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Newspeak is a fictional language in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the novel, it is described as being "the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year". Orwell included an essay about it in the form of an appendix1 in which the basic principles of the language are explained. Newspeak is closely based on English but has a greatly reduced and simplified vocabulary and grammar. This suits the totalitarian regime of the Party, whose aim is to make any alternative thinking – "thoughtcrime", or "crimethink" in the newest edition of Newspeak – or speech impossible by removing any words or possible constructs which describe the ideas of freedom, rebellion and so on. One character says admiringly of the shrinking volume of the new dictionary: "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words."
The Newspeak term for the English language is Oldspeak. Oldspeak is intended to have been completely eclipsed by Newspeak before 2050.
The genesis of Newspeak can be found in the constructed language Basic English, which Orwell promoted from 1942 to 1944 before emphatically rejecting it in his essay "Politics and the English Language".2 In this paper he laments the quality of the English of his day, citing examples of dying metaphors, pretentious diction or rhetoric, and meaningless words – all of which contribute to fuzzy ideas and a lack of logical thinking. Towards the end of this essay, having argued his case, Orwell muses:
| “ | 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 or constructions. | ” |
Thus forcing the use of Newspeak, according to Orwell, describes a deliberate intent to exploit this degeneration with the aim of oppressing its speakers.
Contents |
Basic principles of Newspeak
To remove synonyms and antonyms
The basic idea behind Newspeak is to remove all shades of meaning from language, leaving simple dichotomies (pleasure and pain, happiness and sadness, goodthink and crimethink) which reinforce the total dominance of the State. Similarly, Newspeak root words served as both nouns and verbs, which allowed further reduction in the total number of words; for example, "think" served as both noun and verb, so the word "thought" was not required and could be abolished. A staccato rhythm of short syllables was also a goal, further reducing the need for deep thinking about language. (See duckspeak.) Successful Newspeak meant that there would be fewer and fewer words – dictionaries would get thinner and thinner.
In addition, words with opposite meanings were removed as redundant, so "bad" became "ungood". Words with comparative and superlative meanings were also simplified, so "better" became "gooder", and "best" likewise became "goodest". Intensifiers could be added, so "great" became "plusgood", and "excellent" and "splendid" likewise became "doubleplusgood". Adjectives were formed by adding the suffix "-ful" to a root word (e.g., "goodthinkful", orthodox in thought), and adverbs by adding "-wise" ("goodthinkwise", in an orthodox manner). In this manner, as many words as possible were removed from the language. The ultimate aim of Newspeak was to reduce even the dichotomies to a single word that was a "yes" of some sort: an obedient word with which everyone answered affirmatively to what was asked of them.
Some of the constructions in Newspeak which Orwell derides, such as replacing "bad" with "ungood", are in fact characteristic of agglutinative languages, although foreign to English. It is also possible that Orwell modeled aspects of Newspeak on Esperanto; for example "ungood" is constructed similarly to the Esperanto word "malbona". Orwell had been exposed to Esperanto in 1927 when living in Paris with his aunt Kate Limouzin and her husband Eugène Lanti, a prominent Esperantist. Esperanto was the language of the house, and Orwell was disadvantaged by not speaking it, which may account for some antipathy towards the language.1
To control thought
| “ | By 2050—earlier, probably—all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like "freedom is slavery" when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.3 | ” |
The underlying theory of Newspeak is that if something can't be said, then it can't be thought. There is substantial argument in favor of this notion, in that most humans think by carrying on a dialogue in their heads. They tend to subvocalize their thoughts as they form them and manipulate them; most thought is actually a dialogue with yourself. When new and complex developments come along, new words are invented (or old words adapted) to hold the meme as a gestalt. This is why specialist vocabularies are particularly common – if instead you shrank the vocabulary, you would substantially reduce the memes available to manipulate during this thinking/vocalizing process.
