Politics and the English Language E-Book

George Orwell

• Herausgeber: Renard Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 31

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

George Orwell set out 'to make political writing into an art', and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and AnimalFarm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell's essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Politics and the English Language, the second in the Orwell's Essays series, Orwell takes aim at the language used in politics, which, he says, 'is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind'. In an age where the language used in politics is constantly under the microscope, Orwell's Politics and the English Language is just as relevant today, and gives the reader a vital understanding of the tactics at play.

Leseprobe

politics andthe english language

the orwell’s essays series

i. Why I Write

ii. Politics and the English Language

iii. The Prevention of Literature

iv. Politics vs. Literature

v. Shooting an Elephant

vi. England Your England

vii. Orwell on Reading

viii. Inside the Whale

ix. A Hanging

x. Decline of the English Murder

Politics and the English Language

george orwell

renard press

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Politics and the English Language first published in 1946

This edition first published by Renard Press Ltd in 2021

Edited text © Renard Press Ltd, 2021

Extra Material © Renard Press Ltd, 2021

Cover design by Will DadyExtra Material edited by Tom Conaghan

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contents

Politics and the English Language

Notes

Extra Material

politics and the english language

Most people whobother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilisation is decadent and our language – so the argument runs – must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. 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. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.

These five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad – I could have quoted far worse if I had chosen – but because they illustrate various of the mental vices from which we now suffer. They are a little below the average, but are fairly representative examples. I number them so that I can refer back to them when necessary:

1.