George Orwell, traveling trough the awful old ages of the 2nd universe war as a soldier, could see with his ain eyes the world behind the words looking in the documents. As a journalist and bookman he realized how false the image is that newspapers attempts to sell to the people and do them believe it. With his novel, he showed the reader how unsafe linguistic communication can be when it is in the incorrect hands. “ Language can be used politically to lead on and pull strings people, taking to a society in which the people unquestioningly obey their authorities and mindlessly accept all propaganda as world. ” ( 1 )
As sociolinguistic research shows, civilization and linguistic communication every bit good as linguistic communication and our manner of thought are inseparable. Harmonizing to the Sapir- Whorf hypothesis, it claims that the construction of one ‘s native linguistic communication determines the manner one thinks and behaves. Besides, in the eighteenth century, Romantics believed that people speak otherwise because address is determined by idea, and ideas are influenced by civilization. ( 2 )
These thoughts suggest that if one component is changed that can act upon the other. In the novel of 1984, the totalitarian opinion power attempts to cut down party opposition by making a new type of linguistic communication where prevarication becomes truth, where people can non gestate their ideas, where the so called “ thoughtcrime ” which is the worst of all condemnable activities can be successfully and wholly eliminated. With the creative activity of Newspeak, non merely the manner of speech production and communicating signifiers could be manipulated, but history every bit good. For case Winston is non even cognizant of the existent day of the month, because history informations had been so often changed that it had a immense impact on his memory. The purpose of Oceania ‘s authorities was the entire obliteration of the old linguistic communication, in order to do people obedient retainers of the system. They tried to accomplish it non by force but by utilizing engineering. Their hoped consequence was that easy but decidedly everybody will acquire used to the new words and sentences when they want to make the talking degree of the others so that “ their omnipresent broadcast creates a force per unit area to use it merely in order to pass on economically. “ ( Chilton 1 ) . With this technique they could accomplish to steal the things that belong to each of us that make us human: the sense of clip, the ability to retrieve and to believe separately. The chief thought behind Newspeak was that if people do n’t hold a word for something they are non traveling to believe about it and traveling to bury it. As a effect, they will hold the same sentiment with the taking party even though what the party says is a prevarication. Very important minute when Winston is asked by O ‘ Brien how many of his fingers are shown. When something is repeated many times, one can believe that alternatively of the clear grounds of the four fingers, the reply is five.
Surveies show grounds that if a individual is shown two lines of different length, and a group of people suggests that the shorter is the longer one, the individual will believe it and state the evidently false thing as truth. The same happens by altering the linguistic communication. As cognition is power, the cognition of linguistic communication represents a powerful force every bit good. Winston sees merely fragments of history when he sees the articles that he has to alter in order to suit into the new image of the taking party. He is cognizant that history is altering twenty-four hours by twenty-four hours, but can non make anything against it, since he does non acquire the whole image. For illustration once it is written that cocoa part will be increased with 30 % , so the following twenty-four hours it is merely 25 % , but people think that they get more cocoa, because they do n’t hold the ability to retrieve, when everything and everybody says the antonym. When contrasting thoughts are often repeated after one another they become one and inseparable. “ If you tell a prevarication large plenty and maintain reiterating it, people will finally come to believe itaˆ¦the truth is the greatest enemy of the province ” ( Joseph Goebbels ) . In the novel there is Peace together with War ; Freedom together with Slavery, and Ignorance with Strength. Furthermore the names of ministries ( Ministry of Love where the most barbarous anguishs are traveling on, the Ministry of Truth: where history is changed and falsified each twenty-four hours, and the Ministry of Peace, where war is declared ) attempt to make a entire confusion, when there is nil else left but accepting the thoughts of the system. The same thing happened in world in the Soviet Union, when one twenty-four hours Trotsky appeared to be a civil war hero, and old ages subsequently as an agent of Mensheviks ( 1 ) Datas can be easy manipulated and undependable. Because the degree of our cognition is extremely limited, what we receive as truth might be misdirecting. “ Orwell ‘s dystopia strips adult male of his freedom to talk, and therefore denies him the ability to develop complex ideas, doing him a slave to work forces more clever than he. ” ( 3 ) When people believed that our Earth is level and if they reach its border they would fall down from it. It seems now a pathetic illustration, and one might believe how could people believe such bunk. We have to see nevertheless, that for those people it was a piece of truth, in those old ages they could n’t state what gravity is, they did non cognize about it, hence they did non hold a word for it. The best illustration for conceptualization is the Bible, when Prophetss in the Old Testimony are shown visions of future, but they could depict those things merely with the objects that they had seen or had a word for. When Elijah rose up to the Eden on a manager of fire, it could hold been a UFO every bit good, but in those yearss at that place had n’t been seen such a thing as a winging disk.
“ As they were walking along and speaking together, all of a sudden a chariot of fire and Equus caballuss of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. ”
( 2 Kings 2:11 )
Language can specify the individuality of a individual or a state every bit good. In the play of Translations by Brian Friel, he shows how devolving it can be if people lose their ain national linguistic communication. British military personnels arrive into the peaceable Irish small town of Donegal, and get down altering the Celtic topographic point names into the King ‘s English. ( 4 ) One might believe, it is non a immense calamity, but if we think of our ain history when everybody was forced foremost to utilize German at schools and as an official linguistic communication, so to larn Russian compulsory as a foreign linguistic communication. Our linguistic communication defines our manner of believing non merely as an person but as a state. How can anybody depict the words Turorudi or Tevemaci if the individual has non seen them, or experienced them yet. Another interesting illustrations are the parlances or figure of address. It is non the same if we say “ it is non my cup of tea ” or “ ez nem AZ en asztalom ” . In 1984 the alteration is non so obvious as altering from Irish to English as in Translations, nevertheless the consequence is the same: loss of individuality, civilization and history.
Orwell created an ambiance in his novel which is so intolerable and dejecting that it can be a aftermath up call to the reader who has been kiping and woolgathering about a better hereafter and righteous authorities. If we are manipulated through our linguas it can take to incredible effects. In order to stay healthy persons, we have to better our apprehension and cognition of the universe, every bit good as maintain and enrich our linguistic communications, otherwise we might stop up like Winston stating: 2×2 peers 5.
June 9th, 2010
Beginnings:
1, Berkes, J. ( 2000, February 27 ) . Language as the “ Ultimate Weapon ” in Nineteen Eighty- Four. Retrieved June 9
2000 from hypertext transfer protocol: // www.sysdesign.ca/archive/berkes_1984_language.html
2, Sideris, J. ( 1998 ) Psychological Manipulation Through the Debasement of Language in Orwell ‘s Nineteen Eighty-Four
1998 from hypertext transfer protocol: // www.gradnet.de/papers/pomo98.papers/jysideris_a98.html
3, Kormos, J. , Csolle A. ( 2004 ) . Topics in applied linguistics. ( pp. 97 ) . Budapest: Elte Eotvos Kiado
4, O’Brien, H. ( 2000, November 8 ) . Translations of Brian Friel
2000 from hypertext transfer protocol: // www.culturevulture.net/Theater/Translations.html
