Purpose of Newspeak

[pianoman]

I understand, and yet don't understand, the purpose of Newspeak. I understand, and agree with the way the Big Brother uses Newspeak. If I were a dictator, running my dictatorship rather secretly, I too would combine many words and phrases, to keep the language short and easy. But it completely casts aside emotion form speech. It would keep the people in the dark, unknowing of the dictatorship, and practically unable to express their emotions on it. It creates a sistuation where it is both easier and herder to communicate. But in the government system, like with all the people that have the power, I think it would be a little bit harder for them to communicate and get done what needs to be done, to be clear on what's been told to do. Or is there no need to be super-specific, or specific in general in all the different Ministries.
Anyone help from anyone would be great. Thanks, in advance.

[The Battle Axe]

I think Newspeak's goal is to get rid of words that could be considered "bad" for Big Brother. It would make many people easier to control for if certain words like "rebellion" are removed, eventually people will forget their meaning. Another goal would be to remove meaning from words so as to keep the populous from feeling disapproved thoughts.

Mostly, I believe Newspeak is a way to restrict language that the state thinks is compromising to its continuation. :thumbs_up

[KurtDunn]

It's a little more than that. That is one obvious reason for it, but it also removes the amounts of thought imbued in every-day speech. There is a tremendous amount of meaning, for example, in the word wonderful. In newspeak, wonderful is spoken as 'doublegood.' A term which is almost scientific in it's description of something.

[Thinkerr]

In the book, Newspeak is essentially another control on free speech. If a Party worker were to be told "The Party is bad, we should rebel." they would not be able to react. This sentence is in "Oldspeak" or modern english. There is no concept for rebel in Newspeak, so the worker would only hear,"Party is ungood, comrades." They would almost certainly report this and the rebellion would be crushed. Only those who did not adopt Newspeak would be able to rebel, silencing dissident.

[thinkpink]

A lot of people posted things along the same lines, but I believe Big Brother is using newspeak because he understand he needs to keep people dumb to control them easier. Newspeak is removing describing words first and slowly removing other words. When these words are removed people lose a way to express themselves and show how or what they feel. Soon enough there will be so few words that the "comrades" will have no way to say how they feel. That way people can't rebel and can't go against Big Brother and his ways in governing them. He's just dumbing them down for easier power and control.