A Short Analysis of George Orwell’s ‘Politics and the English Language’,Essays and articles
WebEssays and other works. The Orwell Foundation is delighted to make available a selection of essays, articles, sketches, reviews and scripts written by Orwell. Subscribe to our WebGeorge Orwell's Essays. A Good Word For The Vicar of Bray. A Hanging. A Nice Cup of Tea. AntiSemitism In Britian. Arthur Koestler. Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador WebNov 4, · George Orwell: ‘Politics and the English Language’ First published: Horizon. — GB, London. — April Reprinted: ‘Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays’. WebApr 2, · George Orwell was an English novelist, essayist and critic most famous for his novels 'Animal Farm' () and 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' (). The essay was ... read more
Professor Laski 1 uses five negatives in fifty three words. One of these is superfluous, making nonsense of the whole passage, and in addition there is the slip — alien for akin — making further nonsense, and several avoidable pieces of clumsiness which increase the general vagueness. Professor Hogben 2 plays ducks and drakes with a battery which is able to write prescriptions, and, while disapproving of the everyday phrase put up with , is unwilling to look egregious up in the dictionary and see what it means; 3 , if one takes an uncharitable attitude towards it, is simply meaningless: probably one could work out its intended meaning by reading the whole of the article in which it occurs.
In 4 , the writer knows more or less what he wants to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like tea leaves blocking a sink. In 5 , words and meaning have almost parted company. People who write in this manner usually have a general emotional meaning — they dislike one thing and want to express solidarity with another — but they are not interested in the detail of what they are saying. A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. The 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. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.
In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestos, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases — bestial, atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them.
And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved, as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity.
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.
Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism.
Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:. The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.
I should expect to find — this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify — that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship. But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one's elbow.
Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against. By this morning's post I have received a pamphlet dealing with conditions in Germany. This invasion of one's mind by ready-made phrases lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one's brain. I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this would argue, if they produced an argument at all, that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development by any direct tinkering with words and constructions.
So far as the general tone or spirit of a language goes, this may be true, but it is not true in detail. Silly words and expressions have often disappeared, not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of a minority. Two recent examples were explore every avenue and leave no stone unturned , which were killed by the jeers of a few journalists. There is a long list of flyblown metaphors which could similarly be got rid of if enough people would interest themselves in the job; and it should also be possible to laugh the not un- formation out of existence 3 , to reduce the amount of Latin and Greek in the average sentence, to drive out foreign phrases and strayed scientific words, and, in general, to make pretentiousness unfashionable.
But all these are minor points. The defence of the English language implies more than this, and perhaps it is best to start by saying what it does not imply. On the contrary, it is especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outworn its usefulness. On the other hand, it is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words that will cover one's meaning. What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them. 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 until you find the exact words that seem to fit it.
When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose — not simply accept — the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one's words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally.
In the couple adopted a son, whom they named Richard Horatio Blair, after one of Orwell's ancestors. Their son was largely raised by Orwell's sister Avril after Eileen's death. Near the end of his life, Orwell proposed to editor Sonia Brownell. He married her in October , only a short time before his death. Brownell inherited Orwell's estate and made a career out of managing his legacy. Orwell died of tuberculosis in a London hospital on January 21, Although he was just 46 years old at the time of his death, his ideas and opinions have lived on through his work. An inscription reads, "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
It's an interesting question. He would have to recognise that he was a man of the moment. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Jonny Lee Miller. Robbie Coltrane. Ian McKellen. Edward VII. Prince Andrew. Prince Harry. Prince Louis of Wales. Prince George of Wales. King Charles III. William, Prince of Wales. Alan Rickman. Catherine of Aragon. Early Life Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair in Motihari, India, on June 25, Education Like many other boys in England, Orwell was sent to boarding school. Early Writing Career After leaving the India Imperial Force, Orwell struggled to get his writing career off the ground and took all sorts of jobs to make ends meet, including being a dishwasher.
War Injury and Tuberculosis In December , Orwell traveled to Spain, where he joined one of the groups fighting against General Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Literary Critic and BBC Producer To support himself, Orwell took on various writing assignments. Famous Books Sometimes called the conscience of a generation, Orwell is best known for two novels: Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Death Orwell died of tuberculosis in a London hospital on January 21, Industries Fiction and Poetry Journalism and Nonfiction Astrological Sign: Cancer Schools Eton Interesting Facts According to one biography, Orwell's first word as a child was "beastly.
He and his wife were later indicted of treason in Spain. Orwell was once a BBC producer and ended up loathing his job as he felt he was being used as a propaganda machine. Orwell argues that just as thought corrupts language, language can corrupt thought, with these ready-made phrases preventing writers from expressing anything meaningful or original. Writers should let the meaning choose the word, rather than vice versa. We should think carefully about what we want to say until we have the right mental pictures to convey that thought in the clearest language. v Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Although Hulme and Orwell came from opposite ends of the political spectrum, their objections to lazy and worn-out language stem are in many ways the same. Hulme argued that poetry should be a forge where fresh metaphors are made: images which make us see the world in a slightly new way. But what Orwell advises is that the writer be on their guard against such phrases, the better to avoid them where possible. What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? Nevertheless, the link between the standard of language and the kind of politics a particular country, regime, or historical era has is an important one. Those writing under a dictatorship cannot write or speak freely, of course, but more importantly, those defending totalitarian rule must bend and abuse language in order to make ugly truths sound more attractive to the general populace, and perhaps to other nations.
