All Annotations of George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1946[Preview]

saved by14 people, first byadrienne travis on 2006-05-11, last byCheryl van Tilburg on 2008-08-14

• half-conscious belief that language is a
  natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes
• the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because
  our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier
  for us to have foolish thoughts.
• staleness of
  imagery; the other is lack of precision
• political writing. As soon as certain topics are
  raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think
  of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words
  chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked
  together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse
• A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking
  a visual image
• here is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative
  power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing
  phrases for themselves.
• incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that
  the writer is not interested in what he is saying
• Operators or verbal false limbs. These save the trouble of picking out
  appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra
  syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry
• The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of
  being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes
  a phrase
• Pretentious diction. Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as
  noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote,
  constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate, are used to
  dress up a simple statement and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased
  judgements
• Foreign words and expressions such as cul de sac, ancien regime,
  deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, status quo, gleichschaltung, weltanschauung,
  are used to give an air of culture and elegance
• haunted by
  the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones
• The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic,
  realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot
  be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy,
  not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted
  from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic
  we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim
  that it is a democracy

• Here is a well-known verse from
  Ecclesiastes:

  
  
  

  
  

  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.

  
  

  
  

  Here it is in modern English:

  
  
  

  
  

  Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel 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.

• the concrete illustrations
  -- race, battle, bread -- dissolve into the vague phrases "success or failure
  in competitive activities."
• The whole tendency of modern prose is away
  from concreteness. Now analyze these two sentences a little more closely. The
  first contains forty-nine words but only sixty syllables, and all its words
  are those of everyday life. The second contains thirty-eight words of ninety
  syllables: eighteen of those words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek.
  The first sentence contains six vivid images, and only one phrase ("time
  and chance") that could be called vague. The second contains not a single
  fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its ninety syllables it gives only
  a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first. Yet without a doubt
  it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English.
• It
  is easier -- even quicker, once you have the habit -- to say In my opinion
  it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think.
• When
  these images clash -- as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the
  jackboot is thrown into the melting pot -- it can be taken as certain that
  the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming
• A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that
  he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying
  to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
  4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself
  two more: 1. Could I put it more shortly? 2. 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. 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.
• political writing is bad writing
• Orthodoxy,
  of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style.
• 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 favorable to political conformity.
• political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.
• Thus political
  language has to consist largely of euphemism., question-begging and sheer cloudy
  vagueness. Defenseless 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.
• The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism
• But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
• every such phrase
  anaesthetizes a portion of one's brain
• *One can cure oneself of the not un- formation by memorizing this sentence:
  A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field.
• it has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of obsolete
  words and turns of speech, or with the setting up of a "standard English"
  which must never be departed from. 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.
• 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 visualizing
  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.

• (i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used
  to seeing in print.

  
  
  

  (ii) Never us a long word where a short one will do.

  
  
  

  (iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

  
  
  

  (iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

  
  
  

  (v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you
  can think of an everyday English equivalent.

  
  
  

  (vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

• when you make a stupid remark
  its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself

• on 2006-08-16 Thomasneal
  The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable." The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.