Notes and Takeaways from Politics and the English language
Source: British Library
When I read it: February 2020, most recently.
Why I read it: I review this essay by George Orwell whenever I need a simple reminder on how to improve the clarity of my writing. I’ve put together these notes on the key takeaways to make them easier to revisit. George Orwell was an incredible writer. I hope you find these notes useful.
Read the original essay or scroll down for my notes.
Want to get my future notes when I publish them? Subscribe to my weekly newsletter below.
My notes
A bit about George
George Orwell was a pen name. The guy’s real name was Eric Blair. Eric lived from 1903 to 1950. He was an English novelist and essayist. His most famous works include Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).
Vicious cycles of cause and effect
An effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing a more intense effect, indefinitely ⇒ E.g. “A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks.” ⇒ we call these vicious cycles.
Orwell argues the English language is subject to a vicious cycle ⇒ Language becomes inaccurate because our thoughts are imprecise, and the inaccurate language makes it easier for us to have imprecise thoughts.
Rant on politics
Orwell rants on how politicians (and anyone engaging in politics) intentionally insert meaninglessness into language with the intent to deceive ⇒ “Politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia”
Political language is designed to:
make lies sound truthful
make murder respectable
give an appearance of solidity to wind
Orwell: “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’.”
When watching politicians speak, you feel you’re not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy ⇒ (Note: this makes sense because it favors political conformity)
Political speech and writing is largely the defence of the indefensible ⇒ so political language has to consist largely of “euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness” ⇒ (e.g. how do you justify the dropping of an atomic bomb on Japan).
Bad language habits
The English language is full of bad habits. These habits spread by imitation.
The most common bad habits include:
Staleness of imagery
Lack of precision
Bad writers either
have a meaning and cannot express it,
inadvertently say something they don’t mean, or
don’t care whether their words mean anything or not
Here are some common mistakes of bad writers. Bad writers use:
Dying metaphors ⇒ The sole aim of a metaphor is to produce a visual image. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image and a “dead” metaphor has reverted to being an ordinary word with known meaning. BUT ⇒ Between these new and dead metaphors, there is a huge dump of “dying” metaphors which are lazy and often misused.
Operators or verbal false limbs ⇒ This is another example of laziness. Instead of using simple verbs and nouns, the writer unnecessarily adds extra syllables and words to each sentence.
Pretentious diction ⇒ It is often easier to make up words or use Latin or Greek words than to identify the English words that will cover one's meaning.
Meaningless words ⇒ In certain types of writing (e.g. political writing, art criticism, etc.). Words of this kind are often used in an intentional, dishonest way — I.e. The writer has a private definition, but allows the reader to think he means something different.
The attraction of this “bad” approach to writing is that it is easy.
A good writer asks himself good questions
A good writer will ask himself:
What am I trying to say?
What words will express it?
What image or idiom will make it clearer?
Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
Could I put it more shortly?
Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?
All issues are political issues.
To achieve political conformity, you often must be insincere. Insincerity is the enemy of clear language.
When there is a gap between your real aim and your declared aim, you often turn to meaningless language (“long words and exhausted idioms”) ⇒ your thoughts corrupt your language.
This a vicious cause and effect cycle ⇒ If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
Bad language spreads by tradition and imitation ⇒ this can only be prevented if you’re constantly on guard.
The solution
Change your own habits and guard against political (bad) writing.
Solution ⇒ Let the meaning choose the word, not the other way around:
Put off using words and get your meaning as clear as possible through images and sensation
Choose words that will best cover the meaning
Think about what impressions the words are likely to make on another person and optimize them
Check your final words against the following rules:
“Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.”
“Never use a long word where a short one will do.”
“If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.”
“Never use the passive where you can use the active.”
“Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.”
“Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.”