George Orwell, similar to numerous other literary-scholars, is concerned about the modern practice of the English-language and, especially, the misuse and abuse of the English language. He realized that the language has the influence in the policies to cover the reality and misleading the general public, and George Orwell desires to grow the public mindfulness of this influence. George Orwell has this by introducing a greater emphasis on the Newspeak and the media in his famous novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Representing the recurrent misuse of the language by the government and by the media in his novel, Orwell shows how language could be used governmentally to mislead and influence persons, prominent to the society in which the persons unthinkingly obeys their administration and senselessly admit all of the propaganda as a reality. The Role of Language has a mind-control instrument, with the final aim being the obliteration of the will and the imagination. Such as John Wain has written in his essay that, “[Orwell’s] vision of 1984 does not include extinction weapons . . . He is not interested in extinction weapons because, fundamentally, they do not frighten him as much as spiritual ones”(Language in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)).
The language melody in George Orwell’s novel has its origins in the story of the Tower of Babel. When God has abolishes the Towel of Babel, the societies which have helped in the building of the Tower that suffers forever afterward from the Curse of Confusion. The Curse together creates the languages “mutually unintelligible,” and changes their situation so that “they no longer lucidly [express] the nature of things, but rather [obscured] and [distort] them”(Language in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)).
George Orwell’s Newspeak, the extremely political novel language that is introduced in the year Nineteen Eighty-Four, does exactly that: it enables manipulation and deception, and it determines to limit the consideration of the actual world. It is further suggested that consequence to this is that “each post-Babel language [becomes] a closed system containing its untranslatable view of the world”(Language in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)). Surely, the final purpose of Newspeak is to enfold individuals in orthodox-pseudo realism and isolates them from the actual world.
While individuals normally struggle to increase their lexicon, the administration in Nineteen Eighty-Four basically focuses on cut-back the vocabulary of Newspeak. One of the engineers of Newspeak engineers told, “[we’re] cutting the language down to the bone . . . Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year”(Language in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)). By operating the language, the administration desires to alter the society’s method of thoughtful. This could be completed, psychologists theories, since the arguments that are obtainable for the determination of interactive thoughts tend to be influential in the way persons often consider. The linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf was a very strong believer in this connection amongst language and thought, and he theorized that “different languages impose different conceptions of reality”(Language in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)). Thus when the words that explain specific thoughts that are absent from the language, that thoughts turn out to be further problematic to consider of and to interconnect. For the Inner Party, the aim is to enforce an orthodox realism and makes the heretical thoughts unbearable. “In the end, we shall make thoughtcrime impossible,” explains the Newspeak engineer, “because there will be no words in which to express it”(Language in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)).
In term of design, Newspeak tightens the variety of thoughtfulness and abridges individual’s retentions. It is consequently perfect for an authoritarian system, wherein the administration has to depend on the inactive community which wants liberated thoughts and which has excellent broadmindedness for the errors, both present, and past. “To expand language is to expand the ability to think,” says Myers. Equally, to limit the role of language, as with the Newspeak, is to confine the variety of thoughts. The explicit sorts of Newspeak that assists in limiting the thought: “reduced complexity, few abstractions, and no self-reference.” This narrowed public believes what the Inner-Party desires, since a society that cannot deliberate intensely poses lesser of the danger than one that could eagerly criticize the administration and protect itself from the harm.
Works Cited
Language in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984). http://www.berkes.ca/archive/berkes_1984_language.html. Accessed 12 Dec. 2017.
