Dying Metaphors In George Orwell's Essay

very entertaining towards people who have interest in politics and it will also help writers who are beginners by providing them with better knowledge in writing skills. I also think that Orwell provided good, clear, and simple examples to have better understanding to his argument. I also believe that he explained how language could affect thought in a moral way.

George Orwell, in an essay from Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays titled “Politics and the English Language” (1950), argues that the English language, through a cyclical process of sloven language and foolish thought, has become “ugly and inaccurate.” He supports his argument by using expert opinion, metaphors, and historical context. Orwell’s purpose is to demonstrate the debasement of the English language in order to prompt writers to make a conscious change in their writing . He adopts an informal tone (“Look back throughout this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against”) for writers in a time of political turnover and rising superpowers.

The purpose of Orwell’s essay is to educate the reader to the decline of written English. He also means to expose politicians for manipulating the English language. Orwell writes during the time of the Communist Soviet Union, when dictators like Stalin had full political control over the government. In this time, Stalin and other corrupt leaders manipulated the people in order to gain more power. Orwell argues that politicians use worn-out metaphors with no meaning in order to confuse their audience. Orwell is trying to enlighten people about how politicians abuse people to get what they want, which is a crucial thing to understand in a

George Orwell’s essay, Politics and the English Language, first published in 1946, talks about some “bad habits”, which have driven the English language in the wrong direction, that is, away from communicating ideas. In his essay he quotes five passages, each from a different author, which embody the faults he is talking about. He lists dying metaphors, operators, pretentious diction, and meaningless words as things to look out for in your own writing and the writing of others (593-595). He talks about political uses of the English language. Our language has become ugly and the ugliness impedes upon communication. Ugly uses of language have been reinforced and passed down in the population “even among people who should and do know

Orwell begins his essay claiming that the “English language is in a bad way” which he continuously gives examples of throughout the rest of the essay. From the start, it is clear that Orwell believes that the English language is on a continuous downward spiral that is not caused by one person, but by the collection of everyone. Language has become ugly and inaccurate, which engages no imagery and makes the people look foolish, making the idea worthless. People have stopped trying to make their statements precise and as clear to the audience as possible, which is spreading to the next generations. They also are more concerned with how the sentence looks with big vocabulary, often using those words or phrases incorrectly, than about the big

Using the English language effectively can be difficult at times. You must consider many factors: who your audience is, what kind of tone you wish to convey, the message you are attempting to get across, and any kind of lasting effect wished upon a reader’s mind. After reading through two essays, Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” and Brockenbrough’s “Does IM Make U Dum?” each reveals different mindsets about the advancement and usage of the English language. On one hand, Orwell seems to advocate the simplification of speech and writing. Rather than seemingly sagacious phrases, useless terms, and

Tone Orwell creates a melancholic tone when he describes Winston’s thoughts after he goes against the Party. In the novel it states “He was already dead, he reflected” (27).The word dead has a negative connotation because it is usually associated with loss. In this passage the word “dead” has the connotation of lost hope.

Language is all around us, it is how we communicate with one another, it brings meaning to literature, and is cemented into our culture. Walt Whitman, a famous American novelist from the 19 century, highlights the effects of language on the American population in his essay, Slang in America. He focuses on positive aspect of slang, how we adapt slang into the english language, as if it is second nature to use, giving a deeper meaning to everyday phrases and words. By contrast, Politics and the English Language, by George Orwell, does not highlight the positive side to slang, instead looking at how authors have started to write with no purpose, no meaning in their texts. George Orwell, in Politics and the English Language, creates an connotation between ideas and an appeal to logos to convince the reader that writers have started to write meaningless pieces of work and could have potentially negative effects on the American people. Compared to Walt Whitman’s use of an unifying tone and an appeal to pathos in Slang in America, that highlights the positive effects of the English language on the American people.

What defines a human is their ability to think and show emotion. In George Orwell’s 1984 the Party prevents its citizens from thinking or showing emotion. The Thought Police regulate people’s thoughts and the telescreen ensures that people only show emotion that has a positive bearing on the Party. In this passage, O’Brien makes an important analogy comparing Winston’s condition to the Party’s ability to wipe out humanity. O’Brien begins this passage by describing the characteristics of Winston’s rotting and disgusting body using imagery. He says, “‘filthy grime all over your body…you stink like a goat…I could snap your neck like a carrot…hair is coming out in handfuls’” (Orwell 272). The imagery and figurative language that O’Brien uses

In the midst of the Cold War, the fear of communism was spreading across the US like wildfire. In 1949 George Orwell publishes 1984 to depict a future dystopian society controlled by a totalitarian government. He hopes to show his readers what effect communism can potentially have through the government in the novel known as the Party. This government makes numerous efforts to control not only all aspects of the present life for its citizens but also all aspects of the past. It is seen as the ultimate power striking fear in all of its citizens’ minds. In Orwell’s novel, he uses the character Winston to show how a totalitarian government attempts to control its citizens’ free will to order to be the supreme power; Winston, however, does his best to not conform.

By sheer virtue of its size, ridding the internet of this toxicity is destined to be a long and fraught process. However, as is true of all the political scandals discussed in this essay, solutions based upon the achievement of greater accountability and responsibility must prevail. Beginning at the top, those in positions of influence must be willing to change the way political discourse is conducted, both on and offline. It seems clear that the obfuscating techniques of “euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness” condemned by George Orwell have engendered the rise of “post truth” politics, whereby “objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief” (Orwell, 1968 [1946]:

I believe he speaks of the puddle to show that the prisoner was a healthy, conscious man. This essay illustrates how immense of a thing it is to kill a human. How in a couple of minutes, with an abrupt snap, the prisoner would be gone - there would be one one less mind. You can see this in a couple of passages in the essay. You see it in Orwell's thought of the idea of taking another human's life. He discusses how foreign and wrong it is that the prisoner, could be walking along, and two minutes later, would be dead. He speaks of the wrongness of cutting a life short when it is in full tide.

In particular, George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” discusses how over the course of time, English language has slowly degraded into a new form in which we as a collective lack precision of language. Orwell also notes that “staleness of imagery” has depreciated across many mediums of writing. As these two qualities act upon each other, one is left with a bland piece of writing which lacks any sort of creativity, but also affects how one may perceive such writing. Without these traits, many may use generic phrases as metaphors which completely lack any sort of concreteness Further, Orwell discusses such consequences of vague language in

After citing the passages, Orwell mentions how modern writers use dying metaphors, operators or verbal false limbs, pretentious diction, and meaningless words

George Orwell, the writer of many highly regarded literary works, is extremely interested in the power of language, mainly how it is abused. By analyzing two of his works, 1984 and Politics and The English Language, it is clear that Orwell is using his writing to bring awareness to the dangers of the manipulation, misuse, and decline of language. In 1984 he demonstrates how language can be used to control thought and manipulate the past. This is proven throughout the novel by examining the language of Newspeak and how it is key to controlling the totalitarian state, and how using language to alter and manipulate history can shape reality. In his essay Politics and the English Language Orwell