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Politics and the English Language

George Orwell, 1946 | UK

The English language is in a bad way. Our civilization is decadent, and our language will inevitably follow. Those who point out these issues are branded old fashioned, like preferring candles to electric light, but could this declination of our language be averted?

This problem cannot be pinned on an individual writer; the reason is ultimately more political. Laziness is habitual. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. Bad habits spread by imitation. Once we acknowledge this, we may begin to reverse the process.

Two common issues with our writing are stale imagery and imprecision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or they inadvertently say something else: modern prose consists more and more of simple phrases tacked together, rather than well-constructed sentences. Other symptoms of a dying language are dying metaphors; pretentious dictation; and meaningless words.

Now that I have made this list, let me give an example of the kind of writing that they lead to. I will translate a passage of good English into modern English. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

And in modern English:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be considered.

Analyse these two sentences closer. The first contains forty-nine words but only sixty syllables, and all its words are those of everyday life. The second contains thirty-eight words of ninety syllables: eighteen of those words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images, and only one phrase that could be called vague. The second contains not a single fresh phrase, and despite its ninety syllables, it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first. It’s indolent, but if we were to write a few lines on the uncertainty of human fortunes, we would write something closer to my imaginary sentence than the former.

By using stale metaphors, similes, and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, for yourself and your reader. In order to combat this lingering demise, a scrupulous writer will ask themself at least six questions:

  1. What am I trying to say?
  2. What words will express it?
  3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
  4. Is this image vivid enough to have an effect?
  5. Could this be shorter?
  6. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is a rebel, expressing their private opinions. Political dialects do vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, homemade turn of speech. A speaker who follows these bad habits risks turning themself into a machine. Languages homed in European dictatorships will have all deteriorated in the last decade due to this.

I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Whilst some might disagree, there’s evidence that some expressions have disappeared as a result of action from a minority. Two recent examples were explore every avenue and leave no stone unturned, which were killed by the jeers of a few journalists. There is a long list of metaphors which could similarly be eradicated if enough people tried.

When writing, the following rules should cover most cases:

  1. Use metaphors and similes sparingly.
  2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
  3. If it is possible to cut a word out, cut away.
  4. Be active, rather than passive.
  5. Never use a foreign phrase or a scientific word if there’s an everyday English equivalent.

These rules sound elementary, but they demand a deep change of attitude. One ought to recognize that the present political chaos relates to the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. Simplify your English. One cannot change this alone, but one can at least change one's own habits, and might, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase -- some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, or other lump of verbal refuse -- into the dustbin, where it belongs.



Orwell, George (1946) Politics and the English Language. Penguin Publishing Group: London.