The uninhibited exercise of language safeguards human dignity and liberty, but its restriction under totalitarian conditions dehumanizes the individual and suppresses liberality of the mind.
Orwell shows overwhelming concern for the preservation of literature as a means of communication because of its natural connection with thought. In his essay ‘The Prevention of Literature’, Orwell writes, ‘Freedom of the intellect means the freedom to report what one has seen, heard, and felt, and not to be obliged to fabricate imaginary facts and feelings.’[1] Freedom of expression defines intellectual liberty; without the ability to communicate ideas, the intellect is constricted. Orwell’s concern with the state of literature is, at its heart, a concern for the truth. Throughout ‘The Prevention of Literature’, Orwell asserts that truth is conveyed in the communication of an individual’s observation or experience. Articulating an underdeveloped semiotic concept, he assumes that any verbalization of intellectual activity if honestly expressed is a truthful one. The issue of freedom of expression is ‘at the bottom a controversy over the desirability, or otherwise, of telling lies. What is really at issue is the right to report contemporary events truthfully, or as truthfully as is consistent with the ignorance, bias and self-deception from which every observer necessarily suffers.’[2] Orwell admits the limitations of ‘reportage’, but in spite of them embraces honestly produced literature as fundamentally true.
Literature by its nature is only valuable within a community, because in communicating there is an active agent and a receptive agent. In Orwell’s phrasing, all literature is ‘political’. Every writer begins with the ‘Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society that they should strive after.’[3] Literature would not exist, indeed it would not be necessary, without an audience to receive it. As a political work, literature’s purpose is to convey ideas about society to its members. Orwell advocates heavily that a writer should say what he sees as he sees it. These abstract ideas about literature, in all of Orwell’s essays, are grounded in his current political reality. In discussing the political reporting during the Soviet purges of 1936-38, which ignored the heinous behavior of the Soviet totalitarian government, he asserts that giving voice to the bare and indisputable facts is the greatest virtue of a writer. Literature is communicative and political, and must, as far as possible, be honest. Orwell does not, however, argue against writing with political bias. He admits that ‘no book is genuinely free from political bias’,[4] and that he consciously writes ‘againstfor democratic Socialism, as I understand it’.[5] His motivation to write always developed from ‘a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice…. I write it because there is something that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention’.[6] Orwell argues in ‘Why I Write’ against writers and artists who sacrifice truth to the false idol of political expediency. Prose literature, in Orwell’s estimation, is the primary mode for articulating objective truth, and the liberal communication of truth is the logical extension and principal gauge of freedom of thought.
All humans have a right to liberty because human dignity is located in the freedom of individual thought and to a decent way of life because, all share in a common human condition. Nineteen Eighty-Four’s protagonist, Winston Smith, , flirts with free thought while living under Ingsoc’s tyrannical government. He clings tenaciously to the idea that ‘Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.’[7] What made Winston an individual was the sovereignty he maintained over his own mind. Though the state oppressed him and his compatriots, he retained his autonomy and dignity as a human because he alone ruled over his thoughts. Orwell portrays Winston as the everyman living under oppressive conditions—the man who is ‘a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear….It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.’[8] Winston’s desire to ‘stay sane’ is his last chance at retaining his autonomy and the dignity of humanity. Orwell establishes a direct correlation between the dignity of a human person and her think liberally. These conditions allow for the production of real prose literature, fostered ‘in periods of democracy and free speculation’.[9]. Since every individual is entitled to think and speak freely, the mind is the only true arena of egalitarianism. Orwell believes that the best kind of writing is an uninhibited and truthful articulation of individual thought, written ‘in plain, vigorous language’.[10] This requires one ‘to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox’.[11] A free society protects speech rights and does not outlaw open philosophical speculation, but the careful use of language also safeguards both liberty of thought and a free society. Writers, journalists, and publishers are responsible for using language truthfully and precisely. By writing, publishing, and distributing literature uncensored, they give voice to the true life as they have observed and experienced it. Autonomy of thought, freedom of expression, and political liberty are each invariably dependent upon the others for their conceptual validity.
Orwell sees the problem of bad prose as a symptom of intellectual slothfulness. Language ‘becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier to us to have foolish thoughts.’[12] In fact, his whole essay entitled ‘Politics and the English Language’ addresses the intellectual accidie which gives way to abstruse, imprecise writing. The shape of a writer’s thought should mold her linguistic usage, not vice versa. When prose becomes a conglomeration of ‘stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally’,[13] it demonstrates the loss of free thought in society. A writer’s ‘foolish thought’ corrupts language through words and phrases which shroud rather than bare the truth. Orwell prosecutes the high literary crimes of vagueness in conveying meaning and opting for ‘stale metaphors, similes and idioms’ while ‘[saving] much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only to your readers but for yourself.’[14] Conversely, he observes an exaggerated reliance on grammatical constructions to dictate the meaning of a text. Tired, overused phrases and words overtake the craft of writing, and instead of creating an original work, the writer merely ‘[gums] together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else’.[15] Bad thinking and bad writing move in a cycle, the one perpetuating the other endlessly and promulgating an endless stream of vague, meaningless literature which fails to communicate clearly. Orwell precisely diagnoses the linguistic ills of the English language, but reminds his audience that ‘what is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about. In prose, the worst thing once can do with words is to surrender to them.’[16] Surrendering to words—letting preconstructed literary conventions determine the meaning of prose—and blindly yielding individual thought to an externally ordained agenda are the hallmarks of a language in the stranglehold of totalitarianism.
