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The language of politics is one that is universal to all languages. In 1948, George Orwell published an essay entitled Politics and the English Language, which discussed just that. In paragraph 21 of this essay, he claims, “political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind.” This is absolutely right, it was in Orwell’s time, and it still holds true today, in a time of mass media, corporate influence, and colossal magnitudes of sensationalism. I plan to explain what Orwell meant by “political language” and show how those who misuse it to their advantage can get away with blatantly lying, yet still amassing support of the misled. Right at the beginning of his essay, Orwell claims civilization to be decadent and therein infers that civilization’s language must be decadent as well. This is an interesting point that I did not agree with until I finished the reading. Orwell then goes on to explain, “The decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes,” which is definitely true. Keep in mind that his essay was written in 1946, shortly after World War II had ended, so he is speaking from a time where nearly everyone in the world knew of society’s evils. In addition, throughout the essay, Orwell uses exceptionally strong expressions to describe the current state of the English language by using the analogy of a downtrodden individual succumbing to alcoholism, and then referring to the “slovenliness” of Modern English, explicitly written English... However, Orwell also claims that this same slovenliness of the English language can be reversed… Now in his extremely well written essay, Orwell makes it extremely clear about what needs to be done to preserve proper English in writing. His first step in doing such was to show various examples of what he refers to as “specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.” Interestingly enough, he quotes the work of two of the world’s most educated people (he quotes two professors), two miscellaneous publications, and even Karl Marx himself. With these five examples, there are five different things wrong with each. The first example, which is from an essay by Professor Harold Laski, is erroneous in the eyes of Orwell due to its ambiguity and its capability to confuse.
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