POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE GEORGE ORWELL 1

“POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE” GEORGE ORWELL

1. ORWELL’S THESIS • “Modern English, especially written in English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think more clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers” (4)

2. LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT • Thoughts and language are equal; they influence each other • Language becomes “ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish”… • “but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts” (4) • Later… “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought” (12) • Foolish, confused thoughts unclear, sloppy, ugly language

3. BAD WRITING QUALITIES • Staleness of imagery • Lack of precision • What are some specific examples?

4. PROSE • “Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more of phrases tacked together like sections of a prefabricated henhouse” (6) • Notice Orwell uses a simile which creates the imagery missing in his bad examples

5. FOUR “TRICKS” • Dying metaphors • An over-used word/phrase that has lost its vividness • Operators, or verbal false limbs • Pad each sentence with extra syllables and eliminate simple verbs, use of passive voice (e. g. make contact with (instead of “contact”) • Pretentious diction • Words that dress up simple statements to sound dignified (Latin or Greek, political, newly coined) • Meaningless words • Words used in criticism that are completely meaningless (could hide meaning) (e. g. “dead” and “living” to describe art)

6. AND 8. ORWELL DISTRUSTS… • Political language • Lifeless: “one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, home-made turn of speech” (11) • Consists of euphemism, question begging and vagueness • Tries to defend the indefensible

7. QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF • 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? • Could I have put I more shortly? • Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

9. CURE OF LANGUAGE • Does not involve regenerating obsolete words and setting up of Standard English • Does involve getting rid of words/idioms that have outworn their usefulness • Does not have to do with correct grammar and syntax or having good prose style • Does involve using fewest and shortest words to convey meaning • Does involve letting “the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about”

10. MEANING • The meaning should choose the word • Start with the visual, sensation, the concrete; then choose the words to best convey the meaning

11. ORWELL’S RULES • 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.

12. BACK TO ORWELL’S THESIS • “One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some wornout and useless phrase…into the dustbin where it belongs” (14)