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The Principles of Newspeak (1949)

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Re: The Principles of Newspeak (1949)

#61

Post by potta_coffee »

akomtu wrote: post #44

We do have this newspeak, and it's not about that "woke" stuff. It's what we call UFO and magick: mostly meaningless buzzwords now that conceal a whole range of different things in a box labeled as toxic thought waste that any rational person shouldn't even look at. That line of thinking is blocked so efficiently that nobody can pinpoint a single law or rule that prohibits it. This is what competently implemented new…

The term "conspiracy theory" is used to blanket valid criticisms of government this way. While there are obviously absurd theories out there, they're used to muddy the waters. Several high profile conspiracy theories have been validated in congressional hearings etc.

Re: The Principles of Newspeak (1949)

#62

Post by Animats »

dalbasal wrote: post #28

Esperanto probably inspired Orwell on this, at least to an extent. He knew several Esperantists. Most of the "A vocabulary" rules are similar, like valuing regularities. I wonder if he hated esperanto, or just conveniently borrowed the feel of an artificial language from it. To me, the euphemisation aspects of newspeak are the most "orwellian." IE, they're most likely to trigger that reference. Orwell himself complai…

Esperanto probably inspired Orwell on this

Nope. Simple English did.

During WWII, Orwell had a job with the British Ministry of Information. Part of his job was translating news broadcasts into Basic English, an 850-word vocabulary, for broadcast to the British colonies. (India, Hong Kong, etc.) He discovered that translating speeches into Basic English was a political act. All the ambiguity had to be hammered out. Basic English cannot express much ambiguity.

That's the genesis of Newspeak.[1]

Orwell himself wrote "Politics and the English Language."[2] He gives rules for writing. They are brutal.

- (i) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

- (ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

- (iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

- (iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

- (v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

- (vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous.

Orwell's entire essay is worth reading, both as a style guide, and to help recognize when political writing is pulling your chain.

Minor parts of 1984 are autobiographical, based on that period. "Minitrue" is obviously the Ministry of Information. "Big Brother" is modeled after some manager known there as "BB". The rather depressing canteen scene is reportedly from the Ministry of Information's employee cafeteria.

(From "Orwell, the Lost Writings", which can be obtained from Amazon.)

[1] https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/engl-246-fall2011/2011/...

[2] https://www.public-library.uk/ebooks/72/30.pdf

Re: The Principles of Newspeak (1949)

#63

Post by mdp2021 »

genera1 wrote: post #58
NackerHughes wrote: post #53

> Even in the early decades of the twentieth century, telescoped words and phrases had been one of the characteristic features of political language; and it had been noticed that the tendency to use abbreviations of this kind was most marked in totalitarian countries and totalitarian organizations. Examples were such words as NAZI, GESTAPO, COMINTERN, INPRECORR, AGITPROP. And now, COVID.

Ah yes, COVID-19, technical name for a respiratory disease, totally in the same category as Gestapo

I think the point was that creating a term can create the idea of an entity one can taint with emotional meanings which may be used to enforce an agenda. «Telescoped words and phrases [and] abbreviations» for that aim do not need to be referencing political entities only. (The poster was probably just eliciting smiles or reflections when suggesting 'COVID')

Mussolini, it seems, choose 'OVRA' as a name for the secret police to suggest the "piovra" (octopus), the tentacled entity which reaches anywhere in agility and hypnotically remains fixed at its core while acting with unfolding determination at its periphery. These constructions can be more easily be emotionally charged. Instrumental emotional charge can be invested in terms from other areas, though instrumentality may remain political.

Re: The Principles of Newspeak (1949)

#64

Post by InTheArena »

krapp wrote: post #33
anonymousiam wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, so now we're getting somewhere. He was a socialist, but not a leftist. So were the NAZIs right wing or left wing?

He was a socialist and a leftist but not a communist. Not all leftists or socialists are communists, not all communists are Leninists or Stalinists. >So were the NAZIs right wing or left wing? Right-wing. The only reason anyone claims otherwise is that "socialist" is in their name, but National Socialism isn't socialism any more than North Korea is a Democratic Republic, and the proof is otherwise in the pudding as f…

This is a gross simplification, and not really accurate. The nazi party grew from both left and right leaning aspects. (Booth anti-communist and anti-capitalist) Many of the aspects of nazi ideology where socialist in nature - for example, the building projects, the “strength through joy” institutions, and much of their early party doctrine. The Strassers and Goebbels in particular were deeply aligned to the socialist portion of the doctrine, suggesting tie-ups with communism at different points. This combination of socialist plus nationalist was responsible a lot of the parties early ideological success.

As time went on the party increasingly shifted more to the “nationalist” then the “socialist” - culminating in the night of the long knives where most of the “socialist” camp (Gregor Strasser in particular) were purged, and Goebbels appears to have given up on his socialist tendencies.