Some examples of Newspeak from the novel include "crimethink", "doubleplusungood", and "Ingsoc". They mean, respectively: "thought-crime"; "extremely bad"; and "English Socialism", the official political philosophy of the Party. The word "Newspeak" itself also comes from the language. Note that all of these words would be obsolete and should be removed in the "final" version of Newspeak, except for "doubleplusungood" in certain contexts.
Generically, Newspeak has come to mean any attempt to restrict disapproved language by a government or other powerful entity.citation needed
See also
- Code word
- Fnord
- Framing
- Language and thought
- List of Newspeak words
- Logocracy
- LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii
- Nadsat
- Neologism
- Political correctness
- Sapir–Whorf hypothesis
- Thought-terminating cliché
- Two + two = five
- Dumbing down
References
- ^ a b Orwell, George (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four, "Appendix: The Principles of Newspeak", pp. 309–323. New York: Plume, 2003.
Pynchon, Thomas (2003). "Foreword to the Centennial Edition" to Nineteen Eighty-Four, pp. vii–xxvi . New York: Plume, 2003.
Fromm, Erich (1961). "Afterword" to Nineteen Eighty-Four, pp. 324–337. New York: Plume, 2003.
Orwell's text has a "Selected Bibliography", pp. 338–9; the foreword and the afterword each contain further references.
Copyright is explicitly extended to digital and any other means.
Plume edition is a reprint of a hardcover by Harcourt. Plume edition is also in a Signet edition. - ^ Illich, Ivan; Barry Sanders (1988). ABC: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind (in English language). San Francisco: North Point Press, 109. ISBN 0-86547-291-2. "The satirical force with which Orwell used Newspeak to serve as his portrait of one of those totalitarian ideas that he saw taking root in the minds of intellectuals everywhere can be understood only if we remember that he speaks with shame about a belief that he formerly held... From 1942 to 1944, working as a colleague of William Empson's, he produced a series of broadcasts to India written in Basic English, trying to use its programmed simplicity, as a Tribune article put it, "as a sort of corrective to the oratory of statesmen and publicists." Only during the last year of the war did he write "Politics and the English Language", insisting that the defense of English language has nothing to do with the setting up of a Standard English.""
- ^ Orwell, George (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Further reading
- NB: Cf. ELECTRONIC EDITIONS WARNING.
- "1984-Appendix". Retrieved on 21 April 2006. The complete Newspeak appendix to Nineteen Eighty-Four (NB: Copyright).
- "Newspeak Dictionary". Updated 16 April 2006. Retrieved 21 April 2006. ("The Newspeak Dictionary has moved." New URL shown.)
- Burgess, Anthony. Nineteen Eighty-Five. Boston: Little Brown & Co, 1978. ISBN 0-316-11651-3. Anthony Burgess discusses the plausibility of Newspeak.
- Green, Jonathon. Newspeak: a dictionary of jargon. London, Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985, 1984. ISBN 0-7102-0673-9.
- "Find in a library: Newspeak: A dictionary of Jargon", by Jonathon Green. Retrieved 21 April 2006.
- Klemperer, Victor. LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii: Notizbuch eines Philologen.. Original German language editions.
- Klemperer, Victor & Watt, Roderick H. LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist's Notebook. Lewiston: E. Mellen Press, 1997. ISBN 0-7734-8681-X. An annotated edition of Victor Klemperer’s LTI, Notizbuch eines Philologen with English notes and commentary by Roderick H. Watt.
- Klemperer, Victor & Brady, Martin (tr.). The language of the Third Reich: LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist's Notebook. London, UK; New Brunswick, NJ: Athlone Press, 2000. ISBN 0-485-11526-3 (alk. paper). Translated by Martin Brady.
- Young, John Wesley . Totalitarian Language: Orwell's Newspeak and Its Nazi and Communist Antecedents. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991. ISBN 0-8139-1324-1. John Wesley Young wrote this scholarly work about Newspeak and historical examples of language control.
- An independent compilation of the Newspeak language
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