PoliticsandtheEnglishLanguage.pdf
POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH
LANGUAGE
By: George Orwell
Category: Commentary and Opinion (Historical) Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the Englishlanguage is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by consciousaction do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent, and our language--so theargument runs--must inevitably share in the general collap. It follows that anystruggle against the abu of language is a ntimental archaism, like preferringcandles to electric light or hansom cabs to aero planes. Underneath this lies the half-consciousbelief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which weshape for our own purpos.
Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political andeconomic caus: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individualwriter. But an effect can become a cau, reinforcing the original cau andproducing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on i
ndefinitely. A man maytake to drink becau he feels himlf to be a failure, and then fail all the morecompletely becau he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to theEnglish language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate becau 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 iswilling to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of the habits one can
创业者访谈thinkmore clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards politicalregeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not theexclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this prently, and Ihope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have becomeclearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is nowhabitually written.
The five passages have not been picked out becau they are especially bad—Icould have quoted far wor if I had chon--but becau they illustrate various ofthe mental vices from which we now suffer. They are a little below the average, butare fairly reprentative samples. I number them so that I can refer back to themwhen necessary:
(1)I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to蒋卓君
say that the Milton who onceemed not unlike
扫墓时间有什么讲究
a venteenth-century Shelley had not become,
out of anexperience ever more bitter in each year, more alien (sic) to the founder of thatJesuit ct which nothing could induce him to tolerate.(Professor Harold Laski Essay in Freedom of Expression)
(2)Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with
a native battery of idioms whichprescribes such
egregious collocations of vocables as the Basic put up with fortolerate or put at a loss for bewilder. (Professor Lancelot Hogben Interglossa)
(3)On the one side we have the free personality; by
definition it is not neurotic, forit has neither conflict nor dream. Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, forthey are just what
institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness;another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is little inthem that is natural, irreducible, or culturally dangerous. But on the other side, thesocial bond itlf is nothing but the mutual reflection of the lf-cure integrities.Recall the definition of love. Is not this the very picture of a small academic? Whereis there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality or fraternity?(ESSAY ON PSYCHOLOGY in Politics New York)
(4)All the "best people" from the gentlemen's clubs,
and all the frantic fascistcaptains, united in common hatred of Socialism and bestial horror of the rising tideof the mass revolutionary movement, have turned to acts of provocation, to foulincendiarism, to medieval legends of
poisoned wells, to legalize their own destructionof proletarian organizations, and rou the agitated petty-bourgeoisie to chauvinisticfervor on behalf of the fight against the revolutionary way out of the crisis.
(Communist Pamphlet)
(5)If a new spirit is to be infud into this old
country, there is one thorny andcontentious reform which must be tackled, and that is the humanization andgalvanization of the B.B.C.
Timidity here will bespeak canker and atrophy of the soul.The heart of Britain may lee sound and of strong beat, for instance, but the Britishlion's roar at prent is like that of Bottom in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night'sDream--as gentle as any sucking dove. A virile new Britain cannot continueindefinitely to be traduced in the eyes, or rather ears, of the
world by the effetelanguors of Langham Place, brazenly masquerading as "standard English."
When theVoice of Britain is heard at nine o'clock, better far and infinitely less ludicrous to hearaitches honestly dropped than the prent priggish, inflated, inhibited, schoolma'am-ish arch braying of blameless bashful mewing maidens. (Letter in Tribune)
Each of the 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 otheris lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or heinadvertently says something el, or he is almost indifferent as to whether hiswords mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence isthe most marked characteristic of
modern English pro, and especially of any kindof political writing. As soon as certain topics are raid, the concrete melts into theabstract and no one ems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed:pro consists less and less of words chon for the sake of their meaning, and moreand more of phras tacked together like the ctions of a prefabricated hen-hou.I list below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks by means of which thework of pro-construction is habitually dodged:
Dying metaphors. A newly-invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visualimage, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically "dead" (e.g., ironresolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally beud without loss of vividness. But in between the two class there is a hugedump of worn-out metaphors
抒情的作用>hurt用法which have lost all evocative power and are merelyud becau they save people the trouble of inventing phras for themlves.Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgels for, toe the line, rideroughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, an axe togrind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles'heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of the are ud without knowledge of theirmeaning (what is a "rift," for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequentlymixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he i
s saying. Somemetaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning withouttho who u them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line issometimes written tow the line. Another example is the hammer and the anvil, nowalways ud with the implication that the anvil gets the
worst of it. In real life it isalways the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer whostopped to think what he was saying would be aware of this, and would avoidperverting the original phra.
