orwell's essay politics and the english language

“fascist”, “racist”, “dogwhistle”, “accountable”, “cultural Marxism”, “privilege”, “radical left”, “violent”, “actively harming”, “cancel culture”, “systemic”, “ally”, “whiteness”, etc.) which have been redefined or have had their meanings muddled by their contrasting use by different groups. “īack to politics: both sides of the aisle have certain buzzwords that they love to use (e.g. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. “As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. And this essay explained that in a perfectly eloquent way: I used to say that it was theoretically possible to English class by simply using big words and long sentences in your essays you don’t even have to make a point. I have been annoyed by this for a long time but I couldn’t really find the words to express what bothered me about it. I get very exasperated by political discourse and sometimes humanities academia as well because it often feels like people are using big words and buzzwords to sound smart while they say a whole lot of nothing or simply repeat the talking points of whichever group they consider themselves to be a part of. So of course I had to read his essay that is explicitly about politics. But reading that book, combined with taking a government class that same year and the subsequent upheaval of 2020 led me to become very interested in it.

I did not know of any politicians besides Trump and Obama and a few others on my peripheral vision and I had zero opinions on them. I partially credit George Orwell with originally getting me into politics.īefore I read 1984 when I was 15 I had absolutely no interest in anything political. (You can read “Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell for free here) My Thoughts Title: “Politics and the English Language” George Orwell manages to articulate why people using political buzzword salad is so annoying in one essay.

Orwell's essay politics and the english language