Politics and the English Language

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Politics and the English Language
PoliticsandtheEnglishLanguage.jpg
Penguin edition of Politics and the English Language, George Orwell
"Politics and the English Language" (1946) is an essay by George Orwell that cri
ticises the "ugly and inaccurate" written English of his time and examines the c
onnection between political orthodoxies and the debasement of language. It was o
riginally published in the April 1946 issue of the journal Horizon. The article
had been intended for George Weidenfeld's Contact magazine but it was turned dow
n the magazine wanted reportage. Politics and the English Language was Orwell's
last major article for Horizon.[1]
The essay focuses on political language, which, according to Orwell, "is designe
d to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance
of solidity to pure wind." Orwell believed that the language used was necessaril
y vague or meaningless because it was intended to hide the truth rather than exp
ress it. This unclear prose was a "contagion" which had spread to those who did
not intend to hide the truth, and it concealed a writer's thoughts from himself
and others.[2] Orwell encourages concreteness and clarity instead of vagueness,
and individuality over political conformity.
Contents [hide]
1 Extracts and analysis
1.1 Causes and characteristics of unclear writing
1.2 "Translation" of Ecclesiastes
1.3 Remedy of Six Rules
2 Summary
3 Publication
4 Critical reception
5 Connection to other works
6 See also
7 References
7.1 Bibliography
8 Further reading
9 External links
Extracts and analysis[edit]
Causes and characteristics of unclear writing[edit]
Orwell related what he believed to be a close association between bad prose and
oppressive ideology:
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefen
sible. 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 defende
d, 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. Thus political lang
uage has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagu
eness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven o
ut into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with in
cendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed o
f 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. People ar
e imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to
die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable
elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling
up mental pictures of them.
One of Orwell's major points was:
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between on
e's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long wor
ds and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
The insincerity of the writer perpetuates the decline of the language as people
(particularly politicians, Orwell later notes) attempt to disguise their intenti
ons behind euphemisms and convoluted phrasing.

Orwell said that this decline was self-perpetuating. It is easier, he argued, to

think with poor English because the language is in decline. And as the language
declines, "foolish" thoughts become even easier, reinforcing the original cause
:
A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail
all the more completely because he drinks
English
becomes ugly and inaccurate beca
use our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easi
er for us to have foolish thoughts.
Orwell discusses "pretentious diction" and "meaningless words". "Pretentious dic
tion" is used to make biases look impartial and scientific, while "meaningless w
ords" are used to stop the reader from seeing the point of the statement. Accord
ing to Orwell: "In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and l
iterary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost co
mpletely lacking in meaning."
"Translation" of Ecclesiastes[edit]
As an example, Orwell "translated" Ecclesiastes 9:11:
I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the bat
tle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of under
standing, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them
all.
into "modern English of the worst sort":
Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that su
ccess or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensura
te with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable mu
st invariably be taken into account.
Orwell points out that this "translation" contains many more syllables but gives
no concrete illustrations, as the original did, nor does it contain any vivid,
arresting, images or phrases.
The headmaster's wife at St Cyprian's School, Mrs. Cicely Vaughan Wilkes (nickna
med "Flip"), taught Orwell English and used the same method to illustrate good w
riting to her pupils. She would use simple passages from the King James Bible an
d then "translate" them into poor English to show the clarity and brilliance of
the original.[3] Walter John Christie, who followed Orwell to Eton, wrote that s
he preached the virtues of "simplicity, honesty, and avoidance of verbiage",[4]
and pointed out that the qualities Flip most prized were later to be seen in Orw
ell's writing.[5]
Remedy of Six Rules[edit]
Orwell said it was easy for his contemporaries to slip into bad writing of the s
ort he described and that the temptation to use meaningless or hackneyed phrases
was like a "packet of aspirins always at one's elbow". In particular, such phra
ses are always ready to form the writer's thoughts for him to save him the bothe
r of thinking, or writing, clearly. However, he concluded that the progressive d
ecline of the English language is reversible and offered six rules to help avoid
most of the errors in his previous examples of poor writing:[6]
1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to
seeing in print.
This first rule of Orwell's essay relates to English figures of speech. Examples
which Orwell gives of breaking this rule include, "ring the changes, Achilles'
heel, swan song, hotbed". Orwell describes these as "dying metaphors". Orwell ar
gues that usually when these phrases are used, they are being used without knowi
ng what is truly being said. Orwell argues in his essay that using metaphors of
this kind makes the original meaning of the phrases meaningless, because those u
sing the phrases do not know their original meaning. Orwell states that, "Some m
etaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without tho
se who use them even being aware of the fact".
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
Orwell complains that "the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference
to the active".

5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can th
ink of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
The writer should not use the English language to manipulate or deceive the read
er. Orwell mentions that each of the five is used by people who believe in barba
rous things but must communicate them to a civil society. John Rodden asserts, g
iven that much of Orwell's work was polemical, that he sometimes violated these
rules and Orwell himself concedes that if you look back through his essay, "for
certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am
protesting against".[7]
Summary[edit]
Orwell criticizes bad writing habits which spread by imitation. He argues that w
riters must rid themselves of these habits and think more clearly about what the
y say because thinking clearly "is a necessary first step toward political regen
eration".
Orwell chooses five specimen pieces of text, by Harold Laski ("five negatives in
53 words"), Lancelot Hogben (mixed metaphors), an essay on psychology in Politi
cs ("simply meaningless"), a communist pamphlet ("an accumulation of stale phras
es") and a reader's letter in Tribune (in which "words and meaning have parted c
ompany"). From these, Orwell identifies a "catalogue of swindles and perversions
" which he classifies as "dying metaphors", "operators or verbal false limbs", "
pretentious diction" and "meaningless words". (see cliches, prolixity, peacock t
erms and weasel words).
Orwell notes that writers of modern prose tend not to write in concrete terms bu
t use a "pretentious latinized style", (compare Anglish) and he compares an orig
inal biblical text with a parody in "modern English" to show what he means. Writ
ers find it is easier to gum together long strings of words than to pick words s
pecifically for their meaning. This is particularly the case in political writin
g when Orwell notes that "[o]rthodoxy ... seems to demand a lifeless, imitative
style". Political speech and writing are generally in defence of the indefensibl
e and so lead to a euphemistic inflated style. Thought corrupts language, and la
nguage can corrupt thought. Orwell suggests six elementary rules that if followe
d will prevent the type of faults he illustrates although "one could keep all of
them and still write bad English".
Orwell makes it clear that he has "not here been considering the literary use of
language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for conce
aling or preventing thought".
Publication[edit]
"Politics and the English Language" was originally published in the April 1946 i
ssue of the journal Horizon (volume 13, issue 76, pages 252 265).[8]
From the time of his wife's death in March 1945 Orwell had maintained a high wor
k rate, producing some 130 literary contributions, many of them lengthy. Animal
Farm had been published in August 1945 and Orwell was experiencing a time of cri
tical and commercial literary success. He was seriously ill in February and was
desperate to get away from London to the island of Jura, Scotland, where he want
ed to start work on Nineteen Eighty-Four.[8]
The essay "Politics and the English Language" was published nearly simultaneousl
y with another of Orwell's essays, "The Prevention of Literature". Both reflect
Orwell's concern with truth and how truth depends upon the use of language. Orwe
ll noted the deliberate use of misleading language to hide unpleasant political
and military facts and also identified a laxity of language among those he ident
ified as pro-soviet. In The Prevention of Literature he also speculated on the t
ype of literature under a future totalitarian society which he predicted would b
e formulaic and low grade sensationalism. Around the same time Orwell wrote an u
nsigned editorial for Polemic in response to an attack