Abstract
This paper attempts a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of mind control strategies in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948). More specifically, the paper tries to shed lights on the discursive practices that are used to control the public’s minds in a way that guarantees complete compliance to a specific ideology. Orwell’s novel is one of the distinguished narratives in the twentieth century. This type of fiction has always been a site of power conflict reflecting the atrocities committed against the public by those in power. The main objective of the paper is to uncover the strategies employed to control minds. It tries to explore the extent to which these discursive tactics are used to direct attitudes and change behavior. The paper therefore attempts to offer a linguistic shield against the manipulative use of language. In doing so, the paper adopts CDA in the analysis of the selected data. Some CDA’s strategies have been marked and analyzed as indicative in exposing the extent to which language is biased towards mind control. Three main strategies are discussed here: simplification, euphemism and morphologicalization. The paper reveals that specific discursive practices have manipulatively been used by the elites to reformulate the ideological responses and attitudinal thinking of the masses.
Highlights
Using language to control minds is one of the major themes presented in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four
Concerning the research question No 1: what are the different Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)’s strategies employed to manipulate minds in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four? The paper showed that mind control is linguistically evidenced through a number of strategies, such as simplification, euphemism and morphologicalization
All of which depend totally on the ideological use of lexis. These strategies have linguistically been manifested in different tactics, including slogans and caption; naming and/or renaming things and mollification; and derivation, inflection, coinage, compounding and reduction
Summary
Using language to control minds is one of the major themes presented in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Oceania’s citizens are ruled by a socialist system under the name of the Party headed by a powerful leader called Big Brother. This system employs different tactics to restrict the freedom of the public. In Orwell’s Oceania, different types of linguistic manipulation have been practiced against the masses. This manipulative linguistics is known as “Orwellian linguistics” (Hodge & Fowler, 1979) which is developed through the passage of time to be Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The present paper is supposed to make a connection between the narrative and the linguistic within the context of politics
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