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The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all ot
by justshowpost 5y ago
The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible.
The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak.
- SketchySeaBeast 5y agoUnless there's something in the article I was missing (I didn't subscribe to get past the paywall), a millennia of unstructured linguistic evolution doesn't really match the deliberate desire to trim the language and change how people think.
- ctdonath 5y agoPoint is language does limit possible thought. There are concepts which are hard/awkward/impossible to express because one’s language lacks constructs to do so.
- WJW 5y agoThis is called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis [0], and it is generally believed not to be true by linguists. As it turns out, natural languages are flexible enough to describe any phenomenon even if there are no dedicated words or constructs directly available. If a thought cannot be expressed by the currently available features of the language, people will invent new words "on the spot" instead of not thinking the thought in the first place. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
- BurningFrog 5y agoThis can be true if language is constantly policed to make certain words and thought dangerous to say, as in the 1984 plot. In unpoliced discourse, I don't believe this happens. There are always some rough edges in languages as they aimlessly evolve, but nothing that hard.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]