Why I write (1984) is the first book I've read of George Orwell. I think it is quite an interesting book to start of with. The book includes 4 essays from Orwell on language and spans from 1931 to 1946. It almost spans his entire writing career, so it has a wide range of opinions which are adapting everytime. But it always had a red line between them, the quest to write about the truth. I already started reading the next one, so something must have sparked in me.
While it is quite a short book, it is quite slow paced. Which means there is a lot to think about. And looking at the current geopolitical situations there are a lot of parallels to be made from the time in which the book has been written to the present. I must say that it quite scares me that a lot of the things that are named are still issues today or have become issues. I will look into the language part below, but I will save the remarks on the things like militarism, imperialism and colonialism for a later date.
Language and politics
The Penguin Books version of Why I write has a quote on the cover: "Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.". This quote is in my opinion a perfect summary of both the book and political language. It also illustrates the language of Orwell quite well. The quote is consise, to the point, and does not use academic language if it is not needed.
It is mainly in the last essay that we get specifics on the language itself (what a suprise, it's called politics and the English language, for fuck sake..). It goes into a few examples of texts from different sources, from left to right. Each of them having something in them. Sometimes lies, sometimes general vagueness. After the examples are given we dive into why they are bad writing. Which we do by the following reasons: "Dying Metaphors", "Operators, or verbal false limbs", "Pretentious Diction" and "Meaningless words".
If we follow these examples and reasons of why they are bad, we can understand why they are being used. One of the reasons is that it can be easier to pick words and sentences that others have already written for you. In this why you don't have to think about what you write and what the paticular words mean. It also saves you from having to think if relatable metaphors. The problem with this is that it strips the texts of images and feelings. It get's harder to feel the text, to think about what it means.
I often see this in the writing around me. It can be news articles, political writings, or in the marketing around us all. People talk and write a lot, but say so little. Doing this makes us not think about what we are saying. We simply say things because it 'flows' nicely. Yet the words we use to make it flowy don't mean anything. We don't think of new ways to try and illustrate what we think.
Anyway, before I repeat myself too many times. Here are 6 simple rules Orwell suggests of using, which do not prevent writing bad English, but just prevent empty words.
- Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
A small note from me. I will brake these rules probably everywere, but if we all try and think about our words just that little bit more, I think we can all make this world a little better.