http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Orwell/politics_and_english.html
Politics and the English Language
George Orwell
1946
Most people who bother with the matter at all would
admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed
that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is
decadent, and our language---so the argument runs---must inevitably share in
the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of
language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light
or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief
that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our
own purposes.
Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have
political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of
this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing
the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so
on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a
failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather
the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and
inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our
language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the
process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of
bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing
to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think
more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political
regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not
the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this
presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here
will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English
language as it is now habitually written.
These five passages have not been picked out because they are especially
bad---I could have quoted far worse if I had chosen--but because they
illustrate various of the mental vices from which we now suffer. They are a
little below the average, but are fairly representative samples. I number them
so that I can refer back to them when necessary:
Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from
avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is
staleness of imagery: the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a
meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he
is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This
mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic
of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As
soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no
one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose
consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more
and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated
hen-house. I list below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks by
means of which the work of prose-construction is habitually dodged:
Dying Metaphors
A newly invented
metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a
metaphor which is technically ``dead'' (e.g., iron resolution) has in effect
reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of
vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out
metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they
save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: ring
the changes on, take up the cudgels for, toe the line, ride roughshod over,
stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist
to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles'
heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their
meaning (what is a ``rift,'' for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are
frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is
saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original
meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example,
toe the line is sometimes written tow the line. Another example is the hammer
and the anvil, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the
worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never
the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would be
aware of this, and would avoid perverting the original phrase.
Operators, or Verbal False Limbs
These save the
trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad
each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry.
Characteristic phrases are: render inoperative, militate against, make contact
with, be subjected to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play
a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to,
serve the purpose of, etc., etc. The keynote is the elimination of simple
verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill,
a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some
general-purpose verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render. In addition, the
passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun
constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by
examining). The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and de-
formation, and the banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by
means of the not un- formation. Simple conjunctions and prepositions are
replaced by such phrases as with respect to, having regard to, the fact that,
by dint of, in view of, in the interests of, on the hypothesis that; and the
ends of sentences are saved from anticlimax by such resounding commonplaces as
greatly to be desired, cannot be left out of account, a development to be
expected in the near future, deserving of serious consideration, brought to a
satisfactory conclusion, and so on and so forth.
Pretentious Diction
Words like
phenomenon, element, individual (as noun), objective, categorical, effective,
virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize,
eliminate, liquidate, are used to dress up simple statements and give an air of
scientific impartiality to biased judgments. Adjectives like epoch-making,
epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable,
veritable, are used to dignify the sordid processes of international politics,
while writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic color,
its characteristic words being: realm, throne, chariot, mailed fist, trident,
sword, shield, buckler, banner, jackboot, clarion. Foreign words and
expressions such as cul de sac, ancien regime, deus ex machina, mutatis
mutandis, status quo, gleichschaltung, weltanschauung, are used to give an air
of culture and elegance. Except for the useful abbreviations i.e., e.g., and
etc., there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now
current in English. Bad writers, and especially scientific, political and
sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or
Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite,
ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous and
hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon opposite
numbers. The jargon peculiar to Marxist writing (hyena, hangman, cannibal,
petty bourgeois, these gentry, lackey, flunkey, mad dog, White Guard, etc.)
consists largely of words and phrases translated from Russian, German or
French; but the normal way of coining a new word is to use a Latin or Greek
root with the appropriate affix and, where necessary, the -ize formation. It is
often easier to make up words of this kind (deregionalize, impermissible,
extramarital, non-fragmentatory and so forth) than to think up the English
words that will cover one's meaning. The result, in general, is an increase in
slovenliness and vagueness.
Meaningless Words
In certain kinds of
writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to
come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning. Words
like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as
used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless in the sense that they not only
do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so
by the reader. When one critic writes, ``The outstanding feature of Mr. X's work
is its living quality,'' while another writes, ``The immediately striking thing
about Mr. X's work is its peculiar deadness,'' the reader accepts this as a
simple difference of opinion. If words like black and white were involved,
instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language
was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly abused.
The word Fascism has now no meaning except insofar as it signifies ``something
not desirable.'' The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic,
justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be
reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is
there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all
sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we
are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that
it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it
were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a
consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own
private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite
different. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet Press
is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are
almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable
meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian,
science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.
Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and
perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead
to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to
translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here
is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:
``I returned and saw under the sun, that the race
is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the
wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill;
but time and chance happeneth to them all.''
Here it is in modern English:
``Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena
compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities
exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a
considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into
account.''
This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit
(3),
above, for instance, contains several patches of the same kind of English. It
will be seen that I have not made a full translation. The beginning and ending
of the sentence follow the original meaning fairly closely, but in the middle
the concrete illustrations---race, battle, bread---dissolve into the vague
phrase ``success or failure in competitive activities.'' This had to be so,
because no modern writer of the kind I am discussing---no one capable of using
phrases like ``objective consideration of contemporary phenomena''---would ever
tabulate his thoughts in that precise and detailed way. The whole tendency of
modern prose is away from concreteness. Now analyze these two sentences a
little more closely. The first contains forty-nine words but only sixty
syllables, and all its words are those of everyday life. The second contains
thirty-eight words of ninety syllables: eighteen of its words are from Latin
roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images, and
only one phrase (``time and chance'') that could be called vague. The second
contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its ninety
syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the
first. Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining
ground in modern English. I do not want to exaggerate. This kind of writing is
not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur here and there in the
worst-written page. Still, if you or I were told to write a few lines on the
uncertainty of human fortunes, we should probably come much nearer to my
imaginary sentence than to the one from Ecclesiastes.
