The breakdown of newspeak

Abstract

Abstract Many attempts have been made to create Newspeaks. But in light of what is now known about such attempts, it is clear that not even the most successful of them has come anywhere near to realization of Orwell's projection. Rather than these Newspeaks becoming increasingly fine‐tuned, comprehensive instruments of totalitarian control, as suggested in 1984, quite an opposite development has taken place. The peoples upon whom Newspeaks have been imposed have learned to live with and manipulate these artificial languages, and their effectiveness has declined rather than increased over time. The present paper explores this degeneration of Newspeak, examining some of the assumptions about language, man, and society underlying Orwell's picture of the future. It makes explicit the theory of totalitarian control based on language that is implicit in 1984 and then shows that several fundamental assumptions of this theory are patently Utopian while others are highly implausible. Apart from its rich insights into the dynamics of totalitarianism, even the Utopian elements of 1984 help us to understand better the limitations of as well as the possibilities for totalitarian control in contemporary society by placing in relief the conditions that would have to be met for such control actually to be realized. Setting forth these conditions makes clear why these conditions could never be met in reality.