From: imbibe@mindspring.com   
      
   "Politics and the English Language" (1946) is an essay by George Orwell that   
   criticised the "ugly and inaccurate" written English of his time and examines   
   the connection between political orthodoxies and the debasement of language.   
      
   The essay focuses on political language, which, according to Orwell, "is   
   designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an   
   appearance of solidity to pure wind". Orwell believed that the language used   
   was necessarily vague or    
   meaningless because it was intended to hide the truth rather than express it.   
   This unclear prose was a "contagion" which had spread to those who did not   
   intend to hide the truth, and it concealed a writer's thoughts from himself   
   and others.[1] Orwell    
   encourages concreteness and clarity instead of vagueness, and individuality   
   over political conformity.   
      
   Orwell relates what he believes to be a close association between bad prose   
   and oppressive ideology:   
      
   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 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.   
      
   One of Orwell's points is:   
      
   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.   
      
   The insincerity of the writer perpetuates the decline of the language as   
   people (particularly politicians, Orwell later notes) attempt to disguise   
   their intentions behind euphemisms and convoluted phrasing. Orwell says that   
   this decline is self-   
   perpetuating. He argues that it is easier to think with poor English because   
   the language is in decline; and, as the language declines, "foolish" thoughts   
   become even easier, reinforcing the original cause:   
      
   A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then   
   fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing   
   that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate   
   because our thoughts are    
   foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier to have foolish   
   thoughts.   
      
   Orwell discusses "pretentious diction" and "meaningless words". "Pretentious   
   diction" is used to make biases look impartial and scientific, while   
   "meaningless words" are used to stop the reader from seeing the point of the   
   statement. According to Orwell:    
   "In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary   
   criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost   
   completely lacking in meaning."   
      
   Orwell chooses 5 passages of text which "illustrate various of the mental   
   vices from which we now suffer." The samples are: by Harold Laski ("five   
   negatives in 53 words"), Lancelot Hogben (mixed metaphors), an essay by Paul   
   Goodman on psychology in the    
   July 1945 issue of Politics ("simply meaningless"), a communist pamphlet ("an   
   accumulation of stale phrases") and a reader's letter in Tribune (in which   
   "words and meaning have parted company"). From these, Orwell identifies a   
   "catalogue of swindles and    
   perversions" which he classifies as "dying metaphors", "operators or verbal   
   false limbs", "pretentious diction" and "meaningless words". (See cliches,   
   prolixity, peacock terms and weasel words.)   
      
   Orwell notes that writers of modern prose tend not to write in concrete terms   
   but use a "pretentious Latinized style" (compare Anglish). He claims writers   
   find it is easier to gum together long strings of words than to pick words   
   specifically for their    
   meaning—particularly in political writing, where Orwell notes that   
   "[o]rthodoxy ... seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style". Political   
   speech and writing are generally in defence of the indefensible and so lead to   
   a euphemistic inflated style.   
      
   Orwell criticises bad writing habits which spread by imitation. He argues that   
   writers must think more clearly because thinking clearly "is a necessary first   
   step toward political regeneration". He later emphasises that he was not   
   "considering the    
   literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing   
   and not for concealing or preventing thought".   
      
   As a further example, Orwell "translates" Ecclesiastes 9:11:   
      
   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.   
      
   – into "modern English of the worst sort":   
      
   Objective consideration 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.   
      
   Orwell points out that this "translation" contains many more syllables but   
   gives no concrete illustrations, as the original did, nor does it contain any   
   vivid, arresting images or phrases.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)