Politics and the English Language - George Orwell.pdf

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Politics and the English Language
by George Orwell
Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in
a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything
about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language -- so the argument runs -- must
inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of
language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom
cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a
natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.
Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and
economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer.
But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same
effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he
feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is
rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and
inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it
easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern
English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and
which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of
these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step
toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is
not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I
hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer.
Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually
written.
These five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad -- I could
have quoted far worse if I had chosen -- but because they illustrate various of the mental
vices from which we now suffer. They are a little below the average, but are fairly
representative examples. I number them so that I can refer back to them when necessary:
1. I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once
seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an
experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien [sic] to the founder of that
Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate. - Professor Harold Laski
(Essay in Freedom of Expression )
2. Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native battery of idioms which
prescribes egregious collocations of vocables as the Basic put up with for tolerate ,
or put at a loss for bewilder . - Professor Lancelot Hogben ( Interglossia )
3. On the one side we have the free personality: by definition it is not neurotic, for it
has neither conflict nor dream. Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for
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they are just what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness;
another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is little
in them that is natural, irreducible, or culturally dangerous. But on the other side ,
the social bond itself is nothing but the mutual reflection of these self-secure
integrities. Recall the definition of love. Is not this the very picture of a small
academic? Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality or
fraternity? - Essay on psychology in Politics (New York)
4. All the "best people" from the gentlemen's clubs, and all the frantic fascist
captains, united in common hatred of Socialism and bestial horror at the rising
tide of the mass revolutionary movement, have turned to acts of provocation, to
foul incendiarism, to medieval legends of poisoned wells, to legalize their own
destruction of proletarian organizations, and rouse the agitated petty-bourgeoise to
chauvinistic fervor on behalf of the fight against the revolutionary way out of the
crisis. - Communist pamphlet
5. If a new spirit is to be infused into this old country, there is one thorny and
contentious reform which must be tackled, and that is the humanization and
galvanization of the B.B.C. Timidity here will bespeak canker and atrophy of the
soul. The heart of Britain may be sound and of strong beat, for instance, but the
British lion's roar at present is like that of Bottom in Shakespeare's A Midsummer
Night's Dream -- as gentle as any sucking dove. A virile new Britain cannot
continue indefinitely to be traduced in the eyes or rather ears, of the world by the
effete languors of Langham Place, brazenly masquerading as "standard English."
When the Voice of Britain is heard at nine o'clock, better far and infinitely less
ludicrous to hear aitches honestly dropped than the present priggish, inflated,
inhibited, school-ma'amish arch braying of blameless bashful mewing maidens! -
Letter in Tribune
Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two
qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of
precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says
something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not.
This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of
modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain
topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of
turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for
the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections
of a prefabricated henhouse. I list below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks
by means of which the work of prose construction is habitually dodged:
Dying metaphors. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual
image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically "dead" (e.g. iron
resolution ) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used
without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-
out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save
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people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes
on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder
with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters,
on the order of the day, Achilles' heel, swan song, hotbed . Many of these are used
without knowledge of their meaning (what is a "rift," for instance?), and incompatible
metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is
saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning
without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is
sometimes written as tow the line. Another example is the hammer and the anvil , now
always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always
the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to
think what he was saying would avoid perverting the original phrase.
Operators or verbal false limbs. These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs
and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an
appearance of symmetry. Characteristic phrases are render inoperative, militate against,
make contact with, be subjected to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play
a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the
purpose of, etc., etc. The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a
single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase , made up of a
noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purpose verb such as prove, serve, form,
play, render . In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the
active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds ( by examination of instead of
by examining ). The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and de-
formations, and the banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of
the not un- formation. Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by such phrases
as with respect to, having regard to, the fact that, by dint of, in view of, in the interests of,
on the hypothesis that; and the ends of sentences are saved by anticlimax by such
resounding commonplaces as greatly to be desired, cannot be left out of account, a
development to be expected in the near future, deserving of serious consideration,
brought to a satisfactory conclusion , and so on and so forth.
Pretentious diction. Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as noun), objective,
categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize,
eliminate, liquidate , are used to dress up a simple statement and give an air of scientific
impartiality to biased judgements. Adjectives like epoch-making, epic, historic,
unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable, veritable , are used to dignify
the sordid process of international politics, while writing that aims at glorifying war
usually takes on an archaic colour, its characteristic words being: realm, throne, chariot,
mailed fist, trident, sword, shield, buckler, banner, jackboot, clarion . Foreign words and
expressions such as cul de sac, ancien regime, deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, status
quo, gleichschaltung, weltanschauung , are used to give an air of culture and elegance.
Except for the useful abbreviations i.e., e.g. and etc. , there is no real need for any of the
hundreds of foreign phrases now current in the English language. Bad writers, and
especially scientific, political, and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the
notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words
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like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous , and
hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon numbers. The jargon
peculiar to Marxist writing ( hyena, hangman, cannibal, petty bourgeois, these gentry,
lackey, flunkey, mad dog, White Guard , etc.) consists largely of words translated from
Russian, German, or French; but the normal way of coining a new word is to use a Latin
or Greek root with the appropriate affix and, where necessary, the size formation. It is
often easier to make up words of this kind ( deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital,
non-fragmentary and so forth) than to think up the English words that will cover one's
meaning. The result, in general, is an increase in slovenliness and vagueness.
Meaningless words. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary
criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking
in meaning. Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural,
vitality , as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do
not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader.
When one critic writes, "The outstanding feature of Mr. X's work is its living quality,"
while another writes, "The immediately striking thing about Mr. X's work is its peculiar
deadness," the reader accepts this as a simple difference opinion. If words like black and
white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living , he would see at once
that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly
abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something
not desirable." The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have
each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In
the case of a word like democracy , not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt
to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a
country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of
regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word
if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a
consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private
definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements
like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The
Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to
deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly,
are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality .
Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another
example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an
imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of
the worst sort. 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.
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Here it is 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 taken into account.
This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit (3) above, for instance, contains
several patches of the same kind of English. It will be seen that I have not made a full
translation. The beginning and ending of the sentence follow the original meaning fairly
closely, but in the middle the concrete illustrations -- race, battle, bread -- dissolve into
the vague phrases "success or failure in competitive activities." This had to be so, because
no modern writer of the kind I am discussing -- no one capable of using phrases like
"objective considerations of contemporary phenomena" -- would ever tabulate his
thoughts in that precise and detailed way. The whole tendency of modern prose is away
from concreteness. Now analyze these two sentences a little more closely. 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 ("time and chance") that could be called vague. The second contains
not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its ninety syllables it gives only a
shortened version of the meaning contained in the first. Yet without a doubt it is the
second kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English. I do not want to
exaggerate. This kind of writing is not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur
here and there in the worst-written page. Still, if you or I were told to write a few lines on
the uncertainty of human fortunes, we should probably come much nearer to my
imaginary sentence than to the one from Ecclesiastes . As I have tried to show, modern
writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning
and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming
together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and
making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is
that it is easy. It is easier -- even quicker, once you have the habit -- to say In my opinion
it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think . If you use ready-made
phrases, you not only don't have to hunt about for the words; you also don't have to
bother with the rhythms of your sentences since these phrases are generally so arranged
as to be more or less euphonious. When you are composing in a hurry -- when you are
dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech -- it is natural to fall
into a pretentious, Latinized style. Tags like a consideration which we should do well to
bear in mind or a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent will save many a
sentence from coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes, and idioms,
you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your
reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a
metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash -- as in The Fascist
octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot -- it can be
taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in
other words he is not really thinking. Look again at the examples I gave at the beginning
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