Writing with clarity: thoughts, language, corruption, a totalitarian regime
George Orwell’s dystopian thriller, 1984, written in 1949, follows the totalitarian universe, Oceania, and its Big Brother regime, where people’s actions are monitored 24/7. It’s a controlling state where even language is controlled, in an endeavour to control people’s thoughts.
In his essay ‘Politics and the English Language’ Orwell said, “If thoughts can corrupt language, language can also corrupt thoughts”. This concept led to him creating a unique language called Newspeak for his fictional world.
The protagonist Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth, keeping historical records up to date in a way that distorts the truth. It leads to people being unaware of historical facts.
Orwell said, “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” (reference)
Dumbing down
In Orwell’s fictional world, Big Brother is trying to reduce people’s ability to think complex thoughts and to draw their own conclusions, so that ‘thought crime’ is impossible. Newspeak, the language of Oceania, is designed to prevent people expressing complex thoughts and to reduce language to the simplest terms.
For those unfamiliar with the classic literature, the concept was played out by Christian Bale in the modern movie Equilibrium, which is clearly inspired by some of the Orwell’s ideas in 1984.
The opening chapter of 1984 tells of Winston picking up a book in a store (a crime punishable by death) and starting a journal, forbidden by the regime.
The story reflected Orwell’s own worries that English Language was being eroded and reduced, and that this affected people’s ability to form and explain their own independent ideas.
He famously said, “If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.” (reference)
Orwell’s views on writing
In his aforementioned essay, ‘Politics and the English Language’, he lists six rules for good writing…
1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Of course, the last of these rules reduces the absolute terms of the others. Indeed, Orwell himself didn’t follow them. Many of his works use the passive voice, and there are many words that could be deleted, without losing meaning.
The suggestion then, is that these rules are actually rather tongue in cheek, intended only to make you think.
We all want to be clear, concise and communicate effectively in our writing, and these suggestions may help people to tighten their work.
Awareness of the power of language
Are short simple words always better than longer complex ones? Absolutely not. In fact, to follow these rules too far is to do exactly what Orwell was concerned about — reduce language to basics, and thereby reduce the capacity for complex thought.
However, there’s a good argument that if people need a dictionary to figure out what you’re saying, perhaps you’re not very accessible to the masses. And that’s bad.
Accessibility of writing is important. Clarity of point is important. Long rambling sentences that fail to get to the point, or are so complex that the point is not clear, are a fail.
Orwell’s rules are intended to create a sense of awareness — awareness of overly complex sentences, of difficult concepts poorly explained, of puff and unnecessary ramblings.
He felt that only by being more aware of the decline of the written word could we work to improve it.
© Susie Kearley 2022, All Rights Reserved.