Any of you read the essay- Politics and the English Language

[spookymulder93]

I saw the title of it in another thread on here so I decided to look it up and what Orwell said made sense. I've known a lot of people that say horrible things that sound good when they use the "big" words and phrases, instead of just coming right out and saying what they have to say.

I notice that I always use certain concrete phrases that I've heard before when I speak or when I write. I think I'm going to take the advice he gives in the article and stop doing it.

How about the rest of you? Do you guys fall into some of these habits as well?

[Seasider]

"Politics and the English Language" (1946) is one of George Orwell's most famous essays. He takes examples of political writing in English, analyses common faults and draws up a list of rules for writers to follow:
"Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Never use a long word where a short one will do.
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Never use the passive where you can use the active.
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous."

Writing as he was in an age of totalitarian ideologies Orwell stresses the close association between bad prose and inhumane ideology:
"Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, "I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so." Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

"While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement."

He describes this style as euphemistic, the disguising of hard facts by soft words.
"A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer."
Orwell did not live long enough to know and understand the word "Spin" but he would recognise how much it has poisoned political discourse in the years following his untimely death. Note I did not use the word "demise"

[Emil Miller]

The problem is, that if politicians didn't dance around each other, they would very soon be punching one another on the nose.

[stlukesguild]

There seems to be a repetition of a single theme to a number of threads lately... a harping on about the employment of a more verbose language as opposed to one which is concise and to the point. It reminds me of the political debates in which one politician paints his or her opponent as an "elitist" because he or she actually did well in college... as if one should be ashamed of being intelligent or having a good education... or the ability to employ language beyond the level of a 4th grader or the National Enquirer.

Undoubtedly, we can find other writers beyond Orwell of real merit who also championed simplicity over complexity. On the other hand, one might point out that beside Joyce there are certain other writers like... well, ummm... let's see... perhaps Shakespeare... who most certainly would not approve of Orwell's argument for linguistic simplicity... and most certainly is the far greater writer.

What I find somewhat comic in Orwell's essay is the manner in which this writer of anti-totalitarian thought would dictate to other writers strict rules for how to think and how to write. Of course Orwell is doing this with the intention of enforcing "transparency" in political speak... but then again, don't most totalitarian rules begin with the best of intentions?

[Sebas. Melmoth]

I can endorse much of what Orwell suggests on English composition.
And yet, Orwell is not 100% correct.
It depends what you're writing for and who your target audience is.
Journalism is different from academic discourse; prose-poetry is different from tendentious propaganda.

Orwell's essay is a good starting place for undergraduate college students who need practice and experience with large-scale English composition.
Later a writer may branch out and stylize; however good they may be, one doesn't have to be bound forever by Orwell's dictums on composition.

[Musaeus]

Orwell knew exactly what he was talking about: his advice should be taken by all
journalists and politicians who do value clarity and honesty. He was one of the greatest guardians of effective free speech in the century which most brutally tried to crush it.

As Melmoth says, he was not aiming his advice at poets or other lyrical writers. That is not a mode in which he himself wrote

[dfloyd]

for people to champion simplistic writing and to criticize certain writers, such as those of the nineteenth century, Henry James for example, as being bombastic. When I started reading classics more than forty years ago, I liked to be challenged by a novel. I never criticized novels, but tried to understand them and add them to my repertoire of read classics, When I read where someone says, "He's not for me," "He's boring!" or "I fell asllep reading that book," I think that the problem is not with the author but with the reader. Many books are criticized by those without the acumen to follow or otherwise understand a writer. The next time you crticize a book, try to truthfully see if it is because you just aren't ready for absorbing the thoughts of the author. Henry James, Thomas Hardy, and George Eliot et al, are still read assiduously today, but maybe you just aren't ready for some writers of this ilk.

[Seasider]

@St Luke'sguild. Orwell's essay is not a style guide for all seasons. It lays bare the way that people in positions of power and privilege successfully maintain it by lies, evasions, ambiguities and bluster. It is not simplicity for its own sake that he recommends but sincerity and truthfulness. Particularly in the arena of Politics where the temptation to lie and the opportunity to cover up is endemic.

Of course the English language, any language, can be used in different styles...as long as the style used is suitable to the effect intended. Orwell is not trumpeting the virtues of the four -letter word approach to language. But he suggests that some writers use long words and over elaborate constructions to disguise the paucity or meanness of their thoughts.
There are plenty of examples of complexity in his novels; 1984 is not written at the level of The National Enquirer or The Sun on my side of the pond.

[Scheherazade]

R e m i n d e r

Please do not bring current/recent politics into this discussion.

Such posts will be removed without further notice.

[stlukesguild]

Of course I am not criticizing Orwell as a writer... although I do believe he is far overrated among LitNet members... along with Dostoevsky... but that's neither here nor there. I am criticizing the manner in which Orwell is being employed as an example or proof that writing... creative writing... SHOULD take a certain form: clear, simple, and concise. As already suggested, I believe that creative writing SHOULD take whatever form the author deems is best suited to his or her goals. The success or failure of such is not due to the form, but rather to how well it is or is not employed by the author.

By the way... I quite like Lincoln's Gettysburg Address:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

I can just imagine this stripped down by those who argue for clarity. Rather than "Four score and seven years ago..." we get "87 years ago..." and I can only imagine it going downhill from there.

[Seasider]

I think we are more or less on the same side. Orwell's essay was for a particular purpose. The style employed should be the one best suited to the subject and its intended effect. Nuff Said.
I looked at one of your blogs...I recommend you listen to Wanda Landowska's interpretation of The Goldberg Variations, if you haven't. If you have I am amazed that you don't mention her. In my opinion she is a magnificent interpreter of JSB who is my favourite composer of all time. Distinct whiff of the traditional enmity between Classical and Romantic styles.

[stlukesguild]

I've only heard a few performances of works by Wanda Landowska. I am admittedly not overly fond of the harpsichord... at least in most of the recordings that I have heard... but she certainly is a performer whose efforts I have on my wish lists.

[Sebas. Melmoth]

I recommend you listen to Wanda Landowska's interpretation of The Goldberg Variations.

Oy! She performs on some kind of monster heavy-metal harpsichord which is really stunning.
http://www.amazon.com/Bach-Landowska-Recordings-Box-Set/dp/B000A2ACQ0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1280182045&sr=1-1