While Orwell’s list of linguistic ‘swindles and perversions’ – including ‘dying metaphors,’ ‘meaningless words’ and ‘pretentious diction’ – continues to characterise much of contemporary political discourse, it should be questioned by a subtle alteration in the analysis of language used within the public and political spheres.Ĭontemplating the death of the metaphor requires the acknowledgement of language and semantic fields as markers of complex value systems. Preoccupied with the ‘decay’ of his mother tongue and the political implications inherent to such a decline, Orwell defines the source of such linguistic decadence as a ‘reduced state of consciousness’ in which the metaphor is dead, and pretentiousness prevails. I know that it's all political talk.First published in 1946, George Orwell’s commentary on political language remains culturally salient.

I'm happy to say though, that since taking a course on propaganda, I always know it when I see it. The strange thing is that people fall for it every time. For example, politicians love to exaggerate and remind people of past traumas to gather their support. There are many strategies and techniques involved. Politics really uses very different language from what we use in our every day life. It's all very calculated and most of us don't even realize that we're being taking in when we listen to political speeches. We learned about how leaders and politicians manipulate opinions of the public and rally them using language. I took a course on this topic in school and it was very enlightening. I highly urge college students to take a course on propaganda if they get the opportunity.

I highly recommend reading his essay if you have not. Orwell felt that since politicians cannot truthfully express realities without severe backlash, they have to use vague terms and euphemisms to describe incidents and developments. Orwell explained in this essay that political language is vague and sometimes even meaningless because that's the best way to hide the truth. It was published in 1946 but Orwell's ideas and findings about political language are just as applicable today. I realize that this is about assimilation but I don't think it's very necessary.įebruary 7, Have you read 'Politics and the English Language' by George Orwell. Does anyone have an opinion on requiring immigrants to pass a language or history test in order to become citizens? Do you think that this is fair? My parents also had to pass this type of test for citizenship.

Politics and the english language