Politics and the English Language
By J. Orwell, 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.
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
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.
