Newspeak Of Our Own;

or, "Nineteen Eighty-Four", Political Correctness, and the Death of Language

by Ralph Trayfalgar

(This essay was originally written in compliance with a school literature project; this was later revised and published as part of the author's portfolio. All opinions expressed in this work belong only to the author and do not represent the views of any of the author's affiliated organizations.)

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How does language die?

Over the course of history, we have seen languages rise and fall in many different ways. There is death by extinction, in which the language is completely lost—buried in the sands of time along with the last people who are able to speak it.

There is also death by assimilation—words fall out of use and are replaced with newer, fresher jargon, continuing until an entirely new language seems to sail onward in the old one's place like a linguistic Ship of Theseus.

But what about death by force? Can a language actually be killed? Can the words we utter be forcefully altered in such a way that significantly affects the way we express our thoughts and ideas?

British author George Orwell certainly thought so. And under the ominous, oppressive gaze of Oceania in his novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four", we bear witness to the murder of a language and its consequences.

Ironically, despite its persistent popularity since publication, the core message of the novel has been diluted to the point of delusion, overshadowed by the more obvious threat of its setting's totalitarian government. That the message of this beautiful literary work would be so lost in the popular consciousness is, I believe, a travesty to the legacy of "Nineteen Eighty-Four".

And, through this analysis, one hopes to reexamine and protect the freedoms of our own languages, lest we run the risk of its death happening to us as well.

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Newspeak is the language developed by the ruling English Socialist Party (or Ingsoc) for use by the citizens of the super-state of Oceania.

It is, for lack of a more lenient description, a poisoned parody of popular English purpose-built for the proliferation of propaganda and the persecution of perceived protests in both personal thought and political rhetoric.

In contrast to the vast vocabularies of Tolkien's Sindarin and Martin's High Valyrin, the dictionary of Orwell's Newspeak is crippled and cramped. Half of it consists of survivors from standard English (or Oldspeak as it is called in the novel), now stripped of all meaning but that which is prescribed by the Party.

The other half is arguably Newspeak's most recognizable feature—the strange, nebulously-defined compound words like "speakwrite", "ownlife", and "bellyfeel".

Much of the Newspeak that is seen in the novel is notably self-contradictory. This is seen most prominently in the slogans of the Ingsoc Party itself:

War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.

Unusual though they may be to us, this is only one of many instances of Newspeak used in the novel to both hammer ideological concepts into the minds of Oceania's people and to stand out as points of thematic emphasis to the reader.

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And indeed, it is emphasis that lies at the heart of why Newspeak is such an insidious threat, not only in the world of "Nineteen Eighty-Four" but also that of ours.

You will have noticed by now that I have not talked much about the general plot, the setting, or even the characters of 1984 whatsoever. This is, of course, deliberate, and was meant to mirror how Orwell uses Newspeak rather sparingly throughout his novel.

The language is most notably used to help give context to the job of the main character, Winston Smith (49-61); to have its own purpose explained to Winston (and, by extension, the reader) by his colleague Syme (62-69); and to be more comprehensively broken down in "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism" (also called "The Book"), a subversive political text and plot point of the novel (233-274), as well as the novel's appendix, "The Principles of Newspeak." (376-393)

Outside of that, the overwhelming majority of the novel and the appendix is written in standard English—this implies that the freedoms of Oldspeak would eventually overcome the intellectual vice grip of Newspeak, and in turn, Ingsoc.

What is much more apparent, however, is the effects of Newspeak on the citizens of Oceania. Vividly depicted in standard English is the phenomenon of what is called "blackwhite" in Newspeak. This is the blind acceptance of prescribed information, even if it directly contradicts what one instinctively knows to be true.

This, combined with Ingsoc's constant "rectification" (the revision and manipulation of the historical record) results in many citizens of Oceania failing to remember life before Ingsoc's rise to power—if there even was one at all. As "The Book" describes:

"... this word [blackwhite] has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to BELIEVE that black is white, and more, to KNOW that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary." (268)

This concerted, coordinated manipulation of language and revision of history ultimately ties back into the concept of "doublethink," the ultimate mental state that Ingsoc is attempting to instill into the populace. Once a person becomes fully indoctrinated by doublethink, they become completely willing to discard their own perception of reality in favor of that which is dictated to them by Ingsoc, thereby becoming the Party's perfect political pawn.

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If one has, despite the turmoils of these strange times, managed to keep up with the latest in political rhetoric, one may find that knowing the foundational principles of Newspeak can help shed light on some of the insidiously malicious aspects of modern political discourse.

