The Power of Newspeak

In 1984, Syme discusses Newspeak, the new language manifested by the party. Newspeak is created by gradually stripping the dictionary of any words viewed as "unnecessary." This includes replacing words like "excellent" and "horrible" with the bland Newspeak versions of "doubleplusgood" and "doubleplusbad." It completely narrows the power of language, and therefore narrows the power of our minds. Terrifyingly enough, this is exactly what the party wants. The philosophy behind Newspeak is to make it impossible to even conceive of rebellious or disobedient thoughts, because there are no words to even express those feelings. This is yet another way the party imposes its seemingly unbreakable power over the people of Oceania. Eventually, nobody will even be capable of conceptualizing anything that could possibly question the power of the party. It is absolutely horrifying to think that our minds and personal thoughts could be controlled so efficiently, and to think that we could be stripped of any self-conceived opinions. The idea of Newspeak proposes a form of power even more restricting than that of the telescreens watching the people of Oceania at every moment. Newspeak is a powerful symbol displayed by Orwell, and it shows how easily our perceptions can be warped.

Our perceptions can be warped by our language, however, the most powerful distortion is done without our realizing it. It would involve the use of words that we would uncritically defend. For example, take the new word "meme". What does it even mean or imply about our humanity? Is it really the way we want to describe our communication with each other?

Newspeak is just another way of government control on emotions. With newspeak people can no longer express themselves or have a full conversation. You are correct and it is terrifying to think that someone can have so much power they can just take away free conversation. Even today, twitter you can only have 140 word count and you have to use "political correctness" so is it just in books that this can happen? Or can the government today do this?