Newspeak

Newspeak is a fictional language in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the novel, it is described as being "the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year." Orwell included an essay about it in the form of an Appendix (in the past tense)^[1], in which the basic principles of the language are explained. Newspeak is closely based on English but has a greatly reduced and simplified vocabulary and grammar (e.g., 'good' means 'to love Big Brother'; 'bad' is deleted from the language because 'ungood' means 'bad'; therefore there is now no literal concept to express the term, 'Big Brother is bad'). This suited the totalitarian regime of the Party, whose aim was to make any alternative thinking ("thoughtcrime") or speech impossible by removing any words or possible constructs which describe the ideas of freedom, rebellion and so on. One character says admiringly of the shrinking volume of the new dictionary: "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words."

The Newspeak term for the English language is Oldspeak. Oldspeak was intended to have been completely eclipsed by Newspeak before 2050.

The genesis of Newspeak can be found in the constructed language Basic English, which Orwell promoted from 1942 to 1944 before emphatically rejecting it in his essay, "Politics and the English Language". ^[2] In this paper he laments the quality of the English of his day, citing examples of dying metaphors, pretentious diction or rhetoric, and meaningless words — all of which contribute to fuzzy ideas and a lack of logical thinking. Towards the end of this essay, having argued his case, Orwell muses:

I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this would argue, if they produced an argument at all, that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development by any direct tinkering with words or constructions.

Thus forcing the use of Newspeak, according to Orwell, describes a deliberate intent to exploit this degeneration with the aim of oppressing its speakers.

Basic principles of Newspeak

To remove synonyms & antonyms

The basic idea behind Newspeak is to remove all shades of meaning from language, leaving simple dichotomies (pleasure and pain, happiness and sadness, good thoughts and thoughtcrimes) which reinforce the total dominance of the State. Similarly, Newspeak root words served as both nouns and verbs, which allowed further reduction in the total number of words; for example, "think" served as both noun and verb, so the word "thought" was not required and could be abolished. A staccato rhythm of short syllables was also a goal, further reducing the need for deep thinking about language. (See duckspeak.) Successful Newspeak meant that there would be fewer and fewer words -- dictionaries would get thinner and thinner.

In addition, words with opposite meanings were removed as redundant, so "bad" became "ungood." Words with comparative and superlative meanings were also simplified, so "better" became "gooder", and "best" likewise became "goodest". Intensifiers could be added, so "great" became "plusgood", and "excellent" or "splendid" likewise became "doubleplusgood." Adjectives were formed by adding the suffix "-ful" to a root word (e.g. "goodthinkful", orthodox in thought), and adverbs by adding "-wise" ("goodthinkwise", in an orthodox manner). In this manner, as many words as possible were removed from the language. The ultimate aim of Newspeak was to reduce even the dichotomies to a single word that was a "yes" of some sort: an obedient word with which everyone answered affirmatively to what was asked of them.

Some of the constructions in Newspeak which Orwell derides, such as replacing "bad" with "ungood", are in fact characteristic of agglutinative languages, although foreign to English. It is also possible that Orwell modeled aspects of Newspeak on Esperanto; for example "ungood" is constructed similarly to the Esperanto word "malbona". Orwell had been exposed to Esperanto in 1927 when living in Paris with his aunt Kate Limouzin and her husband Eugène Lanti, a prominent Esperantist. Esperanto was the language of the house, and Orwell was disadvantaged by not speaking it, which may account for some antipathy towards the language^[1]. It can also be observed that some strongly hierarchical groups use these kinds of constructions liberally. For example, the Swedish Military jargon substitutes "unpeace" (Swedish: ofred) for "war", and "ungood" (Swedish: obra) for "bad".

To control thought

By 2050—earlier, probably—all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like "freedom is slavery" when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.^[3]

The underlying theory of Newspeak is that if something can't be said, then it can't be thought. One question raised in response to this is whether we are defined by our language, or whether we actively define it. For instance, how can we communicate the need for freedom, or organize an uprising, if we do not have the words for either? This is related to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and Ludwig Wittgenstein's proposition, "The limits of my language mean the limits to my world." However, this view is disputed by authors like Gene Wolfe (see the article on his Ascian language).

