A Brave New Language: Orwell's Invention of "Newspeak" in 1984

Abstract

Unfortunately, we're not there yet. We're only in the year 1986, and our Revolution has not yet been completed. Our final Revolution, as Zamiatine would say, the one which will lead us to the ideal state where nothing else will ever happen. Our society is still at a stage in its history when linguistic difference exists, when Oldspeak, an everyday and ordinary language, coexists with Newspeak, the official language of the Party, of the government of the people, a perfect language, the best of languages. The road leading to this language purified of all heretical thought, in which thought-crime will be quite simply unthinkable, is long and rough. But, inspired by Big Brother's doctrine, a cohort of anonymous and tenacious linguists, champions of language, are laboring relentlessly on a gigantic project of linguistic purification. Their devotion is admirable, and they will more than fulfill the objectives of the project, the tenth edition of the Newspeak dictionary. Shakespeare and Milton have already been translated; Swift, Byron, Dickens, and others will soon follow. And then the Revolution will be complete: no human being will ever again understand the old language, a dead language which dooms man's memory to oblivion. No one will be left to speak, to write, to remember ... except the proletarians. But the proles are not human beings, Syme, the philologist, would add.