Comments on George Orwell's Newspeak

Language is something unique and extremely important to human beings since our early development. It is unique to mankind and without it; societies nowadays surely can not function at all. Just imagine the society with no words being spoken, or written, no communication; it will just die out immediately. Each of us can understand the significance and the powerful impacts of languages. Therefore a question is raised: "Will the society dominated if language is controlled since language influences are so great?" illustrated clearly through the case of Newspeak- "a fictional language in George Orwell's famous novel Nineteen Eighty-FourÐ'..." "which has a greatly reduced and simplified vocabulary and grammar" which aims "to make subversive thought ("thoughtcrime") and speech impossible"? Will Newspeak be able to attain such goals and is it true that there are some areas in life in which language use is comparable to Newspeak and they have effects on its users?" We will discuss about this later on in the essay but let me make myself clear first. In my opinion, I think Newspeak will work, but with certain conditions being fulfilled.

First let's discuss why Newspeak will work. It is common knowledge that language is truly the "keystone to culture" for without it, we could not pass on the collective experience of society and the lessons it teaches for survival. It is the primary way that we pass on our culture from one generation to the next. It enables us to store meanings so we don't have to relearn everything with each generation. This supports one of the methods of Newspeak- suppression of definitely heretical words. Newspeak eliminates all undesirable words and such words of orthodox meanings ensuring that there are no possibilities of arriving at them by indirect methods. Therefore, when Newspeak has been adopted once and for all and everybody is willing to adopt such rules in the language, apart from people belonging to the generation, who have an understanding of the society before the "Newspeak revolution" are the only ones who have an idea about heretical thoughts. But as they can not pass down the knowledge of heretical thoughts because it is impossible to express thoughts without vocabulary, thoughts are dependent on words and Newspeak has already eliminated the necessary vocabulary. So some people when they argued that people can still think about heretical thoughts even when language is eliminated, they don't realize that even if it is true, it is not important at all. It is the subversive thoughts are not passed down that count. The next generation doesn't even know that these concepts exist, how can they embark and develop on the thoughts divergent from the principles of Ingsoc? So the underlying theory of Newspeak which is "If something can't be said, then it can't be thought" can only be applied to the new generation after Newspeak is applied. The previous generation though they can't say something, they can still think of it.

Furthermore Newspeak vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle words expression to every meaning that a party member could properly wish to express. This equally means one word can express one idea. And language is the only means to express thoughts concretely, clearly and efficiently. The number of words is limited therefore the number of thoughts is limited. In this way Newspeak has made new thoughts in general, not only heretical thoughts impossible. But in our world nowadays, if Newspeak were applied, it must be applied absolutely, strictly and thoroughly in order for it to work in the long run, meaning there must be some "actions". For example: Once words for "heretical thoughts" are eliminated, all records of them in the past must also be eliminated so that the next generation has indeed nothing to think about or embark on. There must be a "real memory" hole used to quickly & easily wipe and destroy subversive documents from history, which is quite hard to achieve in our society nowadays. Moreover, Newspeak must also prohibit the birth of new words or else creating new thoughts will be easy to attain as there are chances where factors for creating heretical thoughts are exposed in the society, waiting to be uncovered. Also nowadays in the world's situation where there are so many individuals who do not obey the laws, there must be methods to force them not to use Oldspeak at any time, any place. That's why I mentioned earlier in order for Newspeak to work there must be some conditions being fulfilled. And these conditions are very difficult to obtain in our world.

Newspeak has struck at the strength but also the weakness of human beings-which is the adeptness of human beings in making sense from little. First the grammar of Newspeak grammar was extremely simple, ordinary, and regular. Subject to a few exceptions which are mentioned below, all inflections followed the same rules. For example all verbs' preterit forms end in Ð'-ed: the preterit of steal was stealed, such forms as swam, gave, brought, spoke, taken, etc., being abolished. This regularity and simplicity do not aim solely for convenience but deeply to avoid any specialty or complexity, therefore any reflection on language of human beings. For the same purpose, Newspeak strives to produce "a staccato rhythm of short syllables". This leads to a new millennium of "curtly spoken" or "monosyllable" languages, bringing an end to witty or eloquent speeches, which also means bringing an extremely high reduction of deep thinking about language of human beings. It is also partially done by utilizing the use of abbreviation "short and sweet".

Newspeak also gives birth to a series of new words which are dogmatic and vague, even overly vague. For example any word could be negative by adding the affix un-, or could be strengthened by the affix plus-, or, for still greater emphasis doubleplus-. Because of such a rule, human beings who are dependent on language to express thoughts concretely will be unable to show neutrality, highest or lowest qualityÐ'...etc, which again limits their minds. The cleverness of Newspeak was not only in the idea of 'shrinking' the English vocabulary but something more: the remaining vocabulary must be so abstract and so vague that real communication is always hampered.

Base on all the points above, I want to state again my point of view that Newspeak will very likely work, but