Examples of Newspeak, from the novel, include: "crimethink"; "doubleplusungood"; and "Ingsoc." They mean, respectively: "thought-crime"; "extremely bad"; and "English Socialism," the official political philosophy of the Party. The word "Newspeak" itself also comes from the language. Note that all of these words would be obsolete and should be removed in the "final" version of Newspeak, except for "doubleplusungood" in certain contexts.

Generically, Newspeak has come to mean any attempt to restrict disapproved language by a government or other powerful entity.

Real-life examples of Newspeak

A comparison to Newspeak may arguably be seen in polarised and simplified political and journalistic rhetoric, where the arguments of either side ultimately reduce to "four legs good, two legs bad", in Orwellian terminology (see Animal Farm). A correlated phenomenon is the dumbing down of political discourse, seen in the employment of soundbites for the benefit of, or by, the media.

Historical and pre-Historical change of the meaning of words

Friedrich Nietzsche, speaking about the morality of winner in his work Genealogy of Morals, cites some examples of words in some languages which have probably undergone a change in their meaning following a victory of a people over another. For instance, the Latin word malus which means both bad and dark haired may take its origin to a previous Celtic invasion of Italy, by which the victorious Celts who had fairer hair than Italian population used to associate the losers with the idea of badness. The English word good looks like god, while in German Nietzsche observes that schlicht (simple) is very close to schlecht (bad). That is, the concepts of good and bad, and the words used to express it, were coined by the victorious populations by taking words having different meaning by which they used to associate to goodness or badness.

"Politically correct" euphemisms

Charges of Newspeak are sometimes advanced when a group tries to replace a word/phrase that is politically unsuitable (e.g. "civilian casualties") or offensive (e.g. "murder") with an alternative, inoffensive euphemism (e.g. "collateral damage"), or falsely innocuous (as in "liquidate the kulaks" or "resettle the Jews", as used by the Soviets or the Nazis, respectively, to conceal their democides).

Some people maintain that to make certain words or phrases "unspeakable" (thoughtcrime) through the attempt to make language politically correct restricts what ideas may be held (Newspeak) and is therefore tantamount to censorship. Others believe that expunging terms that have fallen out of favor or become insulting will make people less likely to hold "outdated" or offensive views.

Either way, there is a resemblance between censorship due to moral dogmatisms and Newspeak, although some may feel that they differ in their intentions: in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Newspeak is instituted to enhance the power of the state over the individual; politically correct language, on the other hand, is said by supporters to free individuals from stereotypical preconceptions caused by the use of prejudicial terminology. It is this attempt to change thought through changing (or eliminating) words that earns political correctness the connection to Newspeak.

For many, there exist striking instances where Orwell's speculations have matched with reality. Orwell suggested that all philosophies prior to Ingsoc (English Socialism) would be covered under the term "oldthink", bearing with it none of the nuances of these ideologies, but simply a connotation of badness. It is argued that since the end of the Second World War and the Cold War, a similar effect has been wrought on the words "fascism" and "communism"; that communism no longer bears with it the doctrines of Marx, Engels, or Lenin, but rather a general bad connotation. Likewise, they contend that few people are aware of the differences between the theories of government of Mussolini, Dollfuß, Franco, and Hitler; all are placed under the blanket term "fascism" or "Nazism" with only a general denotation of badness.^{[citation needed]} An example of this is the rise term "[[islamofascism]"" to describe the ideology of al-Qaeda-type Muslim groups, despite the fact this organization is not, in fact, fascist.