The Nazis obviously where not communists - but the ideology is much more similar than not in some key ways. Instead of Marx’s race war, the Nazis instead believed in Racial War.

Of course, the only reason this really comes up is because people want to tar and feather political opponents as being fascist, socialist, or communists. The best way to break down all of these movements is simply Authoritarian or Totalitarian or not. If socialism is the thought that the means of production and organization of society should belong to society, Totalitarianism is simply that the state is the society, and thus the means of production and th organization of society belongs to the state.

So where the Marxists would call for a class war to violently overthrow the evil capitalists in a all-composing global struggle for communism, the Nazis called for a a “blood and soil” war to eliminate the enemies of the people - with everything subjugated to that violence.

Both were totalitarian in their nature.

Re: The Principles of Newspeak (1949)

#65

Post by robertlagrant »

mdp2021 wrote: post #60
civilized wrote: post #15

Newspeak's goal of a complete regularization of English, and the elimination of all redundant forms, is actually an interesting idea IMO. Business jargon often moves in this direction, e.g. "learnings" instead of "lessons". And it's not always a horrible dystopian idea - Chinese has standardized over time and become more accessible to the masses with each iteration. EDIT: I apologize for my doubleplusungood thoughtcr…

> elimination of all redundant forms Does anything like that exist. Nuances are intellectual keys conceived for discrimination. Get proficiency over the language, and you will use 'learnings' when you mean learnings and 'lessons' when you mean lessons. It is having mental dominance over complexity. Simplification itself requires that dominance - it is thought management.

> Get proficiency over the language

You'd ideally say proficient with the language, not over.

Re: The Principles of Newspeak (1949)

#66

Post by bitwize »

civilized wrote: post #15

Newspeak's goal of a complete regularization of English, and the elimination of all redundant forms, is actually an interesting idea IMO. Business jargon often moves in this direction, e.g. "learnings" instead of "lessons". And it's not always a horrible dystopian idea - Chinese has standardized over time and become more accessible to the masses with each iteration. EDIT: I apologize for my doubleplusungood thoughtcr…

Orwell himself supported the simplification of English for clarity -- reread "Politics and the English Language". What he opposed was people hiding their political agendas behind either obfuscatory language or thought terminating redefinitions of the language under the rubric of simplification and standardization.

Re: The Principles of Newspeak (1949)

#67

Post by InTheArena »

quartesixte wrote: post #8
jp57 wrote: post #2

[flagged]

1984 and The Giver (both featuring dystopian societies with strict rules on language usage) has left me with a distinct distaste for the constant skirmishing over terminology currently active in our current “culture war”. It frustrates me to no end that English teachers, while assigning both books with high frequency, completely miss the language control part of both novels and focus instead on the other things. It f…

I can’t think of a more fitting printed phrase that seems to apply quality well to all sides of the cultural war then the statement - “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal then others…”

Re: The Principles of Newspeak (1949)

#68

Post by akomtu »

krapp wrote: post #59
revolvingocelot wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People need not know anything about Marx to invoke him. He's much more useful as a boogyman -- besides, aggressive enough badmouthing him will discourage others from finding anything serious out about his beliefs or positions.

More to the point - the propaganda that BLM is a "Marxist domestic terrorist group" effectively discourages people from studying the group's actual beliefs or positions.

I've studied the BLM's background out of curiosity and find those four words to be a fairly accurate description. I'd compare them with the Red Guard from Mao's China.

Re: The Principles of Newspeak (1949)

#69

Post by Animats »

gotoeleven wrote: post #18

"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" I'm genuinely curious do the woke brigades of twitter not have the self awareness to recognize what they're doing? Or do they just not care? Would they be happy with a language designed to make 'harmful' thinking impossible?

Both "woke" ideology and MAGA ideology use words in this way.

- Make America Great Again

- Black Lives Matter

- Stop the Steal

- Homophobia

- Drain the Swamp

- Ableist

- America First

All of those exist to make it difficult to express an opposing viewpoint. Orwell would have recognized this.

Re: The Principles of Newspeak (1949)

#70

Post by the_af »

JasonFruit wrote: post #41
dbattaglia wrote: post #4

This appendix, along with the chapters that are except from "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism", are actually my favorite parts of 1984. I enjoyed how "Principals of Newspeak" is written in a past tense when describing the language and the events of year 1984, it feels like a glimmer of hope that somehow mankind did indeed escape the horrific dystopian world otherwise presented in the book.

I take the past tense as meaning the book was a fait accompli , not as an analysis from a fictional future.

A solid argument against this is that the analysis itself isn't written in Newspeak but in the kind of thoughtcrime it seeks to prevent. It's also self-incrimination if it was written by someone in the regime, and while it could be argued that O'Brien employs similar discourse in the novel, the ruling party at that time is far from perfect and still hasn't achieved its goals. A future where this is a fait acompli would have made this kind of thinking impossible.
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