Operators, or verbal fal limbs. The save the trouble of picking out appropriateverbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each ntence with extra syllables whichgive it an appearance of symmetry. Characteristic phras are: render inoperative,militate against, prove unacceptable, make contact with, be subjected to, give rito, give grounds for, having the effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itlffelt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, rve the purpo of, etc., etc. The keynote isthe elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop,spoil, mend,
kill, a verb becomes a phra, made up of a noun or adjective tacked onto some general-purpos v
erb as prove, rve, form, play, render. In addition, thepassive voice is wherever possible ud in preference to the active, and nounconstructions are ud instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of byexamining). The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and deformations,and banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means ofthe not un- formation. Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by suchphras as with respect to, having regard to, the fact that, by dint of, in view of, inthe interests of, on the hypothesis that; and the ends of ntences are saved fromanti-climax by such resounding commonplaces as greatly to be desired, cannot beleft out of account, a development to be expected in the near future, derving ofrious 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, basis,
primary, promote, constitute, exhibit,exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate, are ud to dress up simple statements and givean air of scientific impartiality to biad judgments. Adjectives like epoch-making,epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable, veritable,are ud to
带有近义词的四字成语
dignify the sordid process of international politics, while writing thataims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic color, its characteristic wordsbeing: 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 ud to give an air of culture and elegance. Except for the , e.g., and etc., there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrasnow current in English. Bad writers, and especially scientific, political and sociologicalwriters, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words aregrander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict,extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous and hundreds of others constantlygain ground from their Anglo-Saxon opposite numbers.* The jargon peculiar toMarxist writing (hyena, hangman, cannibal, petty bourgeois, the gentry, lackey,flunkey, mad dog, White Guard, etc.) consists largely of words and phrastranslated from Russian, German or French; but the normal way of coining a
newword is to u 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 (de-regionalize,impermissible, extramarital,
non-fragmentary and so forth) than to think up theEnglish words that will cover one's meaning. The result, in general, is an increa inslovenliness and vagueness.
* An interesting illustration of this is the way in which the English flower names which were in u till veryrecently are being ousted by Greek ones, snap-dragon becoming antirrhinum, forget-me-not becoming myosotis,etc. It is hard to e any practical reason for this change of fashion: it is probably due to an instinctive turningawayfrom the more homely word and a vague feeling that the Greek word is scientific.西红柿炒年糕
Meaningless words. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literarycriticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completelylacking in meaning.* Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, ntimental,natural, vitality, as ud in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the n thatthey not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly even expectedto do so by the reader. When one critic writes, "The outstanding feature of Mr. X'swork is its living quality," while another writes, "The immediately striking thing aboutMr. X's work is its peculiar deadness, the reader accepts this as a simple differenceof opinion If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon wordsdead and living, he would e at once that language was being ud in an improperway. Many
political words are similarly abud. The word Fascism has now nomeaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable." The wordsdemocracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them veraldifferent meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the ca of aword like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to makeone is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a countrydemocratic we are praising it: conquently the defenders of every kind of régimeclaim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word ifit were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often ud in aconsciously dishonest way. That is, the person who us them has his own privatedefinition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.Statements like Marshal Pétain was a true patriot, The Soviet Press is the freest inthe world, The Catholic Church is oppod to percution, are almost always madewith intent to deceive. Other words ud in variable meanings, in most cas moreor less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionarybourgeois, equality.
○2Example: "Comfort's catholicity of perception and image, strangely Whitmanesque in range, almost the exactopposite in aesthetic compulsion, continues to evoke that trembling atmospheric accumulative hinting at a cruel,an inexorably rene timelessness . . . Wrey Gardiner scores by aimi
ng at simple bullyes with precision. Onlythey are not so simple, and through this contented sadness runs more than the surface bittersweet ofresignation." (Poetry Quarterly.)
Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me giveanother example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of itsnature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English intomodern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known ver from Ecclesiastes:北京两日游
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle tothe strong, neither yet bread to the wi, nor yet riches to men of understanding,nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happened to them all.
Here it is in modern English:Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion thatsuccess or failure in competitive
activities exhibits no tendency to be commensuratewith innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable mustinvariably be taken into account.
This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit (3), above, for instance, containsveral patches o
f the same kind of English. It will be en that I have not made afull translation. The beginning and ending of the ntence follow the original meaningfairly cloly, but in the middle the concrete illustrations--race, battle, bread--dissolve into the vague phra
"success or failure in competitive activities." This hadto be so, becau no modern writer of the kind I am discussing--no one capable ofusing phras like objective consideration of contemporary phenomena"--would evertabulate his thoughts in that preci and detailed way. The whole
