Newspeak, the "official" language of Oceania, functions as a devise of extreme Party control: If the Party is able to control thought, it can also control action. In the year 1984, Newspeak is not fully employed, and for good reason; we would not understand the novel otherwise. However, Orwell makes certain to choose a date, 2050, when Newspeak will be the only language anyone will understand. Even though the year 1984 has passed, the book is still timely due to Orwell's vision and foresight. The decline of language troubled Orwell, who was a writer with political and historical agendas. If language could change for the worse, then truth could change into lies, and that was something that Orwell fought against, both in his personal life and in his writing.
George Orwell, likemany other literary scholars, is interested in the modern use of theEnglish language and, in particular, the abuse and misuse of English. He realises that language has the power in politics to mask thetruth and mislead the public, and he wishes to increase publicawareness of this power. He accomplishes this by placing a greatfocus on Newspeak and the media in his novel NineteenEighty-Four. Demonstrating the repeated abuse of language bythe government and by the media in his novel, Orwell shows howlanguage can be used politically to deceive and manipulate people,leading to a society in which the people unquestioningly obey theirgovernment and mindlessly accept all propaganda as reality. Languagebecomes a mind-control tool, with the ultimate goal being thedestruction of will and imagination. As John Wain says in his essay,“[Orwell’s] vision of 1984 does not include extinctionweapons . . . He is not interested in extinction weapons because,fundamentally, they do not frighten him as much as spiritual ones”(343).
1984 language control essays
Download File: https://jinyurl.com/2vzQen
Orwell’s novelpaints a nightmarish picture of a totalitarian system gone to theabsolute extreme, but it is a novel that is fundamentally aboutpsychological control of the public. Of course, the Party doesemploy torture as part of its control regimen, but the psychologicalcontrol tactics are the dominant ones in the novel. While physicalpunishment is difficult to administer, psychological tactics(manipulation of people through language) can be continuously appliedto the general public without raising great public opposition or fear— and that is where its strength lies. It is for this reasonthat “Newspeak rather than torture is planned as the way toerase thoughtcrime” (Stansky 88). However, while Newspeak is avery significant method of mind control through language, it is justa part of a greater Inner Party scheme. It is, in fact, theParty-controlled media in the novel that expertly uses Newspeak aswell as other linguistic trickery to spread its propaganda andbrainwash the public.
Certainly, inNineteen Eighty-Four, “[media information] does controlsome of the ways in which [people] think about and assess the world”(Lewis and Moss 47). The Party is interested in masking the truth,and so the media manipulates language to present a distorted reality. As Orwell says in his essay Politics and the English Language,“Political language . . . is designed to make lies soundtruthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance ofsolidity to pure wind” (150). In the novel, these lies are quiteobvious. For example, the media (controlled by the Party, of course)continually refers to the Ministries of Truth, Peace, Love, andPlenty. In reality, however, the Ministry of Truth is concerned withthe falsification of records, and the Ministry of Peace deals withwarfare. The Ministry of Love is “the really frightening one”(6) as it is essentially a place for the questioning and torturing ofsuspected criminals. The Ministry of Plenty makes up economicfigures to convince the public that the economy is in good shape,even though there are great shortages of all commodities due to thewar. Although the irony in the titles is blatantly obvious, Orwellis making a point about how the media can use language to mask thetruth.
The media isskilled at engineering ‘truth’ through language, and one ofthe most disturbing consequence of this developed in the novel isthat the Party has ultimate control over history. After all,language is the link to history. Winston’s job in the Ministryof Truth is to modify news items and other documents that in one wayor another make the Party look bad. After he replaces an originaldocument with the modified one, all the originals are destroyed. Orwell describes the process:
As well as alteringthe past by manipulating written language, the Party has an ingeniousplan to break the link with the real past by introducing a languagebarrier. When “all real knowledge of Oldspeak [disappears] . .. the whole literature of the past will have been destroyed”(56). After a few generations, when people are no longer capable ofdecoding information from the past, there will no longer even be aneed to censor the history that has the potential for breedingunorthodox ideas — it will be completely out of the public’sreach. Thus, the manipulation of language and text not only effectsthe present, but also the past and future in more than one way. AParty slogan in the novel reads, “Who controls the past,controls the future: who controls the present controls the past” (37).
