This has always been one of my favorite essays.
George Orwell: Politics and the English Language (1946)
41–50 of 67 posts
Re: George Orwell: Politics and the English Language (1946)
#42I try to read this once a year to jolt myself out of my typical writing. Another useful tip is to have "The Elements of Style" by Strunk & White nearby.
Re: George Orwell: Politics and the English Language (1946)
#43Surprised to see such a seminal essay on the top of HN. I'm sure most people here will have read this before ... but, hey, always a good re-read.
It happens fairly often:
See the previous submissions: https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=Orwell...
Re: George Orwell: Politics and the English Language (1946)
#44[deleted]
Re: George Orwell: Politics and the English Language (1946)
#45The more I read Orwell's essays of the 1940s the more they seem like a master class in how to write, which means they are also a master class in how to think. The clarity and impact in his style are so powerful that it's actually shocking. Moreover, it seems to be aging well, so Orwell's reputation (specifically for this) has been increasing. Other great examples: http://orwell.ru/library/essays/wiw/english/e_wiw htt…
You might be looking to read in the vein of "creative non-fiction". Many practitioners, at least the ones I tend to appreciate, also had careers as journalists. Into Thin Air was a mammothly famous example.
Re: George Orwell: Politics and the English Language (1946)
#46The more I read Orwell's essays of the 1940s the more they seem like a master class in how to write, which means they are also a master class in how to think. The clarity and impact in his style are so powerful that it's actually shocking. Moreover, it seems to be aging well, so Orwell's reputation (specifically for this) has been increasing. Other great examples: http://orwell.ru/library/essays/wiw/english/e_wiw htt…
gruseom asks, Is there anyone writing today with anything like that quality (i.e. that combination of clarity and directness)? Steven Pinker is attempting to advocate for more clarity and directness in writing. I think his rather long lecture on MIT video, "Communicating Science and Technology in the 21st Century," http://video.mit.edu/watch/communicating-science-and-technol... has been submitted to Hacker News befor…
Pinker references the book Clear and Simple as the Truth at the end of his talk. It's one of my favorites: http://www.amazon.com/Clear-Simple-Truth-Writing-ebook/dp/B0...
Re: George Orwell: Politics and the English Language (1946)
#47I'm about to go do something, but wanted to be somewhat critical; the result will probably be a bit all over the place and incoherent: The irony of this post, of course, is that it decries the evolution of language while praising the evolved parts of the language. Orwell says, ‘… while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically “dead” (e.g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and…
The irony of this post, of course, is that it decries the
evolution of language while praising the evolved parts of
the language.
What is deterioration, pray tell? What makes a language
worse? Did a change in instruments in the second half
of the twentieth century make our music worse? Our
great musicians? Did the emergence of Ruby or Python
make our programs worse? Our programmers? By what
metric?
[1] http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2010/01/cory-doctorow-c...
Re: George Orwell: Politics and the English Language (1946)
#48This post on Language Log identifies ways in which Orwell violated his own rules in the essay.
Re: George Orwell: Politics and the English Language (1946)
#49I'm about to go do something, but wanted to be somewhat critical; the result will probably be a bit all over the place and incoherent: The irony of this post, of course, is that it decries the evolution of language while praising the evolved parts of the language. Orwell says, ‘… while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically “dead” (e.g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and…
The irony of this post, of course, is that it decries the evolution of language while praising the evolved parts of the language. He decries one aspect of the evolution of language, the aspect which just hides meaning. And it seems to me, that objectively there is a incentive for many stakeholders to disguise the inherent meaning of their message, either to appear more disruptive in whichever space they move, or to s…
>He decries one aspect of the evolution of language, the aspect which just hides meaning.
But that begs the question of whether meanings are in fact hidden, or simply changed -- at least as far as language as a whole is concerned[1]. There are of course individual cases where people are, as you point out, incentivized to do all sorts of weird things with language to accomplish some goal. Thus was rhetoric born.
1. Many insults, for example, shed their original sense and persist only as generic attacks. Does that mean that the original meanings are hidden? Or are they simply no longer relevant? Like 'Scumbag': http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/28253/origin-of-s.... (Note the several possible etymologies, none of which really bears on its use today anyway.)
>And it seems to me, that objectively there is a incentive for many stakeholders to disguise the inherent meaning of their message, either to appear more disruptive in whichever space they move, or to straight out lie by misunderstanding.
Well said. "To appear more disruptive" is particularly apropos on HN, where 'disruptive' is so perfunctory an adjective as to have lost all meaning (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glittering_generality).
Edit: To Doctorow's point, I doubt that's quite true. In the West at least, solo pieces (particularly piano), quartets and quintets of various kinds (particularly brass and string), and so on have been popular for ages.
Re: George Orwell: Politics and the English Language (1946)
#50I'm about to go do something, but wanted to be somewhat critical; the result will probably be a bit all over the place and incoherent: The irony of this post, of course, is that it decries the evolution of language while praising the evolved parts of the language. Orwell says, ‘… while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically “dead” (e.g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and…
> What is deterioration, pray tell? What makes a language worse?
In this essay it seems to be the a poor signal to noise ratio. Metaphors that have lost the power to move and habits of speech that go against concise expression.
> 'Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing.'