When Orwell speaks of totalitarianism, he has in mind three different methods by which political ideologies are oppressively imposed. Totalitarianism suppresses dissent and allows no opposition to the formally mandated way of thinking by employing an ideology or philosophy which eradicates any contrary thought or undesired behavior. The most conspicuous sort and most obviously dangerous is de jure totalitarianism, enacted by corrupt governments and states like the
The third system of totalitarianism is a self-imposed curtailment of thought and expression through cowardly self-censorship. ‘The unavoidable result of self-censorship’ is the stilted and clichéd promulgation of the party line. The thinker and the writer must ferociously defend individual liberty of thought because ‘literature is doomed if liberty of thought perishes…. any writer who adopts the totalitarian outlook, who finds excuses for persecution and the falsification of reality, thereby destroys himself as a writer.’[19] Here, he indicts the intellectuals of his day, suggesting that ‘on a long view the weakening desire for liberty among the intellectuals themselves is the most serious symptom of all.’[20]
In a totalitarian state, whether imposed by government, society, or self, thought is necessarily shaped by language instead of shaping it. Oppressive states operate by perverting language to make their own tyranny appear to be freedom. When language is controlled, independent thought is suppressed because certain modes of expression are illegitimized. In the tempestuous political climate of
a plongeur is one of the salves of the modern world….His work is servile and without art; he is paid just enough to keep him alive… they have simply been trapped by a routine which makes thought impossible. If plongeurs thought at all, they would long ago have formed a union and gone on strike for better treatment. But they do not think, because they have no leisure for it; their life has made slaves of them.[22]
Though his time in
Totalitarian powers manipulate language to subdue the populace, predisposing them to certain modes of thought which are acceptable to the leadership. Because of the intimate and unique kinship of thought and language, the influence of one upon the other is exploited to peremptorily assert a single ideology. On principle, an authoritarian government , must maintain absolute dominance over the people and is
in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened.[24]
The alteration of history conceals the truth from the average person, communicating fabrications as if they were facts. ‘Organized lying’ is ‘something integral to totalitarianism.’[25] This ‘organized lying’ encumbers the lower classes by perpetuating lies of luxury and necessity, keeping them as far from liberal thought as possible, while ‘it is at the point where literature and politics cross that totalitarianism exerts its greatest pressure on the intellectual.’[26] Orwell’s delineation of linguistic repression involves one single principle, and that is to craft a unified ideology for public consumption through imperious control of meaning.
Orwell explains in his essays the ways in which language is appropriated by totalitarian leaders to dominate the ignorant masses, but he illustrates it most strongly in Nineteen Eighty-Four, appending to the end of his novel the ‘Principles of Newspeak’. Newspeak is the reconstructed English language employed by Ingsoc, the only political party in Orwell’s hypothetical dystopia. The appendix is a treatise propagated by the Party describing the ideological theory and grammatical standards of the only legal form of communication. Orwell has created a quasi-fictionalization of totalitarian philosophy of language:
The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc — should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words….Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.[27]
Phrased from Ingsoc’s point of view, this explanation of Newspeak is a thinly veiled analysis of the ways political parties attempt to (and, at their worst, succeed at) using language to debilitate liberty of thought. He nimbly summarizes his thought when he writes that the words chosen as acceptable, by law or by practice, ‘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.’[28] ‘It is at this point’, he says, ‘that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.’[29]
This ‘special connection’ is actualized in ‘The Principles of Newspeak’ when Orwell demarcates the three vocabularies which Ingsoc employs. A word belonging to the A Vocabulary ‘was simply a staccato sound expressing one clearly understood concept…. It was intended only to express simple, purposive thoughts, usually involving concrete objects or physical actions.’[30] The B Vocabulary consists of political words, ‘intended to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them. Without a full understanding of the principles of Ingsoc it was difficult to use these words correctly.’[31] These words have deeply encoded, highly specialized meaning attached to them. While the A Vocabulary and the B Vocabulary seem to be antithetical in principle—one minimizes meaning while the other maximizes it—they achieve the same purpose. When these words are used, they connote only the concepts and principles which Ingsoc desires to inculcate to the people. The C Vocabulary consists only of technical and vocational terms which are practical in nature and not in use by all sectors of the population. With this system in place, ‘it was seldom possible to follow a heretical thought further than the perception that it was[32] Language no longer the vehicle for the free exchange of ideas but an instrument of mental torture with which to dominate the literate classes.
heretical: beyond that point the necessary words were nonexistent.’
The signified and the signifier, thoughts and words, are the two corresponding elements of language. The articulation of truth and the articulation of political party orthodoxy are diametrically opposed to one another. To write and speak truth, the words must take their form from the thoughts that precede them. As Orwell sees it, ‘The greatest enemy of 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 squirting out ink.’[33] Without consistent thought undergirding ideological expression, the words become meaningless. To write and speak party orthodoxy one must resort to political language, which ‘is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.’[34]
[1] George Orwell, ‘The Prevention of Literature’, in Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays
[2] Ibid., 210.
[3] George Orwell, ‘Why I Write’, in Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays (
[4] Ibid., 5.
[8] Ibid., 31.
[18] Ibid., 214.
[21] Stephen J. Greenblatt, Three Modern Satirists: Waugh, Orwell and Huxley (London: Yale University Press, 1965), 68.
[23] Ibid., 120.
[25] Ibid.
[27] Nineteen Eighty-Four, 305-6.
[32] Ibid., 311.
[34] Ibid., 171.
Bibliography
Humanities
Greenblatt, Stephen Jay. Three Modern Satirists: Waugh, Orwell and Huxley.
233-238.
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