If a new spirit is to be infused into this old country, there is one thorny and contentious reform which must be tackled, and that is the humanization and galvanization of the B.B.C. All the ‘best people’ from the gentlemen’s clubs, and all the frantic Fascist captains, united in common hatred of Socialism and bestial horror at the rising tide of the mass revolutionary movement, have turned to acts of provocation, to foul incendiarism, to medieval legends of poisoned wells, to legalize their own destruction of proletarian organizations, and rouse the agitated petty-bourgeoise to chauvinistic fervor on behalf of the fight against the revolutionary way out of the crisis.ĥ. Is not this the very picture of a small academic? Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality or fraternity?Įssay on psychology in Politics (New York).Ĥ. But on the other side, the social bond itself is nothing but the mutual reflection of these self-secure integrities. Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for they are just what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity there is little in them that is natural, irreducible, or culturally dangerous. On the one side we have the free personality: by definition it is not neurotic, for it has neither conflict nor dream. Professor Lancelot Hogben ( Interglossia).ģ. Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native battery of idioms which prescribes egregious collocations of vocables as the Basic put up with for tolerate, or put at a loss for bewilder. Professor Harold Laski ( Essay in Freedom of Expression).Ģ. I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien ( sic) to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate. I number them so that I can refer back to them when necessary:ġ. They are a little below the average, but are fairly representative examples. These five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad – I could have quoted far worse if I had chosen – but because they illustrate various of the mental vices from which we now suffer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. The point is that the process is reversible. 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. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Our civilization is decadent and our language – so the argument runs – must inevitably share in the general collapse. Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. We rely on the generosity of donors, Friends and Patrons to maintain these free resources. The Orwell Foundation is an independent charity. Home / Orwell / Essays and other works / Politics and the English Language Politics and the English Language
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