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Interesting essay on this from the man himself. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
by dil8 13y ago
Interesting essay on this from the man himself.
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
- bananacurve 13y agoThank you, I especially liked this little bit: > A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.
- sliverstorm 13y agoI am familiar with everything he talks about, and have personally noted most of what he describes in political writing in the past. I guess I just don't think of it as a corruption of language; it's just kind of a given to me, that people speak in riddles and flowery phrases when they look to hide another meaning. I don't really see how English has changed as a result of it.
- dllthomas 13y agoFor a counterpoint by people who actually study language: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=992 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=992