One of George Orwell's central themes in 1984 is the power of language. This is actually a theme he explored elsewhere in his work, including Animal Farm and a famous essay entitled "Politics and the English Language."
Newspeak is central to the Party's power and is discussed throughout the book. For example, Syme, a Party philologist tasked with compiling a Newspeak dictionary, explains to Winston in book 1, chapter 5 that the purpose of Newspeak is not simply to invent a new language but rather to destroy words in an effort to eliminate the possibility of thoughtcrime. With each edition of the dictionary, Syme says, "the range of consciousness [is] always a little smaller." He continues by explaining the significance of this:
The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak . . . How could you have a slogan like 'freedom is slavery' when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
These quotes should illustrate the effectiveness of Newspeak. We can find one example of how Newspeak alters the way people think (or attempts to) by looking at the word "bad." This word, Syme tells Winston, is superfluous. It is better to say "ungood." If something is very bad, instead of using an adjective like "terrible," Newspeak would have people say "doubleplusungood." In this way, every synonym for "bad" and every word that expresses gradations of "bad" is gone.
A good topic sentence for the paragraph would illustrate that through Newspeak, the Party seeks to control the thoughts of people in order to make nonconformity impossible.
Sunday, October 16, 2016
I have a paragraph on Newspeak: why/how it's put into use and how it is effective. I need a few quotes and supporting details. I need help forming a good topic sentence as well. Thanks!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Why is the fact that the Americans are helping the Russians important?
In the late author Tom Clancy’s first novel, The Hunt for Red October, the assistance rendered to the Russians by the United States is impor...
-
There are a plethora of rules that Jonas and the other citizens must follow. Again, page numbers will vary given the edition of the book tha...
-
The poem contrasts the nighttime, imaginative world of a child with his daytime, prosaic world. In the first stanza, the child, on going to ...
-
The given two points of the exponential function are (2,24) and (3,144). To determine the exponential function y=ab^x plug-in the given x an...
-
The play Duchess of Malfi is named after the character and real life historical tragic figure of Duchess of Malfi who was the regent of the ...
-
The only example of simile in "The Lottery"—and a particularly weak one at that—is when Mrs. Hutchinson taps Mrs. Delacroix on the...
-
Hello! This expression is already a sum of two numbers, sin(32) and sin(54). Probably you want or express it as a product, or as an expressi...
-
Macbeth is reflecting on the Weird Sisters' prophecy and its astonishing accuracy. The witches were totally correct in predicting that M...
No comments:
Post a Comment