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George Orwell's Politics And The English Language

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George Orwell's Politics And The English Language
George Orwell was an English author, best known for his novels, Nineteen-Eighty-Four, and Animal Farm. Orwell used his work to raise political questions. In his essay "Politics and the English Language", Orwell questions the authenticity of the English language. According to Orwell, the English language has become "ugly and inaccurate, because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts." He believes that this is the reason why we buy into foolish ideas and dishonest politics. Orwell thinks that contemporary writers are vague and incompetent. He goes on to say that bad language is used to manipulate political ideas. I see a lot of the type of bad language that Orwell is referring to in the Bush Presidency. …show more content…
In the case of President Bush I think the first two applies. He doesn't mean what he says and sometimes he doesn't know what he's talking about. Using bad language, the President started a war with a country that didn't attack America, legalized discrimination against homosexuals, and appointed extremely conservative judges in the Supreme Court.
Bush often uses language to hide his meanings and intentions rather then say them. For instance, Bush uses two of Orwell's meaningless words, democracy and freedom. According to Orwell, these words are meaningless because they have a variety of definitions. Bush uses the word freedom a lot a lot because it's so symbolic to Americans. No American is against freedom and liberty. The word freedom is misleading because of its variable meanings. America has been had puzzling definitions for the word through its history. Freedom has been a truth for many Americans and a cruel joke for

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