Orwell on the English language

One of my favorite essays of George Orwell?s, and perhaps his most famous, is ?Politics and the English Language,? written in 1946. It is a criticism of modern political writing for being vague. Specifically, Orwell saw in the writing of his contemporaries several annoying habits which he believed had social implications. The thrust of Orwell?s complaints is that his fellow writers had a bias against plain language ? that they often preferred long words over short ones or that they employed long phrases when a single word would suffice. This bias against plainness left their writing dull and in some cases completely meaningless.

Orwell argued that art and literary criticism were particularly susceptible to meaningless filler words. He noted that one could read sentences such as ?The outstanding feature of Mr. X's work is its living quality? from one critic and just as easily read from another critic ?The immediately striking thing about Mr. X's work is its peculiar deadness."

?If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he (the reader) would see at once that language was being used in an improper way,? wrote Orwell.

Orwell noted that certain words in political discourse were used so loosely that they had no meaning whatever. Even by 1946, the word fascism had ceased to describe a system of government and instead had come to refer to anything the speaker disagreed with.

The most important point of the essay is that imprecise language is a sign of muddled thinking. Actually, Orwell argues that some writers are intentionally imprecise as a way of masking the unpleasant consequences of the policies they support.

?In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible,? wrote Orwell. ?Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.?

Orwell suggests a number of remedies to cure writers of their bad habits including cutting out unnecessary words, refraining from scientific jargon, and using the active voice instead of the passive voice. I mostly agree with Orwell?s recommendations, although I don?t think the etymology of a word is relevant, whereas Orwell disliked that his fellow essayists preferred Latin-root words over those with an Anglo-Saxon heritage. Overall, I strongly urge everyone to read the essay, which you can find for free on the Internet.