Politics and the English Language

Politics and English

Politics and the English Language

The deterioration of language is tied to the deterioration of culture and tehre's nothing that can be done about either.

Foolish thoughts lead to ugly and inaccurate language, which in turn leads to an increase in the rate and degree of foolish thoughts.

"Staleness of imagery;" that is, the language is dry and/or cliched.

"Lack of precision:" the authors seem unclear about or indifferent to the meaning of their words.

A dying metaphor is a cliche phrase that is nt truly secure enough in its vividness of meaning to stand the test of time, and which destroys any sense of vividness and originality when used. Modern examples include "dragging his/her feet," "outside of the box," and arguably "show me the money" (when used in a symbolic context; the phrase is over-used regardless, but is not always metaphoric).

6)

A verbal false limb is a verb phrase that could be more efficiently and effectively replaced with a single active verb. They are filler; useless except for watering down an argument to diluted drivel.

7)

Pretentious diction can be used to add impartial-seeming scientific fact to an argument, to stir up emotion, and to simply seem more sophisticated. What distinguishes pretentious diction from varied, creative, erudite word choice is both the lack of true innovation and imaginativeness on the part of the scribe, as well as an obfuscation of cognitive comprehension in the interpretive capabilities of the reader.

8)

Modern meaningless words, or those on their way there, are "liberal" and "conservative," "scientific" and "intellectual," and arguably "economics" and "economy," depending o one's level of cynicism.

9)

The construction of the sentence is needlessly complicated, and deliberately avoids a standard subject-predicate-object delivery. There was more thought in the use of language than in the meaning of the phrase.

10)

There is not a single concrete element in the entire sentence; it is vague and does not reference any actual or even hypothetical events, but instead generalizes both nouns and verbs with complex phrases.

11)

The main problem Orwell points out is that people choose the easy route of selecting previously strung-together words for their thoughts rather than selecting their own words for their particular meanings. The ix questions that should be asked about every sentence are: What am I trying to say? What words best express it? What image/idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have the desired effect? Could it be shorter? Is anything avoidably ugly?

12)

Orthodoxy demands a lifelessness in prose because it demands that thinking not be original, but rather that it "toes the line" of party doctrine. Just as foolish thinking produces sloppy language, orthodoxy in thinking produces dull and unoriginal language.

13)

Political leader defend the indefensible by making vague and cliche connections between the indefensible event/practice/policy and some far vaguer principle or goal. Though the situation has become almost cliche itself, the invasion and occupation of Iraq as a mean of bringing freedom to the region is a solid modern example.

14)

No answer.

15)

Insincerity by definition creates a gap between true meaning and language, which necessarily leads to muddied thoughts.

16)

Language can corrupt thought by creating laziness; the ready supply of cliche and vague phrases is an insidious and corruptive temptation.

17)

Archaism and the salvaging of obsolete words and/or the standardizing of English are contrary to Orwell's intentions, as is an oversimplification of the language. Orwell is also not concerned with grammar, syntax, or style so long as meaning is clear.

18)

Orwell's six rules: i. Never use a phrase/image you are used to seeing n print; ii. never use a long word when there is a shorter substitute; iii. cut out any unnecessary words; iv. use the active voice whenever possible; v. everyday English words are preferable to foreign or scientific words; vi. break these rules if keeping them means being barbarous.