Here are my notes on Politics and the English Language.
An effect can because a cause. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.
But… this process is reversible! He then talks about five examples of “habitual” English to give examples.
Two qualities are common to all his examples: staleness of imagery, and lack of precision. They use vagueness on purpose so that it’s not clear whether the words mean anything or not. Orwell gives an example of the tricks they use:
Dying metaphors: there are new metaphors, which evoke a strong image, and there are “dead metaphors” that have basically become ordinary words (like iron resolution) and can still be used. In between there is a ton of “worn-out” metaphors which have lost all power! His examples: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgels for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, Achille’s heel, hotbed. It seems like Orwell’s measure for whether it’s a dead metaphor or a worn-out one is whether the writer clearly understands their meaning.
Operators, or verbal false limbs: words that “save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns”. Eg: render inoperative, militate against, prove unacceptable, make contact with, be subjected to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading role, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of. These are all examples of phrases that could have been simple verbs, a single word, but instead become a phrase with a noun/adjective tacked on. They are also all in the passive voice wherever possible.
Pretentious diction: phenomenon, element, objective, effective, virtual, basic, promote, utilize, eliminate, exploit. They are all used to give an air of scientific impartiality to bias. Don’t use latin words. Don’t use historical adjectives like historic, triumphant, age-old.
Meaningless words: Orwell says that certain kinds of writing, like art/literary criticism, use words that have no meaning, like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality. A great quote: The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. In another case, like ‘democracy’, there is no definition, but it’s obvious when we say a country is democratic we are praising it. Other words like this: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality. Charlie note: I would add capitalism, woke, social justice.
The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness.
Modern writing more and more consists of “gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else”. The “attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy.”
A good writer will ask himself four questions when writing:
- What am I trying to say?
- What words will express it?
- What image or idiom will make it clearer?
- Is the image fresh enough to have an effect?
And he will probably ask himself two more:
- Can I make it shorter?
- Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?
Then he sums up the rules at the end:
- Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short word will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.