Discussion #1: Politics and the English Language, by George Orwell
Salah G. Hamed
Deskripsi
Writers who use a pen name run the risk - or enjoy the benefit - that if they achieve huge fame, their assumed surname will enter common use as an adjective rather than their real one. Eric Blair, known to history as George Orwell, didn’t live long enough to see “Orwellian” become a frequently used and abused staple of many languages. The term is most closely associated with ideas in his novel 1984, which was published in 1949 before Orwell passed away less than a year later. In our time, commentators of the left, right and elsewhere all routinely wield it as a political weapon and claim the author as one of their own. The word’s meaning sometimes appears blurred by excessive, contradictory, and imprecise use.<br/><br/>Anyone who reads Orwell’s 1946 essay <a href="https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/">Politics and the English Language</a> suspects that he would have detested “Orwellian” in this current form. The below excerpt from the essay itself suggests why:<br/><br/>“Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of régime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning.”<br/><br/>“Orwellian” has ironically become one of these abused words. Few would object to its use in describing the North Korean dictatorship, but the
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Discussion #1: Politics and the English Language, by George Orwell
Salah G. Hamed