If I recall correctly, he was wrong about a few things including, I think, the right way to make a cup of tea! In all seriousness, what he fails to acknowledge in this essay is that language is a living thing and belongs to the people, not the theorists, at all time. If a metaphor changes because of homophone mix up or whatever, then so be it. I recall learning to make up new metaphors and similes rather than use clichés when I first began training ten years ago or more. Similarly, the use of active voice has led to unpalatable writing which lacks character. The passive voice may well become longwinded when badly used, but it brings character when used well.
That said, Orwell is rarely completely wrong. But the idea of the degradation of politics is really quite a bit of nonsense! Always good to get some critique of Orwell, Ken! Hulme camp than the Orwell — poetry can afford to bend language in new ways indeed, it often should do just this , and create daring new metaphors and ways of viewing the world. But prose, especially political non-fiction, is there to communicate an argument or position, and I agree that ghastly new metaphors would just get in the way. Orwell shows that at least one person was already discussing them over half a century ago!
Critical Essays is a collection of wartime pieces by George Orwell. It covers a variety of topics in English literature, and also includes some pioneering studies of popular culture. It was acclaimed by critics, and Orwell himself thought it one of his most important books. In late Orwell, worrying about the ephemerality of magazine publication, began to collect a volume of his best essays. The following May a second impression of copies was issued, with some small corrections. A reprint in paperback dropped the subtitle. The blurb to the first edition described some of the essays as being "among the very few attempts that have been made in England to study popular art seriously". Orwell thought seemingly frivolous popular culture, such as crime fiction, comic postcards , and the Billy Bunter stories, to be worth studying for the light it throws on contemporary attitudes.
He considered the English language of the s to be in a degenerate state, and held that political discourse was inevitably corrupted as a result. Orwell himself, writing before he had completed Nineteen Eighty-Four , said that he thought Critical Essays one of his three most important books, along with Animal Farm and Homage to Catalonia. The journalist Tosco Fyvel , writing in Tribune , acclaimed Orwell as "a national figure as a critic, satirist and political journalist", while disagreeing with Orwell's view that the Attlee government was uncommitted to the introduction a fully socialist society. Pritchett considered the essays "brilliant examples of political anthropology applied to literature by a non-conforming mind".
Eric Bentley saw the book as "a dirge for nineteenth-century liberalism", and, like Irving Howe , thought it represented Orwell at his best. Jump to content Navigation. Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate. Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file. What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item. Download as PDF Printable version. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Go to top. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. More Read Edit View history.
I Have Tried to Tell the Truth: — The Complete Works of George Orwell. Volume ISBN Retrieved 4 October Smothered Under Journalism: ISBN X. Leab Brown University, Fall ". John Hay Library: Collections. Brown University Library. The Orwell Society. Archived from the original on 8 October Retrieved 9 June George Orwell: The Politics of Literary Reputation. New Brunswick, N. Retrieved 6 October New Republic. In Meyers, Jeffrey ed. Graham Greene: A Revaluation. London: Macmillan. Retrieved 3 November Edmund Wilson: A Biography. London: Constable published George Orwell. Burmese Days A Clergyman's Daughter Keep the Aspidistra Flying Coming Up for Air Animal Farm Nineteen Eighty-Four Down and Out in Paris and London The Road to Wigan Pier Homage to Catalonia Cigarettes " " Confessions of a Book Reviewer " " Decline of the English Murder " " A Good Word for the Vicar of Bray " " How the Poor Die " " The Moon Under Water " " A Nice Cup of Tea " " Pleasure Spots " " Politics and the English Language " " The Politics of Starvation " " Politics vs.
Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels " " The Prevention of Literature " " Riding Down from Bangor " " Second Thoughts on James Burnham " " Some Thoughts on the Common Toad " " Why I Write " Fiction Burmese Days A Clergyman's Daughter Keep the Aspidistra Flying Coming Up for Air Animal Farm Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell,The Orwell Foundation
WebGeorge Orwell's Essays. A Good Word For The Vicar of Bray. A Hanging. A Nice Cup of Tea. AntiSemitism In Britian. Arthur Koestler. Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador WebNov 4, · George Orwell: ‘Politics and the English Language’ First published: Horizon. — GB, London. — April Reprinted: ‘Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays’. WebApr 2, · George Orwell was an English novelist, essayist and critic most famous for his novels 'Animal Farm' () and 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' (). The essay was WebEssays and other works. The Orwell Foundation is delighted to make available a selection of essays, articles, sketches, reviews and scripts written by Orwell. Subscribe to our ... read more
Loading Comments Orwell then gives five examples of what he considers bad political writing. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes. Orwell describes a condemned criminal being executed by hanging, using this event as a way in to thinking about capital punishment and how, as Orwell put it elsewhere, a premeditated execution can seem more inhumane than a thousand murders. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.
Orwell argues that just as thought corrupts language, language can corrupt thought, with these ready-made phrases preventing writers from expressing anything meaningful or original. Wellsamong others. As its title suggests, essays george orwell, Orwell identifies a link between the degraded English language of his time and the degraded political situation: Orwell sees modern political discourse as being less a matter of words essays george orwell for their clear meanings than a series of stock phrases slung together. Not wishing to embarrass his family, the author published the book under the pseudonym George Essays george orwell. People who write in this manner usually have a general emotional meaning — they dislike one thing and want to express solidarity with another — but they are not interested in the detail of what they are saying.
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