Blog 4 Politics and the English language

Orwell, G. (1950) Shooting an elephant and other essays. London: Secker & Warburg.

Orwell, G. (1950) Shooting an elephant and other essays. London: Secker & Warburg.

According to George Orwell, “our civilization is decadent and our language…must inevitably share in the general collapse.” Orwell discourses a significant relationship between the use of language and political manipulation.

He posits the cause- and-effect of the disorientation of the language has been reinforced in an intensified form indefinitely, and reversely; the slovenliness of our language leads to foolish thoughts, just as language and thought are co-constituted with each other.

He believes a declining usage of language has political and economic causes that mislead on expression and communication.

He criticizes most of the political professional writings consist of vagueness, unnecessary and foreign translated words, such as Professor Harold Laski, Professor Lancelot Hogben, an essay on psychology in Politics, the Communist pamphlet, and a Letter in Tribune’s work. He argues those the political writings are written in euphemism, where consists staleness of imagery and “mixture of vagueness and sheer incomplete”.

Orwell thinks political writing becomes difficult to understand when politicians create confusions when they lack of precision on expression and express euphemistically their own thoughts to public. Political writers fail to express clear message to their intended audiences because of dying metaphors, operational or verbal false libs, pretentious diction, and meaningless words. At the end, Orwell lists six steps that can help writers prevent meaningless and vague writing, and engage writes to get rid of bad habits on writing.  Orwell believes that language should not be used for deception or concealment on political writing, and proper usage of language is a necessary step toward to revive political regeneration.

This article shows a strong objective view about how Orwell thinks about Modern English, and also emphasizes how bad writing skill influences our understanding on political articles. It enables to make CCT110 students to realize that plain writing in modern English is important, as it can increase precision and accuracy in communication, digital and interactive media environment.