Political Language

The Miami Book Fair last weekend featured a discussion among the authors of "WHAT ORWELL DIDN'T KNOW: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics" edited by ANDRAS SZANTO. The session followed a conference titled "There You Go Again: Orwell Comes to America" held at the New York Public Library on November 7th. Both recommended an essay by George Orwell titled "Politics and the English Language."

Orwell wrote better than I ever will, so I recommend you read his essay. In 1946 he wrote that people were using the English language badly. Were he writing today, he would still find that speeches and articles were filled with ugly phrases, sentences and paragraph, and that they failed to clearly communicate fact and opinion, and also that many people used the language to deliberately create false impressions in the minds of the audience. Today he would find that politicians and flacks have learned more from social and behavioral scientists about how to trigger emotional responses with words and images, and now use those skills more effectively to avoid informed reason by the audience, thereby selling their own products or messages. Too often a political speech is like a magicians act, hands waving to misdirect the audience's attention from the real action.

Orwell was concerned, correctly I believe, that not only does poor use of language lead to poor thinking, and poor thinking to poor use of language, but the cycle is self-reinforcing. The more degraded language we read and the more degraded is that language, the more likely we are to fall into the use of degraded language ourselves.

An example of dishonest appeals to emotion in political discourse, given in the conference, is the way Republicans have used the concept of "supporting our troops". They have managed to confound "support our troops" with "support U.S. involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan". All citizens should support the men and women who volunteer for military service, especially in times when they are exposed to battlefield dangers, and even more so when they return injured in body, mind or spirit from their service. There is no logical implication that because we support our troops we should support the war our government has sent them to fight.

The military forces, in our system, do not pick and choose which wars to fight. They do what they are ordered to do by civilian elected authorities. Supporting the military is not equivalent to supporting the decisions which send them into danger. Much less does supporting our troops imply we should support the politicians who sent them into danger. Indeed, the best way to support our military may be to elect a new administration and new legislators who will bring them home.

We are emotional. There is no firewall between brain and hormones. If you don't want to be manipulated by the cynical use of language, try to be aware of how language manipulates emotions thereby to influence thought. Use your reason to control your emotions.

I resent the action of politicians who seek to play on my emotions and those of my fellow citizens to obtain support for policies and actions we would not rationally support. I will vote against the worse offenders of those on offer in an election. I suggest you do also.

Orwell wrote in his essay:

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 regime 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. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way.

"Democracy" should not mean government by those who most effectively manipulate our emotions to advance their own positions and policies. It seems especially inappropriate to the proper function of our democracy when politicians cynically manipulate us by appealing to our basest emotions -- fear rather than empathy, anger rather than calm, greed rather than generosity. Lets not let any of them get away with that kind of manipulation!

Orwell closed his essay with suggestions that would help writers defend the English language. That defense, he wrote,

is especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outworn its usefulness. It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one's meaning clear, or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a "good prose style." On the other hand, it is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words that will cover one's meaning. What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose -- not simply accept -- the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one's words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never us a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

I recommend these rules to anyone, but especially to anyone who wants my vote (or my business)!