___ PART II ___
Language, propaganda, unspeak: words are weapons
Change maker!
End of peace 1999 6 chapters here
Fascinating descriptions of changes in words meanings over time and how manipulation of this property can change reality.
"pro-choice" or anti-life,
"tax relief" on charitable donations or rather than in taxes to fund the state’s own choice."Friends of the Earth" or Alien from Andromeda
"anti-social behaviour","climate change" for the wrong "global warming""sound science" to forget real science.
- "natural", "wholesome" and "tradition", these comforting words over all manner of technological innovation
- "war on terror"
- "defence of freedom"
- road map [rather than plan],
- community [rather than 'some self-elected representatives of a supposedly unified group'],
- 'barrier' [rather than 'wall' or 'checkpoint' or 'annexation'].
- "ethnic cleansing" .... " genocide/mass murder"as a grisly euphemism?
___ PART II ___
In Orwell’s eyes the great enemy of clear language is insincerity.
- ‘All issues are political issues and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia’.
Steven Poole - article:
On the enduring popularity of Orwell's "Politics and the English Language".
it is savagely contemptuous of politicians and what they say, an attitude that never goes out of fashion. Orwell writes, in the most celebrated passage:
- "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible."
- "Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness."
- "Political language […] is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
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