General semantics
George Orwell does not need an introduction as writer of books on
society and matters relating to language, being the author of the novels
1984 en Animal Farm. However, he has also written non-fiction
is this field, for example the essay that has been reproduced below.
There is little doubt that this article is totally within the vein of
General Semantics, as the following section shows:
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
...
In the beginning of the article Orwell refers to the bad state the
English language is in his day, writing in 1946. In needs very little
argument that things nowadays, with the comet-like rise of the
mass-media and the importance of influencing language, is much worse.
George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1946
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.
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
.
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 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?
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.
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 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!
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 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 color, 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 like expedite, ameliorate, predict,
extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous, and hundreds of others
constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon numbers. (note
1). 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 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 (note
2). 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 Pétain 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.
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 of this essay. Professor Laski (1) uses five negatives in
fifty three words. One of these is superfluous, making nonsense of the whole
passage, and in addition there is the slip - alien for akin - making further
nonsense, and several avoidable pieces of clumsiness which increase the general
vagueness. Professor Hogben (2) plays ducks and drakes with a battery which is
able to write prescriptions, and, while disapproving of the everyday phrase
put up with, is unwilling to look egregious up in the dictionary and
see what it means; (3), if one takes an uncharitable attitude towards it, is
simply meaningless: probably one could work out its intended meaning by reading
the whole of the article in which it occurs. In (4), the writer knows more or
less what he wants to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like
tea leaves blocking a sink. In (5), words and meaning have almost parted
company. People who write in this manner usually have a general emotional
meaning - they dislike one thing and want to express solidarity with another -
but they are not interested in the detail of what they are saying. A scrupulous
writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four
questions, thus: 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 fresh enough to have
an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: 1. Could I put it more
shortly? 2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged
to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open
and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your
sentences for you - even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent - and
at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your
meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection
between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.
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 some kind of
rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a "party line." Orthodoxy, of
whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political
dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White papers
and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party,
but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid,
homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform
mechanically repeating the familiar phrases - bestial atrocities, iron heel,
bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder
- one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being
but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments
when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs
which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A
speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning
himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but
his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for
himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over
and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is
when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of
consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political
conformity.
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the
indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian
purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be
defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face,
and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus
political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and
sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the
inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts
set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.
Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads
with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population
or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without
trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber
camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such
phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental
pictures of them. 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."
The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. 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. I should expect to find - this is a guess which I have not sufficient
knowledge to verify - that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all
deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad
usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do
know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways
very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to
be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well
to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at
one's elbow. Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I
have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against. By this
morning's post I have received a pamphlet dealing with conditions in Germany.
The author tells me that he "felt impelled" to write it. I open it at random,
and here is almost the first sentence I see: "[The Allies] have an opportunity
not only of achieving a radical transformation of Germany's social and political
structure in such a way as to avoid a nationalistic reaction in Germany itself,
but at the same time of laying the foundations of a co-operative and unified
Europe." You see, he "feels impelled" to write - feels, presumably, that he has
something new to say - and yet his words, like cavalry horses answering the
bugle, group themselves automatically into the familiar dreary pattern. This
invasion of one's mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a
radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard
against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one's brain.
I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those
who deny this would argue, if they produced an argument at all, that language
merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its
development by any direct tinkering with words and constructions. So far as the
general tone or spirit of a language goes, this may be true, but it is not true
in detail. Silly words and expressions have often disappeared, not through any
evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of 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
flyblown metaphors which could similarly be got rid of if enough people would
interest themselves in the job; and it should also be possible to laugh the
not un- formation out of existence (note
3), to reduce the amount of Latin and Greek in the average sentence, to
drive out foreign phrases and strayed scientific words, and, in general, to make
pretentiousness unfashionable. But all these are minor points. The defense of
the English language implies more than this, and perhaps it is best to start by
saying what it does not imply.
To begin with it has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of
obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the setting up of a "standard
English" which must never be departed from. On the contrary, it is especially
concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outworn its
usefulness. It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of
no importance so long as one makes one's meaning clear, or with the avoidance of
Americanisms, or with having what is called a "good prose style." On the other
hand, it is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make written
English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon
word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words
that will cover one's meaning. What is above all needed is to let the meaning
choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing one can
do with words is surrender to them. When you think of a concrete object, you
think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been
visualizing you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to
fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words
from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the
existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of
blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using
words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through
pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose - not simply accept -
the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide
what impressions one's words are likely to make on another person. This last
effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated
phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can
often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules
that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover
most cases:
(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are
used to seeing in print.
(ii) Never us a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you
can think of an everyday English equivalent.
(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change
of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now
fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English, but one
could not write the kind of stuff that I quoted in those five specimens at the
beginning of this article.
I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely
language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing
thought. Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all abstract
words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of
political quietism. Since you don't know what Fascism is, how can you struggle
against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to
recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of
language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at
the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst
follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when
you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself.
Political language - and with variations this is true of all political parties,
from Conservatives to Anarchists - is designed to make lies sound truthful and
murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One
cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own
habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send
some worn-out and useless phrase - some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed,
melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse -
into the dustbin, where it belongs.
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