As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in
picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order
to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of
words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results
presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it
is easy. It is easier---even quicker, once you have the habit---to say In my
opinion it is a not unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think. If you
use ready-made phrases, you not only don't have to hunt about for words; you
also don't have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences, since these
phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious. When you
are composing in a hurry---when you are dictating to a stenographer, for
instance, or making a public speech---it is natural to fall into a pretentious,
Latinized style. Tags like a consideration which we should do well to bear in
mind or a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent will save many a
sentence from coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes and
idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague,
not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed
metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these
images clash---as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot
is thrown into the melting pot---it can be taken as certain that the writer is
not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not
really thinking. Look again at the examples I gave at the beginning of this
essay. Professor Laski (1)
uses five negatives in fifty-three words. One of these is superfluous, making
nonsense of the whole passage, and in addition there is the slip alien for
akin, making further nonsense, and several avoidable pieces of clumsiness which
increase the general vagueness. Professor Hogben (2)
plays ducks and drakes with a battery which is able to write prescriptions,
and, while disapproving of the everyday phrase put up with, is unwilling to look
egregious up in the dictionary and see what it means. (3),
if one takes an uncharitable attitude towards it, is simply meaningless:
probably one could work out its intended meaning by reading the whole of the
article in which it occurs. In (4),
the writer knows more or less what he wants to say, but an accumulation of
stale phrases chokes him like tea leaves blocking a sink. In (5),
words and meaning have almost parted company. People who write in this manner
usually have a general emotional meaning---they dislike one thing and want to
express solidarity with another---but they are not interested in the detail of
what they are saying. A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes,
will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What
words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image
fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more:
Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But
you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply
throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in.
They will construct your sentences for you---even think your thoughts for you,
to a certain extent---and at need they will perform the important service of
partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that
the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes
clear.
In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing.
Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some
kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a ``party line.''
Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The
political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes,
White Papers and the speeches of under-secretaries do, of course, vary from
party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a
fresh, vivid, home-made turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the
platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases---bestial atrocities, iron
heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to
shoulder---one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live
human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger
at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into
blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether
fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance
towards turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out
of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing
his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed
to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying,
as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of
consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political
conformity.
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the
indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian
purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be
defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face,
and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus
political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and
sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the
inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the
huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions
of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no
more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or
rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or
shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps:
this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed
if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.
Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian
totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, ``I believe in killing off your
opponents when you can get good results by doing so.'' Probably, therefore, he
will say something like this:
``While freely conceding that the Soviet regime
exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we
must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political
opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the
rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been
amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.''
The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A
mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines
and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is
insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims,
one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a
cuttlefish squirting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as ``keeping
out of politics.'' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a
mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. When the general
atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find---this is a guess
which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify---that the German, Russian and
Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a
result of dictatorship.
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A
bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should
and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some
ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much
to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do
well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always
at one's elbow. Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find
that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against.
By this morning's post I have received a pamphlet dealing with conditions in
Germany. The author tells me that he ``felt impelled'' to write it. I open it
at random, and here is almost the first sentence that I see: ``The Allies have
an opportunity not only of achieving a radical transformation of Germany's
social and political structure in such a way as to avoid a nationalistic
reaction in Germany itself, but at the same time of laying the foundations of a
cooperative and unified Europe.'' You see, he ``feels impelled'' to
write---feels, presumably, that he has something new to say---and yet his
words, like cavalry horses answering the bugle, group themselves automatically
into the familiar dreary pattern. This invasion of one's mind by ready-made
phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation) can only be
prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase
anaesthetizes a portion of one's brain.
I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable.
Those who deny this would argue, if they produced an argument at all, that
language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot
influence its development by any direct tinkering with words and constructions.
So far as the general tone or spirit of a language goes, this may be true, but
it is not true in detail. Silly words and expressions have often disappeared,
not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of a
minority. Two recent examples were explore every avenue and leave no stone
unturned, which were killed by the jeers of a few journalists. There is a long
list of flyblown metaphors which could similarly be got rid of if enough people
would interest themselves in the job; and it should also be possible to laugh
the not un- formation out of existence, to reduce the amount of Latin and Greek
in the average sentence, to drive out foreign phrases and strayed scientific
words, and, in general, to make pretentiousness unfashionable. But all these
are minor points. The defense of the English language implies more than this,
and perhaps it is best to start by saying what it does not imply.
To begin with it has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of
obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the setting up of a ``standard
English'' which must never be departed from. On the contrary, it is especially
concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outgrown its
usefulness. It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of
no importance so long as one makes one's meaning clear, or with the avoidance
of Americanisms, or with having what is called a ``good prose style.'' On the
other hand it is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make
written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the
Saxon word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest
words that will cover one's meaning. What is above all needed is to let the
meaning choose the word, and not the other way about. In prose, the worst thing
one can do with words is to surrender to them. When you think of a concrete
object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you
have been visualizing you probably hunt about till you find the exact words
that seem to fit. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to
use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it,
the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the
expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put
off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can
through pictures or sensations. Afterwards one can choose---not simply accept---the
phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch around and decide
what impression one's words are likely to make on another person. This last
effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated
phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can
often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules
that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will
cover most cases:
These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but
they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing
in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad
English, but one could not write the kind of stuff that I quoted in those five
specimens at the beginning of this article.
I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but
merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or
preventing thought. Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all
abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating
a kind of political quietism. Since you don't know what Fascism is, how can you
struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but
one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay
of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting
at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst
follies of orthodoxy You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when
you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself.
Political language--and with variations this is true of all political
parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists---is designed to make lies sound
truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure
wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's
own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough,
send some worn-out and useless phrase---some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed,
melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno or other lump of verbal refuse---into
the dustbin where it belongs.