So it’s decided! We will be starting George Orwell’s Animal Farm next week!
But first, the second part of “Politics and the English Language.” It was published in 1946 before Orwell wrote 1984. In many ways this essay serves as a precursor to everything the writer would say about Newspeak in the later novel. In this treatise he explains how language is being abused and distorted by politics and ideology; how words with literal meaning are being replaced by phrases that are “tacked together.” Orwell famously writes that “the word Fascism now has no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable.’” The essay is a brilliant anticipation of what we today call “talking points,” the repetition of stock phrases and political jargon that are used by all politicians, government departments and corporate spokespersons. Once again, Orwell was increcibly prescient about where both language and political discourse was headed.
Notice how he writes about euphemisms being used to disguise atrocities and crimes. He mentions “pacification” as a word applied to the murder of innocent civilians. That was almost 30 years before the Nixon administration referred to its invasion of Cambodia as the “accelerated pacification” of the Vietcong! Today, when we are in the midst of hellish wars that engulf whole civilian populations, politicians, generals and the media speak about “collateral damage.”
Orwell never ceases to amaze!
Or how about this brilliant bit of analysis: “Political language — and with varying degree this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and lies sound truthful, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
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David Krayden Reads George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language," Part II