Politics and the english language essay. Politics and the English Language Essays 2022-10-22
Politics and the english language essay Rating:
5,1/10
1383
reviews
In George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language," he argues that the decline in the quality of the English language is closely tied to the state of political discourse. According to Orwell, this decline is characterized by a lack of precision in language, a reliance on cliches and meaningless words, and an overall lack of clarity in expression.
Orwell asserts that this decline in language quality is not simply a matter of personal preference or aesthetics, but rather a reflection of a broader societal trend. He argues that the use of poor language is a reflection of a society that is in decline, where individuals and groups are unable to think clearly and communicate effectively. In such a society, Orwell suggests, there is a greater risk of totalitarianism and a loss of freedom.
One of the key causes of the decline in language quality, according to Orwell, is the influence of political parties and propaganda. He argues that political parties, in their efforts to win support, often use language in a way that is designed to obscure or mislead rather than to clarify. This can take the form of the use of slogans and catchphrases that are designed to appeal to emotions rather than reason, or the use of jargon and technical language that is designed to exclude rather than to inform.
Orwell also identifies a number of other factors that contribute to the decline in language quality. These include the influence of foreign languages, the increasing use of technical language in everyday communication, and the growing reliance on cliches and meaningless words as a means of filling space or avoiding difficult or controversial issues.
Overall, Orwell's essay serves as a warning about the dangers of a society that is unable to think clearly and communicate effectively. He argues that the decline in language quality is a reflection of deeper problems in society, and that it is essential that we work to improve the quality of our language if we are to have any hope of addressing these problems and creating a more just and free society.
A Short Analysis of George Orwell’s ‘Politics and the English Language’
Exhibit 3 above, for instance, contains several patches of the same kind of English. These vices are dying metaphors, operators, pretentious diction mainly the overuse of foreign phrases , and meaningless words. The first one is ambiguity. In this essay we found two good examples of figurative images. What it is that causes political groups to dig their heels in and oppose each other so relentlessly is certainly a vast and complex question.
The fourth and final subtopic in this paper is meaningless words. Orwell argues that just as thought corrupts language, language can corrupt thought, with these ready-made phrases preventing writers from expressing anything meaningful or original. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. Example number three is from an essay on psychology, and Orwell again takes a sarcastic tone by calling it meaningless. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties.
English Papers: English Essay Help, English Term Paper Tips, English Research Paper Guide » Essay on Politics and the English Language
Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by such phrases as with respect to, having regard to, the fact that, by dint of, in view of, in the interests of, on the hypothesis that; and the ends of sentences are saved by anticlimax by such resounding commonplaces as greatly to be desired, cannot be left out of account, a development to be expected in the near future, deserving of serious consideration, brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and so on and so forth. With the knowledge and experience I will gain from teaching in Spain, I plan to look for employment opportunities within the U. Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for they are just what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness; another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is little in them that is natural, irreduc- ible, or culturally dangerous. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better.
Politics And The English Language Analysis Essay Example
He gives an example of Madrid 's new Spanish-English public schools, who strive to learn English. Here it is in modern English: Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the con- clusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no ten- dency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account. This scholar says that in politics, people may be forced to say statements that they do not mean. The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness. Next Section Test Yourself! 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. Sentences are saved from fizzling out because the thought or idea being conveyed is not particularly striking by largely meaningless closing platitudes such as greatly to be desired or brought to a satisfactory conclusion. What this reporter wanted to say was that the individuals were in full full condition, which in its improved form, is still not a Standard English.
The general public, however, is mainly drawn to simple, short, and understandable writing works. A great and useful post. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English.
Like any other form of journalism, photojournalism has to follow a set of guided rules. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. The beginning and ending of the sentence follow the original meaning fairly closely, but in the middle the concrete illus- trations-race, battle, bread-dissolve into the vague phrase "success or fail- ure in competitive activities": This had to be so, because no modern writer of the kind I am discussing-no one capable of using phrases like "objective consideration of contemporary phenomena"-would ever tabulate his thoughts in that precise and detailed way. Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way.
Politics and the English Language: Analysis of George Orwell's Essay
The second contains thirty-eight words of ninety syllables: eighteen of those words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. This is a figurative image because it makes an abstract comparison of language to preferring candles to electric light. The first example, which is from an essay by Professor Harold Laski, is erroneous in the eyes of Orwell due to its ambiguity and its capability to confuse. It is often easier to make up words of this kind deregionalise, impermissible, extra- marital, non-fragmentatory and so forth than to think up the English words that will cover one's meaning. I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien sic to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Instead of saying that an individual is drunk, one would say that the individual is in full condition.
He cannot say outright, "I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. In 1946, the time that Orwell is writing his essay, the poor use of English was feeding into the poor thinking of particular partisan politics. Look again at the examples I gave at the beginning of this essay. The point is that the process is revers- ible. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestos, White Papers and the speeches of Under-Secretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, home-made turn of speech.
