prior to picking the words to describe it. Maybe it's white and smoothed, or gray and rough... But I still wordlessly visualize it.
In short, Wittgenstein put it best. Ways of life precede the language that nominatively identifies them.
my experience is that my 'conscious' thought is a constant thread of language in monologue. i'm not very good at meditation (though i don't practice much) because quieting my internal monologue feels nearly impossible. putting on podcasts helps me fall asleep because i no longer need to generate my own movement, but the external speaking can relax me.
i personally fall slightly more into the (maybe Lacanian) view that language is essential - maybe even primordial - in our formation of subjectivity. i don't necessarily buy into it 'scientifically' per se, but i'm skeptical of pure ideas existing without language, at least in any human subject capable of language. i don't really know, this is one of those places where i'm always fine tuning and changing my thoughts.
> i don't necessarily buy into it 'scientifically' per se, but i'm skeptical of pure ideas existing without language, at least in any human subject capable of language.
AFAICT that does happen to be scientifically inaccurate.
There have been experiments that show other primates exhibit a clear sense of fairness, for example. If one of the test subjects received food that was less desirable than what was given to the other test subject, the test subject with the less desirable food would get angry and eventually start throwing its food back at the researcher. I can't remember kind of primate this was. But they didn't possess a language, therefore this was an expression of a "pure idea existing without language."
I haven't read much more about this. But the idea that we acquired language while somehow dropping the ability to hold such pure ideas-- esp. in the domain of fairness-- seems unlikely.
So... Out of silliness. Consciously repeat a single word, say "blueberry", over and over and over and over again until you're sick of it, then try to visualize your actual house.
This is a mind quieting exercise that I read about in a book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.
Many people will get stuck when drawing, only making the crude symbols of the thing they are thinking about because they are thinking with the linguistic part of their brain. Much of the spacial processing tends to take place in the opposite hemisphere of the brain.
Repeating that same word over and over and over will exhaust the language processing part of your brain, allowing the non-verbal parts to do do their thing more effectively.
Bonus bit: The concern you have with the intrinsic link between language and thinking is exactly why Orwell was completely justified to my thinking to be concerned about manipulation of language as a mechanism to control thought.
The escape hatch, as it were, is that language as a concept transcends any of it's concrete implementations, and is intrinsically bound to the act of being. We are immersed in the business of being, and one can imagine a mute, illiterate thinking being nevertheless existing and thinking, without spoken, written, or heard language. Their language would just be to point at what it is they are trying to describe, or recalling the memory of it. Our words as spoken or written, are just a shorthand that allows us to communicate with one another and evoke a shared experience of being.
Everything is language. A language can constrain your thinking within the context and grammar of that language, but another language lacking the same constraints need not necessarily constrain thinking in the same way.
Wittgenstein thusly posits that the very act of Philosophy is constantly engaging in language games, in which we experiment with changing up the rules by which we communicate in the attempt to forge shared understanding.
In short: Communication is really hard, and once you start thinking about, you'll really start having to wonder whether anyone really does deep and meaningful "we're saying the same thing about the same thing" level communication a lot less than we think we do.
indeed that was a major problem i had the last time i tried any visual arts :) i've added the book to my list, it's something i have wanted to learn, or unlearn i guess, for quite a long time!
on one hand, i feel a strong aversion to anybody trying to prescribe a better linguistic framework with the goal of solving political discourse. others in this thread have noted that this essay has become a guideline for political writing. as i think we have seen with media recently, news media was perfectly comfortable to eschew the lofty diction of academia for the down-to-earth writing of the 'middle class.' if you skip past CNN and Fox, consent will just as easily be manufactured with 30 second viral videos on TikTok.
on the other hand, i do really really care about politics and communication. i don't want to throw out all language just because those moments where truly deep and meaningful communication are indeed incredibly rare. i'm on a big critical theory kick lately and it leaves me pretty depressed... but also i think it's too accurate to ignore. i guess i'm just tired of the language games and the hope for an event which will only reproduce the same social relations. i want to believe! :)
anyway, you've left me with lots to think about, and i appreciate your explanations! i will look more into Wittgenstein, my path through these thinkers has been a little backwards and random since it's not through academia.
No problem. For Wittgenstein in particular, hit up Philosophical Investigations, his latter work. Tractatus is a bit more "language must be like math", while PI was informed by a bit more time having lived life. Most of what I'm referring to can be found there.
The modern translation from Ecclesiastes is just so funny.
> I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Becomes
> Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.
When the cashiers in the big supermarket chain store in my neighborhood started to use a standard, corporate mandated phrase that included the company name and ended with something like "did you get everything you need?" I was irritated at first and started to get angry after a while.
I'm usually a cheerful person that gives the cashiers a smile and a nod and wishes them a nice weekend or something.
But that phrase felt totally alien, it deprived the whole little exchange of any humanity.
I think the cashiers hated it, too.
Luckily, it didn't catch on. Maybe it was German stubbornness or something. I'm really glad it's gone.
Oh, I detest this as well. At Chik-Fil-A in the US, employees are basically required to say "my pleasure" in response to "thank you", and it comes off so artificial- maybe even culty. It's even worse when the employee in question is clearly in a bad mood or something. Either way, it kinda makes me avoid saying "thank you" at all; most of the time I'll try to come up with some other polite valediction to avoid making them say it.
A polemic arguing for plain English. What it lacks is a comparison to other tongues (much communist rhetoric is a translation from either German or Russian or Chinese or Vietnamese or Italian or Spanish so demands questions about choice of metaphorical equivalency which probably is fed by dictionaries, and would tend to archaisms as a consequence)
Not really confined to politics either, unless you regard all argumentative writing (as in writing presenting a side of an argument of reasoning) as politics.
So he basically predicted the current news cycle issues with American/western media political education. For example if it's not laissez-faire capitalism then it's socialism and heavens forbid the government is the one doing the work then it's communism. However, if you explain to the average person what bill/policy/plan does, alot more will agree and not care and think it's great until the buzzwords they remember to dislike come out.
Basically use buzzwords strategically, people will agree on more than one expects if you get to the core of what's happening. When you use buzzwords the connotations already is set and taints everything you use around them
Academics, esp in humanities and social sciences, are masters of bullshitting; they learn this art from their mentors (Ph.D advisors, teachers), who have mastered that. Just look at the followers of Foucault, Derrida, etc.
Orwell's job during WWII was translating news into Basic English, the 1000 word vocabulary, for radio transmission to the colonies. (India, Hong Kong, etc.) He had to take out ambiguity, euphemisms, and verbosity to hammer news into that limited vocabulary. He discovered that this is a political act. Removing ambiguity from political writing changes the meaning. It cannot be done neutrally, because reducing the ambiguous to the concrete requires making a decision.
Hence this essay, and, later, Newspeak.
(Source: "Orwell, the Lost Writings".)