In the Spanish Civil War, both parties called each other by dysphemistical names. Perhaps the best description is it began as a conflict of Republicans and Nationalists, and ended up as a war of Communists and Fascists.^{[citation needed]}

Political groups often use neologisms to frame their views positively and to discredit their opponents' views.[1] One of the most prominent and heated examples is the U.S. abortion debates: Those advocating restrictions on abortion label themselves "pro-life", seeing the term "abortion" or the idea of "aborting a pregnancy" as euphemistic for "murder of an unborn child" and leaving their opponents, who do not view the human organism as being its own person in pre-natal stages of development, and who see the issue as being not about life or death but primarily about women's rights, presumably "anti-life" or "pro-death". Using a similar tactic, those advocating abortions reduce this highly charged and highly complex moral and ethical issue in their own way to a convenient sound byte that redirects emphasis to their own concerns by labeling themselves "pro-choice", leaving their opponents, many of whom are women themselves, and who see women's rights as completely unrelated to what is for them a life and death matter, supposedly "anti-women" and "anti-choice". Members of either side are commonly heard expressing views that the other camp's self-label is dishonest, or at the very least overly simplistic.

In modern business, it is often frowned upon to use words with a negative connotation, such as "problem" and instead problems are referred to as "challenges", "obstacles", or even "opportunities".

Three examples unrelated to political correctness are Basic English, a language which takes pride in reducing the number of English words, World English and E-Prime, another simplified version of English.

Abbreviations and Acronyms

Another common use of Newspeak today is the overuse of abbreviations. To quote from the 1984 Appendix "It was perceived that in thus abbreviating a name one narrowed and subtly altered its meaning, by cutting out most of the associations that would otherwise cling to it." Attention is also drawn to the use of such abbreviations by totalitarian regimes prior to World War II (see Gestapo, Comintern, Agitprop, Minculpop).

Even more powerful are acronyms like "USA PATRIOT act", "Ofcom", "OPEC","NAMbLA", "PETA", "NAFTA", "NICE", and the "PROTECT Act" which can be pronounced as if they were proper words. This is most vividly seen in acronyms like "laser", "scuba", and "radar", which are in widespread use today and are nearly always written in lowercase.

On July 5 1959 President Sukarno of Indonesia abolished parliamentary democracy and established a system of government-by-decree called Manifesto Politik or in short Manipol - an abbreviation greatly reminiscent of those in Orwell's book, though there is no evidence that Sukarno read the book or was directly influenced by it. In a similar way, the Indonesian term "Tapol" (political prisoner) - first used as a derogatory word by the authorities, later adopted as a term of pride by the "tapols" themselves - was created from the first syllables of "prisoner" and "political".^{[citation needed]}

References

^ ^a ^b Orwell, George (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four, "Appendix: The Principles of Newspeak", pp. 309–323. New York: Plume, 2003.
Pynchon, Thomas (2003). "Foreword to the Centennial Edition" to Nineteen Eighty-Four, pp. vii–xxvi . New York: Plume, 2003.
Fromm, Erich (1961). "Afterword" to Nineteen Eighty-Four, pp. 324–337. New York: Plume, 2003.
Orwell's text has a "Selected Bibliography", pp. 338–9; the foreword and the afterword each contain further references.
Copyright is explicitly extended to digital and any other means.
Plume edition is a reprint of a hardcover by Harcourt. Plume edition is also in a Signet edition.
^ Illich, Ivan (1988). ABC: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind (in English language). San Francisco: North Point Press. p. 109. ISBN 0-86547-291-2. The satirical force with which Orwell used Newspeak to serve as his portrait of one of those totalitarian ideas that he saw taking root in the minds of intellectuals everywhere can be understood only if we remember that he speaks with shame about a belief that he formerly held... From 1942 to 1944, working as a colleague of William Empson's, he produced a series of broadcasts to India written in Basic English, trying to use its programmed simplicity, as a Tribune article put it, "as a sort of corrective to the oratory of statesmen and publicists." Only during the last year of the war did he write "Politics and the English Language," insisting that the defense of English language has nothing to do with the setting up of a Standard English." {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
^ Orwell, George (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four.