Orwell’s novelcarries a well-founded warning about the powers of language. Itshows how language can shape people’s sense of reality, how itcan be used to conceal truths, and even how it can be used tomanipulate history. “Language is one of the key instruments ofpolitical dominations, the necessary and insidious means of the‘totalitarian’ control of reality” (Rai, 122). Whilelanguage in the traditional sense can expand horizons and improve ourunderstanding of the world, Orwell’s novel demonstrates thatlanguage, when used in a maliciously political way, can just aseasily become “a plot against human consciousness” (Rahv,182).
1984 is a political novel written with the purpose of warning readers in the West of the dangers of totalitarian government. Having witnessed firsthand the horrific lengths to which totalitarian governments in Spain and Russia would go in order to sustain and increase their power, Orwell designed 1984 to sound the alarm in Western nations still unsure about how to approach the rise of communism. In 1949, the Cold War had not yet escalated, many American intellectuals supported communism, and the state of diplomacy between democratic and communist nations was highly ambiguous. In the American press, the Soviet Union was often portrayed as a great moral experiment. Orwell, however, was deeply disturbed by the widespread cruelties and oppressions he observed in communist countries, and seems to have been particularly concerned by the role of technology in enabling oppressive governments to monitor and control their citizens.
By means of telescreens and hidden microphones across the city, the Party is able to monitor its members almost all of the time. Additionally, the Party employs complicated mechanisms (1984 was written in the era before computers) to exert large-scale control on economic production and sources of information, and fearsome machinery to inflict torture upon those it deems enemies. 1984 reveals that technology, which is generally perceived as working toward moral good, can also facilitate the most diabolical evil.
They are milieu control, mystical manipulation, the demand for purity, the cult of confession, the "sacred science," loading the language, doctrine over person, and the dispensing of existence. ... The sixth psychological theme of mind control is loading the language. ... Newspeak best put by Lionel Trilling "is the language of nonthought."(Lifton) It is with the assumption that language can be owned and operated by the government. Language is central to all human experience and by constricting language the abilities to think and feel are immensely narrowed. ...
Through the use of language the author conveys the message that a government which utilizes the means to narrow the ability of thought, and conjecture will have control of its citizens. ... The Party's agenda lay in linguistic control and if they control the past they control the future. If they control the present they controls the past. Newspeak, the communicator of the masses, voices all opinions, including thoughts with unity, and clarity--singular perception for all. ... The brain has been washed and reset under Party control. ...
The Church in the Dark Ages was in complete control of society. ... The Church was able to use this great influence to control great wealth and command great power. ... Orgon dismisses Cleante's attempts to enlighten him by offering this rebuke to his argument: Brother, your language savors of impiety. ... While Dorine, and the masses, have little actual power or control, they are astute to the workings of the world around them, and have the increasing ability to voice some opinions about them. ... It is the common sense of the masses that is given voice by Dorine, in balance wi...
A totalitarian government is in placed ruling the people by psychological manipulation, controlling "news" or information to the masses, surveillance, and even physical violence to maintain its power. ... This leads to another aspect of the world, where language is used for mind control. If you can control language you can control a person's thought, eliminating a person's capability of formulating ideas, coming to conclusions, expressing unique individualism and questioning motivates. ... To do this, the party invents a new language to do just that, Newspeak. ... They are ...
The Party controls everything, even the people's history and language. The Party is currently forcing the implementation of an invented language called Newspeak, which prevents the possibility for political rebellion by eliminating all words related to it. To me, a person's right should never be defied; therefore it frightens me that a government could ever control the people in such a way. ... On almost every wall is a telescreen watching and constantly delivering messages to the masses. ... The vigorous control system in the book stands as a method by which no Amerifan would wa... 2ff7e9595c
留言