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Politics and the English Language

Questions About Politics and the English Language

by George Orwell

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Answered Questions (2)

what is Orwell want to say about "is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give appearance of solidity to pure wind."?
Mervyn Pitchford Hi Deland.
The phrase above relates to political language. If you listen carefully to
the words spoken by politicians they never promise anything speci…m´Ç°ù±ðHi Deland.
The phrase above relates to political language. If you listen carefully to
the words spoken by politicians they never promise anything specific, as any failure to deliver is an obvious error in their judgement. In the world of politicians, people who make errors of judgement should not have any influence, so they avoid telling the truth, if not actually telling lies.Thus they can't be blamed. They use words to create an impression, look back at the text and you can find examples of this. "The soviet press is the freest in the world." It was not.
Today, a common example of a deceptive, and to my mind abhorrent phrase is "going forward", when chosen to mean " in the future."
Going forward means making progress in the desired or intended direction, and progress is the betterment of a process or situation. You are intended to take this "progress" as the meaning in order to encourage you to take the feeling that things will be better. They don't want you to get the impression that the future is uncertain, but we all know that it is.
A politician or spokesperson for an organisation cannot let you think that their decisions may in deed turn out to be an error of judgement.
Also the word 'problem', is now banned because problems require solutions, some problems have no solutions. Politician pretend to have all the solutions by calling problems, 'issues'. An issue is the subject of a debate and therefore whatever they do they cannot have failed because they did not set out to find a solution to a problem, only to consider it and talk about it as an issue. I think these are modern examples of giving "solidarity to pure air". Words creating a vague feeling not conveying solid facts.
So many sound bites today do this,they make out that things are under control, when they are not, they are just platitudes to pacify an unquestioning mass audience.
I suggest you re-read the section where Orwell suggests the words of an apologist for the Stalinist regime in Russia, and note how the language sounds. By using euphemisms, the murder of political opponents, the detentions without trial and other atrocities are acceptable because the country is undergoing change.
I hope that this helps. I have no qualifications in the subject but I love the English language. You may like to read. 'Lost for Words' by John Humphrys, the subtitle is ' The Mangling and Manipulation of the English Language.'
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Wondering if Donald Trump ever read this? Seems like he has, along with "How to Win Friends and Influence People"! :)
Timothy Morrison Who knows? People read anything
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