1984

Introduction

What we have here is an excerpt from George Orwell's 1984 book he published in 1949. The book is a dystopia that describes a dark, utopian world where people are constantly being watched by Big Brother and the police of thought.

It describes a Great Britain thirty years after a nuclear war between East and West supposed to have taken place in the 1950s and where a totalitarian regime strongly inspired by Stalinism. Freedom of expression no longer exists. All thoughts are meticulously monitored, and huge posters are posted in the streets, telling everyone "Big Brother is watching you".

In this excerpt, we meet Syme, a friend of Winston, who is working on the creation of a new language, supposed to be more practical and more compact, but whose main purpose is ultimately to narrow the range of thought.

To what extent can we say that the destruction of language influences the way we perceive the world, and allows the dictator to avoid all sorts of revolts?

The excerpt begins with Winston's meeting with his friend Syme. Syme is working on the dictionnary : he says that he and his collegues are getting the language into its final shape. Actually his job consists in destroying words, he says that there are schools of words which are userless because they have "subsiduary meanings". The new language can be limited to the roots of a few words and some prefixes. So he must cut the language to the boam. He seems to be very enthusiastic about his job : he brightens ups at the mention of dictionnary and finds it fascinating. He adds that the destuction of words is a beautiful thing. He claims that the revolution will only be complete when the language is perfect. By destroying words, he is convinced that he is changing the word for the better. He is quite self-satisfied and seems to worship Big Brother who had the bright idea of destroying words.

However, Winston does not speak very much because in such a society the last you speak, the better. Totalitarian regims do not permit ideas to be freely expressed. Winston is probably an outsider, maybe a rebel and knows that he has to be quiet. He is aware that Big Brother is spying on everybody including Syme, who is in the favor of the regime. If he expressed his thoughts, he would probably say how much he disapproves of the destruction of words. However, the fact that he doesn't speak much may eventually proove to be a mistake because Syme, who has notst his lack of enthousiasm about Newspeak, may report him to the Thought Police.

But, in truth, the real purpose of this new language is not to make communication simpler, but to narrow de range of thought, what Syme explains to him. That means that words have to be destroyed. In the end a concet will only be expressed in one word, modified by prefixes and suffixes. The meaning of these words will thenbe precisely defined. There awill not be any shades of meaning because that could lied to be the hate which is unacceptable in a totalitarian regime. By eliminating words expressing concepts or thoughts, the aim of Newspeak is actually yo deprive people of the ability to think about anything that is not desired by the state (this would be a thought-crime), let alone to act against the state. Newspeak was created because the Thought Police had to develop a method of reading people's mind to detect the dissent.

It's important for Big Brother to narrow the range of thought because the knowledge is power. That is why in 1984 language is systematically destroyed. Reality is then more easily shaped by the oppressor. All dictaors destroy the educated first. and always try to prevent people from expressing themselves. They all try to narrow the range of thought, to turn man into a brain less creature incapable of critical thinking. Culture is what dictators hate, because the more people think, the less they can be manipulated. Consequently dictators always try to control education and communication, especially the media. because for them, "ignorance is stenght", which in facts means that the ignorance of the people implies the strenght of the dictators party.

Conclusion

To conclude, we can note that the main concept in Newspeak is that if people don't poseess the words to express an idea, such an idea doesn't exist. For instance f the word "Revolution" does not exist, people will not be able to revolt.

In 1984, "ignorance is strenght" is one of the free solgans of the party. The orther two are "war is peace" and "freedom is slavery".

Thus, it can be said that the destruction of language influences the way we perceive the world.

Here we can make a parallel with the satirical science-fiction novel "W", written in 1920, by writers like Orwell were most likely inspired. In this novel, Evgeni Zamiatin presents a dark future in which a totalitarian state claims to govern all human activities (accurately described in the Table of Hours) and to make people happy at the expense of their individual liberties and in which men are Dehumanized, they have no identity, no first names. All this is described by a man named D-503, who in the course of the novel realizes that he becomes, in spite of himself, more and more attracted by the old world (which is ours), characterized by freedom, the unpredictability and precariousness of happiness.