Give Me Doubleplusgood or Give Me Death!

by Wendy McElroy, The Future of Freedom Foundation
Sep. 15, 2011

George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, got a few things wrong — for example, the date. But he was dead-on in depicting the cause-and-effect relationship between language and politics, between language and our ability to think clearly; the process of using words as social control was called Newspeak. What cannot be expressed cannot be effectively understood or opposed. Neutralizing language defuses the most powerful weapon against oppression: the ability to think.

In his essay “Politics and the English Language” (1946), Orwell wrote, “[The] decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes.... [To] think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous.” Nor is the political use of bad or distorted English accidental.

Since the advent of political correctness, a vigorous war on words has been waged.

Some of attacks are blatant. For example, “gender” has replaced the word “sex” and this replacement has been key to embedding the idea of sexual orientation as a social construct and not a biological fact. Words have been demonized as de facto acts of violence, so that using a slang term for a race is viewed as a hate-filled attack that might result in retaliatory violence or even arrest. Other attacks on words are subtler. Terms have come mean their opposite, so that “equality” now requires the disadvantaging of men in law and with policies such as affirmative action in order to favor women. Euphemistic terms are used to describe vicious practices; for example, “sensitivity training” refers to mandatory re-education sessions at which participants are harangued for possessing wrong beliefs such as a traditional Christian view of women or gays.

Political correctness has so infused the public schools and academia that the institutions no longer offer education (to the extent they ever did) but, instead, offer propaganda that “teaches” proper attitudes and positions on social issues. Thus, language is degraded not merely by the production of illiteracy but also by shutting down entire areas of discussion.

One expression of the war on words is currently unfolding: the circus of rhetoric that precedes the 2012 presidential election. It will do nothing but intensify as that election draws nigh and rhetoric ramps up. Words will be used to confuse not inform; lies will masquerade as truth and become weapons against awareness; the meaning of words such as “justice” and “equality” will be gutted or reversed, so that analysis or even understanding becomes tortuous.

One of the characters of 1984, Party member Syme, proclaims, “The whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought.” He adds, “The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.”

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