Orwell on Writing and Politics
A radio essay on NPR by author Lawrence Wright caught my ear and I soon found myself searching for and downloading George Orwell’s essay, Politics and the English Language. Written in 1946, Orwell both demonstrates examples of truly horrid writing, and sets out clear and concise rules for good writing. Rules that any freelance writer should read and memorize.
He then goes on to say:
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 the 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 itself is a kind of euphemism.
Key to Orwell’s essay is this comment:
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
Orwell thought the problems with language use were “probably curable.” Decades later, as I listen to talk radio, watch and read the news, I can only hope and pray he’s right, and that we cure it sooner than later.
Write well and often,
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POSTED IN: General Freelance Writing, The Power of Words / Words To Power
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