THE POWER OF LANGUAGE!

Hello everyone! Today I'm going to examine the concept of "Newspeak".

THEME: Language as Mind Control

Looking at the Society in the novel 1984, there is a mentioning of the destruction of the language and the creation of a new dictionary. George Orwell's Newspeak is a new extreme type of language that expedites the manipulation of individuals. The significance of this was to inhibit people's understanding of what is really happening in their world and to limit free thought. I believe that George Orwell's intensions of demonstrating this new language was to explain to the reader how being repetitive on an extremely level can impact the lives of many people in their society. It shows how the government was able to manipulate and deceive with language which ultimately leads to people having to only accept what they were saying. Everything that the government tells them is true, and people mindlessly acknowledge that all the propaganda exhibited is reality. This way, it makes people more likely to comply of what they are told and to stop them from realizing just how corrupt their society is, stopping them from potentially starting a rebellion against the government.

What is so surprising to me is how the character, Syme, was explaining the uses of destroying language and creating this new "Newspeak" language. We learn from the novel that he is an intelligent and enthusiastic co-worker of Winston at the ministry of truth and is very knowledgeable with language. His idea of removing words and creating new ones to substitute the "wastage" of verbs, adjectives and nouns was very intriguing. I find that some of the new words he made to replace the opposite meaning of a word were pretty comical. For instance, Syme stated that the opposite of the word “good”, instead of bad, he said that “ungood” will be enough as it’s still the opposite of “good” (Orwell 54). Some other words that were silly was “plusgood” and “doubleplusgood” when you want to emphasize something (Orwell 54). If we think about how these words will be incorporated into our language in society today, it would sound ridiculous and there will be a lot less vocabulary in the dictionary. As funny the new words would sound, I think that Syme’s idea is interesting and it does sound reasonable in the dystopia that he is living in because this language will eliminate thoughtcrime due to there being no words to express it.

We can learn from this novel of just how powerful language is, and if left in the wrong hands, it can ultimately lead to chaos and destruction of society. If Newspeak or some type of language that is similar were to take hold of our world in the future, people will no longer have the words to express their ideas and eventually, all great ideas will die. I believe that the novel 1984 serves as a warning to us in the future and how people can be manipulated from their free will. So take the advantage of the power of language today! Use it in your full ability! Express your thoughts out loud or either in writing! Create new ideas! If we are restricted from free thought, the world would not progress and no new great discoveries would be made.

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