One particularly egregious parallel of Newspeak in the real world is the normalization of less palatable concepts through the manipulation of language. Although we can't rewrite the dictionary and have it instantly adopted by the population, we still see this normalization through the use of euphemisms.

Take, for example, the term "squatter", a word used to refer to a person living illegally on a piece of land. Over the years, local politicians and the media have taken to refer to these people as "informal settlers" as a supposedly less derogatory alternative (Tan, 2011).

More popular in the West is the use of the term "person/people of color" or POC to refer to non-Caucasian ethnic groups.

These initial examples are quite harmless, if not beneficial in the latter case. However, nearby extrapolations of these word substitutions can start one on a slippery slope into much more dangerous corruptions of language.

In "Nineteen Eighty-Four," one of the most obvious subversions of meaning in words is in the very names of the four central government agencies of Oceania.

The first is the Ministry of Peace or Minipax, which essentially consists of the military.

The second is the Ministry of Plenty or Miniplenty, supposedly tasked with handling the economic growth of the country, but in truth restricts the individual prosperity of the citizens of Oceania through the strict rationing and control of most if not all living necessities.

The third is the Ministry of Truth or Minitruth, the place of employment for Winston Smith and the government office tasked with the dissemination of entertainment and information, as well as the revision of news and historical records to fit the whims and agendas of the Ingsoc Party.

The last and most harrowing of the four is the Ministry of Love or Miniluv, which seeks out and tortures enemies of the state, real or imaginary, until their dissent is replaced with loyalty to the party and, as the concluding chapters of the novel reveal, a love for Big Brother.

Now, I would like to return to the real world with the word "torture" still fresh in the mind.

This is because, while "love" and "torture" are very clearly contradictory, one cannot say the same for "torture" and "enhanced interrogation techniques."

And yet this is the exact language that is used by the CIA to describe actions that are, beyond any reasonable doubt, outright torture (Ross & Esposito, 2008). These examples are part of the growing "political correctness" movement, which seeks to replace common terms in sociopolitical discourse with words that are less discriminatory towards certain groups or ideas.

Although political correctness in theory seems to have a purely positive end goal, it is, as we have previously discussed, very vulnerable to abuse. In recent years I have been made aware of groups with vocal, radical ideologies that force their culturally divergent—and in some cases, morally reprehensible—beliefs onto the masses.

These groups destroy sensible discourse through overwhelming and meaningless noise, shielding themselves from valid criticism by being offended or "triggered," labeling the opposition as "racist," "sexist," or whatever "-ist" labels are in vogue, and covering their eyes from the truth with the thick, heavy banner of political correctness in the other.

One such morally reprehensible movement has been that of the "Minor-Attracted Person" or MAP, a politically correct term its followers use to normalize or otherwise obfuscate their true identities—pedophiles (Burns, 2017).

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At risk of drawing flak from those who will misconstrue my use of the following quote as an expression of my support of his views, I will sum up my thoughts with a quote from Dr. Jordan Peterson:

"In order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive."

Again, I would like to make clear that I do not wholly support his views on anything. But writing this only proves my point: this trend of "cancel culture" is so pervasive in modern discourse that one cannot express even a generally-accepted opinion without becoming the target of an online witch hunt.

And this could not have come at a worse time, in which even factually correct information is opposed by a growing faction of partly misguided but mostly malicious groups.

All this, I believe, is why language must be re-examined and protected, because free thought can only be expressed if the medium through which it is expressed is able to do so.

Now, let me make clear that political correctness is not fundamentally wrong, and I believe that more tolerant and inclusive language has its place in our society. But if the words we use lose their meaning, the Ingsoc ideal is fulfilled: war becomes peace, freedom becomes slavery, and ignorance becomes strength.

Understanding the power of language and its connection to free thought is critical to understanding the core tenet of George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four".

And as constant users of language, we must always strive to keep it free, lest we may witness the death of language and the death of truth with a Newspeak of our own.

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Works Cited

Tan, Michael L. (2011, July 12). Homeless. Philippine Daily Inquirer. Retrieved from https://opinion.inquirer.net/7553/homeless

Ross, Brian & Esposito, Richard. (2008, March 15). CIA's Harsh Interrogation Techniques Described. ABC News. Retrieved from https://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1322866

Burns, Catherine. (2017, September 11). The young paedophiles who say they don’t abuse children. BBC News. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-41213657