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 )
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 )
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)
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
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 A 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
Article comments
1 - Marty
Anyone who reads this long-winded albeit useful essay must be commended. Mind your language!
2 - Luke Welke
George Orwell: Politics and the English language
George Orwell in this essay exposes the abuses of language in the political and journalistic writing of his day. He points out three categories of bad and unethical writing: dying metaphors, operators or false limbs, pretentious diction. Dying metaphors are phrases that have been drained of meaning due to overuse and serve as a substitute for original thought. A writer will use operators and false limbs instead of going to the trouble of coming up with the appropriate verb. Operators and false limbs are connective phrases that bolster an inadequate or weak sentence with a false sense of symmetry. Meaningless words are general terms that have no particular referent, but are loaded with emotional connotations. This article has much relevance to modern political discourse. The language of modern political discourse is rife with meaningless emotional content that manipulates the readers/listeners emotional reaction to what is said. Jargon twists language to usurp rational thought by strapping emotional language into empty rhetoric, it makes allusions to vaguely defined symbols to create mental associations to trigger psychological reactions. If you eliminate the manipulative content in the jargon laden writing that passes for political discourse today, you will find in it, no real factual content. There is no real information that is related to things-in-the-world, it consists of a chain of abstract associations with no real content. Orwell talks about how political writing softens its subject matter to distort the truth. This is more prevalent then ever today. Political rhetoric describes harsh realities in terms that soften their impact on the reader. For instance, they will describe civilian casualties as “soft targets” or “collateral damage”. These terms remove the human element from discourse and replaces it with an abstraction. The more abstract discourse becomes the less involved the general public will be with what is being done in their name. Massively funded think tanks and public relations corporations work tirelessly designing ways of manipulating the public through language and image. Orwell is necessary for this class because he predicted the direction in which the world was heading. By reading his writing we can understand how we are being manipulated and used by elite power. Orwell was a pessimist and saw the future as “a bootheel stamping on the face of humanity forever”. I fear he may have been right.