Language

Language

1. Newspeak, the "official" language of Oceania

   • make it impossible to even conceive of disobedient or rebellious thoughts, because there would be no words with which to think them
     • no one will be capable of conceptualizing anything that might question the Party’s absolute power.
       • “ The party is not interested in the overt act; the thought is all we care about”
       • eployed as a device to discipline the people through spreading fear and narrowing freedom of speech,
   • Newspeak unorthodoxly minimizes its lexicon by eliminating words that are deemed unnecessary.
     • “destroying words-scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We’re cutting the language down to the bone.”
     • This act saves the government because people cannot express disgust and hatred against it since words to express such feelings are totally absent from the language imposed by the state.
   • Myers (1986: 353) states that “to expand language is to expand the ability to think”

2. “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU”

   • he script is written in capital letters to warn the people that nobody can hide from the eyes of the regime and it spreads fear to tame the opponents
   • War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength .
     • The aim of the slogans is not only to distort the facts but to psychologically prepare the people to accept lies as truth

3. Orwell says, “Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind” .

   • cannot distinguish between truth and lies and thus they accept what the party says as mere facts.

4. the Ministry of Truth is concerned with the falsification of records

   • the Ministry of Peace deals with warfare
   • the Ministry of Love is a place for the questioning and torturing of opponents
   • the Ministry of Plenty makes up economic figures to convince the public that the state has a strong economy and people live a luxurious life
   • Spreading lies in the interest of the party may not be fruitful if the people know about their past which is based on truth. Thus, the party has already planned to change past since, as the party slogan
     • “Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the p resent controls the past”

5. - All Flesh - Daily Bread - Loaves and Fish

   • Clear biblical references
   • Reinforces feeling of theocratic dictatorship