Language as a Powerful Mind Control Weapon Essay

xix eighty-four (1949) is a classic dystopian novel by incline major power George Orwell. Akin to the latters earlier work, Animal Farm (1945), Nineteen Eighty-Four is a cautionary tale about the dangers of totalitarianism. The novels main character, Winston smith, is a civil servant tasked with disseminating government propaganda through the forge of records and political literature. Disillusioned with much(prenominal) a mechanistic existence, Smith begins an arise against the regime a move which later(prenominal) resulted in his incarceration and torture.The entertain of Nineteen Eighty-Four can be attri entirelyed mainly to its frank and glorious portrayal of the perpetuation of the status quo at the expense of individual rights (Gearon 65). more of the novels terminologies and ideas, such as doublethink, Orwellian, naked as a jaybirdspeak and Big crony, in conclusion acquired adept places in the English terminology (Trahair 289). At present, some(a) thinkers even lend oneself these ways and concepts to criticize repressive government policies.The term Orwellian, for instance, is currently an idiom that refers to both(prenominal) form of normalcy that closely resembles the Party (Cameron 151). One of Orwells study arguments in the novel is that linguistic communication is the totalitarian governments some powerful weapon of mind control. Through the usage of deceptive phrase and propaganda, as well as the modification of language, the Party was able to duck the thoughts and beliefs of the citizens of Oceania. Newspeak was the Partys primary mover of misleading the citizens of Oceania (Thomas, Singh, Peccei, Jones and Wareing 39).It was a demoralize form of bar English (known in the novel as Oldspeak) that reflected the principles of Ingsoc. inapplicable spoken communication were eliminated from the lingua franca, while those that were retained were stripped of unorthodox denotations (Ji 1). Consequently, it became unrealizable to develop other modes of thought in Newspeak (Orwell 144). Newspeak was more than just a language it was the (embodiment) of the totalitarian (mindset) of the Party members (Gerovitch 12).To accommodate alternate views would increase the calamity of encountering heretical thoughts (Gerovitch 13). It is no longer surprising, on that pointfore, if the Party required all inhabitants of Oceania to subroutine Newspeak doing so was a very convenient way of indoctrinating them with Ingsoc beliefs. The immense power of language to control the mind is not a fictional phenomenon. The Sapir-Whorf dead reckoning (n. d. ) argued that language determined how human beings perceived their environment (Thomas, Singh, Peccei, Jones and Wareing 39).This assumption is sedate of two parts linguistic relativity theory and linguistic determinism. lingual relativity theorized that the languages of different cultures do not necessarily have equivalent systems of representation. lingual determin ism, meanwhile, asserted that a language not scarcely reflected certain aspects of frankness but also influenced the speakers thought process (Thomas, Singh, Peccei, Jones and Wareing 25). It would be fair to say that the premise behind the development and usage of Newspeak was found on the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.In the novels appendix, it is revealed that Ingsoc was originally known as English Socialism (Orwell 143). But during the time of English Socialism, people spoke Standard English. Consequently, they were exposed to radical ideas that inspired them to turn against the Party (Ji 1). In retaliation, the Party silenced them through punishment and terror (Ji 1). The Party eventually viewed the period of English Socialism as one that was characterized with violence and lawlessness. Standard English, meanwhile, was regarded as a relic of an anarchic past that moldiness be discarded at all costs.The Party even set a year in which they expected Standard English to be already non existent 2050 (Orwell 143). In the appendix of the novel, Orwell wrote the Partys ultimate ideate a society wherein everyone accepted the official ideology even without the flagellum of punishment and terror (Ji 1). This was only practicable, however, if they had no access to subversive ideas. It must be noted that in the context of the novel, Standard English was regarded as the source of dissident concepts.The Party therefore realized that Standard English must be replaced with a singular and specially contrived language Newspeak. When people spoke, heard, read and wrote only in Newspeak, they could be kept below control even without outright state persecution (Ji 1). Newspeak was the official language of Oceania and had been devised to chance the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism. In the year 1984 there was not as yet anyone who used Newspeak as his sole means of communication, either in speech or writing.The leading articles in The propagation were writt en in it, but this was a tour de force which could only be carried out by a specialist. It was expected that Newspeak would have last superseded Oldspeak (or Standard English, as we should call it) by about the year 2050. (143) The mean of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the (worldview) and psychological habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible.It was intend that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly deprivation to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of newwords, b ut chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever. To give a single example. The word unaffectionate still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as This dog is unleash from lice or This field is free from weeds. It could not be used in its old sense of politically free or intellectually free since political and intellectual exemption no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity anonymous.(144) A person growing up with Newspeak as his sole language would no more know that equal had once had the secondary meaning of politically equal, or that free had once meant intellectually free, than for instance, a person who had never heard of chess would be aware of the secondary meanings attaching to queen and rook. at that place would be many crimes and errors which it would be beyond his power to commit, simply because the y were nameless and therefore unimaginable. (148-149)This ambition, however, was not without serious consequences. The individual rights of the people of Oceania were severely violated. They eer lived in concern of government reprisal landscapes across London were bombarded with posters of Big Brother with the caption Big Brother is Watching You (Orwell 1). Two-way television sets telescreens were installed in all homes and public establishments in order to monitor the populace for any sign of subversive activity (thoughtcrime). Worse, the Party encouraged everyone to spy on one another.Even children were ordered to report their parents to the authorities (Thought Police) if they caught them committing a thoughtcrime. Winston Smith was among those who paid the ultimate price. Upon his arrest, he was taken to the Ministry of Love, where he was subjected to electroshock torture. Winston was afterward taken to the infamous Room 101, where a prisoner was tortured by being exposed to his or her greatest fear. Winstons primal fear was rats he was therefore tortured by having a wire coop full of starving rats brought near to his face.Petrified, Winston finally accepts Party ideology and was later released as a brainwashed individual. Sadly, it is obvious that Orwells warning in Nineteen Eighty-Four went unheeded. At present, there are still so many societies wherein people are stripped of their basic rights and liberties. What is more saddening is that some of the parties who are guilty of this wrongdoing are actually claiming that they are block advocates of freedom, justice and equality. They use elaborate propaganda to proclaim their advocacy while playacting in a completely opposite manner.The Party used language in order to keep the people of Oceania silent, ignorant and oppressed. In doing so, the cause be that evil prospers where good is silent. Orwell, on the other hand, used words in order to expose and fight this atrocity. In doing so, he proved that the pen is mightier than the sword.Works CitedCameron, Deborah. Verbal Hygiene. New York Routledge, 1995. Gearon, Liam. Freedom of Expression and human race Rights Historical, Literary and Political Contexts. Eastbourne Sussex Academic Press, 2006. Gerovitch, Slava.From Newspeak to Cyberspeak A History of Soviet Cybernetics. Cambridge MIT Press, 2004. Ji, Fengyuan. Linguistic Engineering Language and Politics in Maos China. capital of Hawaii University of Hawaii Press, 2004. Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. n. p. n. d. Thomas, Linda, Ishtla Singh, Jean Stilwell Peccei, Jason Jones, and Shan Wareing. Language, Society and Power An Introduction. 2nd ed. New York Routledge, 2004. Trahair, R. C. S. Utopia and Utopians A Historical Dictionary. Santa Barbara Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999.