Politics and the English
Language
by George Orwell
Horizon, April 1946
Meaningless words. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and
literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost
completely lacking in meaning.2 Words like romantic, plastic,
values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art
criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not
point to any discoverable object, but are hardly even expected to do so by the
reader. When one critic writes, “The outstanding feature of Mr. X’s work is its
living quality,” while another writes, “The immediately striking thing about
Mr. X’s work is its peculiar deadness,” the reader accepts this as a simple difference
of opinion 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. Many political words are similarly abused. The
word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies
“something not desirable.” The words democracy, socialism, freedom,
patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings
which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy,
not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted
from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country
democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of
régime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop
using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are
often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them
has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means
something quite different. Statements like Marshal Pétain
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. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less
dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary
bourgeois, equality.
Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions,
let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time
it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of
good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse
from Ecclesiastes:
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“I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the
swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet
riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and
chance happeneth to them all.” |
Here it is in modern English:
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Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the
conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no
tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable
element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account. |
This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit (3), above,
for instance, contains several patches of the same kind of English. It will be
seen that I have not made a full translation. The beginning and ending of the
sentence follow the original meaning fairly closely, but in the middle the
concrete illustrations—race, battle, bread—dissolve into the vague phrase
“success or failure 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. The whole tendency of modern prose
is away from concreteness. Now analyze these two sentences a little more closely.
The first contains 49 words but only 60 syllables, and all its words are those
of everyday life. The second contains 38 words of 90 syllables: 18 of its words
are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid
images, and only one phrase (“time and chance”) that could be called vague. The
second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its 90
syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the
first. Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining
ground in modern English. I do not want to exaggerate. This kind of writing is
not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur here and there in the
worst-written page. Still, if you or I were told to write a few lines on the
uncertainty of human fortunes, we should probably come much nearer to my
imaginary sentence than to the one from Ecclesiastes.
As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not
consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images
in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long
strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and
making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing, is that it is easy. It is easier—even quicker, once
you have the habit—to say In my opinion it
is a not unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think. If you
use ready-made phrases, you not only don’t have to hunt about for words; you also
don’t have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences, since these phrases
are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious. When you are
composing in a hurry—when you are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or
making a public speech—it is natural to fall into a pretentious, Latinized
style. Tags like a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind or
a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent will save many a
sentence from coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes and
idioms, you save much mental effort at the cost of leaving your meaning vague,
not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed
metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images
clash—as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is
thrown into the melting pot—it can be taken as certain that the writer is
not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not
really thinking. Look again at the examples I gave at the beginning of this
essay. Professor Laski (1) uses five negatives in 53 words. One of these is
superfluous, making nonsense of the whole passage, and in addition there is the
slip alien for akin, making further nonsense, and several avoidable
pieces of clumsiness which increase the general vagueness. Professor Hogben (2) plays ducks and drakes with a battery which is
able to write prescriptions, and, while disapproving of the everyday phrase put
up with, is unwilling to look egregious up in the dictionary and see
what it means. (3), if one takes an uncharitable attitude towards it, is simply meaningless: probably one could work out its
intended meaning by reading the whole of the article in which it occurs. In
(4), the writer knows more or less what he wants to say, but an accumulation of
stale phrases chokes him like tea leaves blocking a sink. In (5), words and
meaning have almost parted company. People who write in this manner usually
have a general emotional meaning—they dislike one thing and want to express
solidarity with another—but they are not interested in the detail of what they
are saying. A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to
say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is
this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two
more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?
But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply
throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in.
They will construct your sentences for you—even think your thoughts for you, to
a certain extent—and at need they will perform the important service of
partially concealing your meaning even from yourself.
It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the
debasement of language becomes clear.
In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing.
Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind
of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a “party line.” Orthodoxy, of
whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political
dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, 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. When one watches some tired hack on the platform
mechanically repeating the familiar phrases—bestial atrocities, iron heel,
bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder—one
often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but
some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when
the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs
which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A
speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance towards
turning himself into a machine. 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. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to
make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as
one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of
consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political
conformity.
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense
of the indefensible. 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.
Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging
and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air,
the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the
huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.
