"Newspeak" in 1984 by Orwell

A real or an imaginary death of language?  Or something even worse?

1984, by George Orwell… quite an extraordinary book, full of amazingly well-devised ideas,  an astonishingly well created political scene and a story which could be considered a real world instead of a simple novel. But what would happen if the novel itself was nothing but a sinister peep of what the world is supposed to become in a not-so-far future?  Yes, it can be told that it could be paranoia, just a whole pack of coincidences, nothing serious. Yet, let’s discuss one important approach the novel discusses about which can be (sadly) traced to our normal, everyday life: language. In the book, a new language was created in order to simplify (or better said, hand-cap) language and the ideas carried by it, this new language was called Newspeak. Are we facing a ‘Newspeak’ crisis because of internet and texting?  Are our ideas being simplified to the point they lose their original meaning and intention? Are we becoming less aware of our intentions and feelings in spite of communicating faster?

Let’s expose the context

According to the Orwell’s novel, Newspeak was created in order to simplify communication and to get rid of ‘complicated’ ideas such as freedom and individuality. Once Newspeak overcame English, the use of adjectives and adverbs was rather poor, as it was considered a loss of time, something undesirable. With this, the Party gained control over the minds of the people given that all problematic words and ideas were removed of language, so they could not be expressed.  So the government could enjoy of total control of the minds, and therefore, the whole life of the people. This can be understood and reflected if we pay attention to the author’s life and the experiences with the Communist party and press he went through, which made him understand that the power obtained by politics themselves cannot be harmful to mankind, society or people, but that power may create an unparalleled eagerness for power in the minds of men, which ultimately can lead the whole world to an end.

Language evolution based on technology or deliberately language capping?

Orwell himself was against the bad usage of English in his time as it could lead us to detrimental consequences, as he established: “(…) language merely reflects existing social conditions (…)” (George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”, 1946). I want to say that this particular point is critical: we all know that texting few, if any, times allow us to use proper grammar and punctuation, elements which obviously affect the final intention of any text. Nowadays, we sadly tend to use fewer words to describe something.  So, now, is when you should know that, according to a study carried out by the University of Winnipeg (Penn State, 2002 release, outspoken by the investigator, Drew Cingel), people who are frequent texters place less value on spiritual and moral issues, and pay quite a bit more of attention to wealth and image, in other words, we are becoming shallow. According to this, we truly are not thinking beyond what ours eyes see. Another important fact that supports the given theses, this time respecting to grammar and the usage of words, is the study of Northwestern University which declares that kids who usually rely on language adaptations or texting apps were doing poorly in grammar exams, since they knew how to pronounce a word such as “great”, yet they did not know how to spell it correctly as they usually use abbreviations or homophones but not the actual word. This can lead a kid not to properly express what he or she wanted to say, and eventually to accept whatever was understood in the first place. Given all this, we can and should make a change.

Why we can and should stop this. From now on. No doubt

For us, as students of English language must keep this language (or any other) from disappearing and becoming something with not further intention than communicating a shallow idea with no major improvement or dedication. We must keep language alive, and the only way to do so is using it at its best, with every single one of the resources given to it to fulfill its most basic objective: communicating whole, decisive, powerful, lively ideas and feelings in an understandable and efficient way. Yet, this battle is awesomely hard to withstand and even more to win. So the question is: what can we do to save English from becoming the Orwell’s biggest language nightmare, that is, Newspeak? The answer only lies in our minds and mouths.