Newspeak In George Orwell's Novel 1984
Response to: The Principles of Newspeak
In George Orwell's novel 1984 the main character, 39 year old Winston Smith, lives in the superstate Oceania, a place controlled by Ingsoc which is Newspeak for English Socialism (the English Socialist Party). Winston's story takes place in what he believes is the year 1984, a time when Newspeak is still being changed and integrated into the Party.
Newspeak is the official language of Oceania, created by the Socialist Party with intentions to reduce range of thought, with intentions to eventually stop any thoughts deemed unacceptable. Ingsoc wanted to create a language that would fulfil the requirements of the Party members while eliminating ambiguity, and at the same time control the way people think. The way that they were able to do these things was by stripping words of unorthodox or secondary meanings while creating some new words, but mostly eliminating a lot of words. By doing this it not only removed words but it also removed the correlating concepts, this way even if one wanted to express feelings against intellectual freedom a word wouldn’t exist for it. In fact the word "free" only exists with the meaning of being free of something, such as "This …show more content…
For example, even if someone was muttering to himself, is considered a facecrime. Very distracting it must be to always have to pay attention to and fake facial expressions, something that is usually unconscious. Don’t forget about sleep, something else that is dangerous and unconscious. Winston talks about the Thought Police coming to vaporize people, always in the middle night. In the beginning of Winston's journaling, his thoughts drifted and he found himself accidently writing over and over "DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER"(18). Putting these two things together it wouldn’t be difficult to suspect people sleep talking about their built up and repressed
In George Orwell's novel 1984 the main character, 39 year old Winston Smith, lives in the superstate Oceania, a place controlled by Ingsoc which is Newspeak for English Socialism (the English Socialist Party). Winston's story takes place in what he believes is the year 1984, a time when Newspeak is still being changed and integrated into the Party.
Newspeak is the official language of Oceania, created by the Socialist Party with intentions to reduce range of thought, with intentions to eventually stop any thoughts deemed unacceptable. Ingsoc wanted to create a language that would fulfil the requirements of the Party members while eliminating ambiguity, and at the same time control the way people think. The way that they were able to do these things was by stripping words of unorthodox or secondary meanings while creating some new words, but mostly eliminating a lot of words. By doing this it not only removed words but it also removed the correlating concepts, this way even if one wanted to express feelings against intellectual freedom a word wouldn’t exist for it. In fact the word "free" only exists with the meaning of being free of something, such as "This …show more content…
For example, even if someone was muttering to himself, is considered a facecrime. Very distracting it must be to always have to pay attention to and fake facial expressions, something that is usually unconscious. Don’t forget about sleep, something else that is dangerous and unconscious. Winston talks about the Thought Police coming to vaporize people, always in the middle night. In the beginning of Winston's journaling, his thoughts drifted and he found himself accidently writing over and over "DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER"(18). Putting these two things together it wouldn’t be difficult to suspect people sleep talking about their built up and repressed