After endless annotating of this well written essay, I finally see the light of Orwell's argument. He believes that language is bound to become a mess of meaningless, lengthy sentences, and that we as upholders of the English language should take the sword against this monstrosity.
Well, you are on the right path, Orwell, but no cigar.
He envisioned a future where we would try to mitigate our speech, and not exactly say what we mean. This age, however, is the era of the straight-to-the-point message; nothing more. In fact, one could argue that language has come around to be even more meaningless by being short. This could even display that we have, perhaps, nothing to say.
This society is a lot farther from Orwell's worldview in his novel 1984, which suppressed ideas under a dictatorship. Instead, it veers towards a world where we are overwhelmed with ideas, and we start to not care anymore. We are bombarded by pop culture, and important ideas such as war and the environment take a backseat. In short, we choose to write about subjects that do not take much thought, which is what has corrupted our language. It really does not take much to talk about gossip and entertainment, and our sentences reflect that.
My opinion is that we do not meander around, throwing in words to cloud what we think we know. Instead, we flat out say in our writing that we know nothing.
I have to agree with you here Kevin. People now-a-days are saying a lot of nothing, and as they say "the proof is in the pudding" because we can find examples of this all over the internet.
ReplyDeleteThe best example being Twitter. In 150 words or less we "tweet" about what we're doing or rather what we're supposed to be doing instead of "tweeting." Now, however, people are even to lazy to do that and they just "retweet" what others are saying, or they post links to funny cat videos.
While reading Orwell's essay, I kept thinking about if he was actually directing, or at least helping, English to what it is today: simple and to the point. Near the end he gives us some suggestive rules on how to write like, " never use a long word when a short one will do," and, " if a word can be cut out, cut it." Is this not what we do today? Why do we think simple language is so bad? None of us here are at any position to judge what good language is and bad language is. Why does our culture make us think that I must use ornate adjectives to emphasize my point when I can easily use comprehensible language (on today's terms) that will do the same thing. My stance probably isn't the most popular one, so I'd love to hear everybody else's opinion.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with you here Kevin, and we can find proof of this "saying a lot of nothing" all over the internet: especially with Twitter.
ReplyDeleteIn 150 characters or less we are challenged to tell the world what we are doing (or rather what we are not doing since we're tweeting instead). Even this already short, mindless task is getting simplified. People are retweeting what they're friends are tweeting or just tweeting links to various websites and videos rather than saying anything at all.
I agree, Carina; Twitter is the quintessential example. This really is a pity, because it can keep opinions to the point and let them be heard. Just look at the posts of the recent Iranian protesters. This was a good use of the website, since it gave outsiders a look inside the media-censored country and connected worldviews with others. These are powerful things said on these sites that give pride to the English language, not superficial posts by celebrities.
ReplyDeleteTo Quang I give my agreement. Simple language lets us communicate faster and better speak our minds honestly without any filler. In all honesty, excessive adjectives can make any piece of literature inaccessible. I think a middle ground between oversimplified and overinflated language should be sought.