1984 Newspek Language Essay

Linguistic Brainwashing: Newspeak and Its Subjects
Each language provides a worldview or the “reality of the world” for the people who speak it. It carries the consciousness of people using it and the ideologies employed to explain how lives should be lived. George Orwell’s 1984 is a dystopian novel which explores the world if individualism were nonexistent and wars and violence were the norm. These characteristics of a “totally imperfect world” were mainly illustrated through violence and the regulation of the Newspeak language.
1. Historical Background of the Text
Before the First World War, the ideas of the Enlightenment prevailed in the socialist movements in Europe. However, as people witnessed the death of millions under the illusion
“We’re getting the language into its final shape—the shape it’s going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When we’ve finished with it, people like you will have to learn it all over again. You think, I dare say that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We’re destroying words—scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We’re cutting the language down to the bone. The Eleventh Edition won’t contain a single word that will become obsolete before the year 2050.” (53)
Apart from the reduction of the number of words, the suppression of Oldspeak terms employed by the Party also aimed to strip words of meanings and concepts against the Party-endorsed principles. For instance, the word free in Newspeak could not be used to indicate political or intellectual freedom as the word only means the “absence of” as in “a dog is free from lice.” The second method employed by the Party is the distorting the link between the words (signifier) and the concepts they denote (signified) (Saussure, 1916-1959). Due to the exercise of doublethink, people have accepted contradictiory statements to be natural, for instance the Ingsoc slogan: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” Through the alteration of the signifieds of a signifier, the Party was able to effectively propagate their political
In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Ever concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we’re not far from that point. But the process will be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thought-crime. It’s the merely a question of self-discipline, reality control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.”
… The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness. (53-54) Through the unconsciousness of the Party members, the government of Oceania ensures that each person adapts to the new culture through the use of both linguistic and non-linguistic methods. Culture, in Oceania’s case, is the conventions imposed by the principles of