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. People are 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. Consider for instance some comfortable English
professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, “I believe
in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so.”
Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:
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While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain
features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think,
agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an
unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the
Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in
the sphere of concrete achievement. |
The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin
words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering
up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When
there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it
were instinctively, to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish
squirting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as “keeping out of
politics.” All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of
lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is
bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find—this is a guess which I have
not sufficient knowledge to verify—that the German, Russian and Italian
languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years as a result of
dictatorship.
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt
thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people
who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing
is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable
assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a
consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous
temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one’s elbow. Look back through this
essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the
very faults I am protesting against. By this morning’s post I have received a
pamphlet dealing with conditions in Germany. The author tells me that he “felt
impelled” to write it. I open it at random, and here is almost the first
sentence that I see: “(The Allies) have an opportunity not only of achieving a
radical transformation of Germany’s social and political structure in such a
way as to avoid a nationalistic reaction in Germany itself, but at the same
time of laying the foundations of a cooperative and unified Europe.” You see,
he “feels impelled” to write—feels, presumably, that he has something new to
say—and yet his words, like cavalry horses answering the bugle, group
themselves automatically into the familiar dreary pattern. This invasion of
one’s mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a radical
transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against
them, and every such phrase anesthetizes a portion of one’s brain.
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 and constructions.
So far as the general tone or spirit of a language goes, this may be true, but
it is not true in detail. Silly words and expressions have often disappeared,
not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of a
minority. Two recent examples were explore
every avenue and leave no stone unturned, which were killed by the
jeers of a few journalists. There is a long list of fly-blown metaphors which
could similarly be got rid of if enough people would interest themselves in the
job; and it should also be possible to laugh the not un- formation out
of existence3, to reduce the amount of Latin and Greek in the
average sentence, to drive out foreign phrases and strayed scientific words,
and, in general, to make pretentiousness unfashionable. But all these are minor
points. The defense of the English language implies more than this, and perhaps
it is best to start by saying what it does not imply.
To begin with, it has nothing to do with archaism, with the
salvaging of obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the setting-up of a
“standard-English” which must never be departed from. On the contrary, it is
especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has
outworn its usefulness. It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax,
which are of no importance so long as one makes one’s meaning clear, or with
the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a “good prose
style.” On the other hand it is not concerned with fake simplicity and the
attempt to make written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every
case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the
fewest and shortest words that will cover one’s meaning. What is above all
needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about. In
prose, the worst thing one can do with words is to surrender them. When you
think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to
describe the thing you have been visualizing, you probably hunt about till you
find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract
you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a
conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and
do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning.
Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s
meaning as clear as one can through pictures or sensations. Afterwards one can
choose—not simply accept—the phrases that will best cover the meaning,
and then switch round and decide what impressions one’s words are likely to
make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or
mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and
vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word
or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on
when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:
These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a
deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style
now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English, but
one could not write the kind of stuff that I quoted in these five specimens at
the beginning of this article.
I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but
merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or
preventing thought. Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all
abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating
a kind of political quietism. Since you don’t know what Fascism is, how can you
struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but
one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the
decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by
starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from
the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects,
and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to
yourself. Political language—and with variations this is true of all political
parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound
truthful and murder respectable. and to give an
appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment,
but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can
even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase—some jackboot,
Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno or other
lump of verbal refuse—into the dustbin where it belongs.
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1. An
interesting illustration of this is the way in which the English flower names
which were in use till very recently are being ousted by Greek ones, snapdragon
becoming antirrhinum, forget-me-not becoming myosotis, etc. It is hard to see any practical reason
for this change of fashion: it is probably due to an instinctive turning-away
from the more homely word and a vague feeling that the Greek word is
scientific. 2.
Example: “Comfort’s catholicity of perception and image, strangely Whitmanesque in range, almost the exact opposite in
aesthetic compulsion, continues to evoke that trembling atmospheric
accumulative hinting at a cruel, an inexorably serene timelessness . . . Wrey Gardiner scores by aiming at simple bullseyes with precision. Only they are not so simple,
and through this contented sadness runs more than
the surface bittersweet of resignation.” (Poetry Quarterly.)
3. One
can cure oneself of the not un- formation by memorizing this sentence:
A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen
field. |