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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 out 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 (Interglossa)
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?
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 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 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 withouth 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.* The jargon peculiar to
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*An interesting illustration of this is the way in which English
flower names were in use till very recently are being ousted by
Greek ones, Snapdragon becoming antirrhinum, forget-me-not becoming
myosotis, etc. It is hard to see any practical reason for this
change of fashion: it is probably due to an instinctive turning away
from the more homely word and a vague feeling that the Greek word is
scientific.
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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.† Words like
romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural,
vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in
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† Example: Comfort's catholicity of perception and image, strangely
Whitmanesque in range, almost the exact opposite in aesthetic
compulsion, continues to evoke that trembling atmospheric
accumulative hinting at a cruel, an inexorably serene timelessness .
. .Wrey Gardiner scores by aiming at simple bull's-eyes with
precision. Only they are not so simple, and through this contented
sadness runs more than the surface bittersweet of resignation."
(Poetry Quarterly)
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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. The 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*, to reduce the amount of Latin and Greek
in the average sentence, to drive out foreign phrases
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*One can cure oneself of the not un- formation by memorizing this
sentence: A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across
a not ungreen field.
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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 yo 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 mak 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.
This essay was first published in 1946
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