akrish

This article by George Orwell is really interesting and pretty funny.

Orwell talks about how the english language has been polluted through evolution, and how writers tend to be verbose and ambiguous rather than trying to get their point across. He cites a lot of examples which I’ve seen and heard frequently in writing, speeches, and even common language, showing that even though the article is like 50 years old, it’s still very relevant.

One of the funniest parts is when he translates a line from Ecclesiastes into modern English.

Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English:

Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

Seriously… look at that second sentence. First of all it’s really hard to read quickly. Secondly, it doesn’t really say anything. And thirdly, the first sentence provides wonderful imagery while the second sentence is completely abstract. And I’m not kidding, I’ve seen a lot of writing like that (and I’ve even written like that a lot).

One of the problems is that society encourages us to write like that (at least to some extent). I remember that college applications like to see that you have a strong vocabulary, so we include “big” words into our essays when smaller words suffice or are better. Same with the writing I’ve done in college, people don’t seem to argue with you’re writing if it looks like you know what you’re talking about and to do that, you use this cryptic constructs and ambiguous vocabulary.

Orwell continues to talk about politics, and how political writing (including speeches) is complete garbage in terms of language. Since politics is so much about pleasing your audience, phrases that present catastrophes in a “not-so-bad” light are often used. As an example, Orwell writes, “Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.” And with the Iraq war, how often have events that would surely be met with public disapproval been covered up with vagaries and euphemisms?

And I hear it a lot in campaign rhetoric, that I don’t even follow that much. Plans and promises on both sides are kept intentionally vague for obvious reasons, but this usage of language promotes itself as politicians are seen as role models. I don’t really know too much about politics so please correct me if I’m wrong. I prefer to stick to my programs, where language is rigid and being ambiguous means being incorrect.

Orwell then suggests how we can work to fix this language, if you’re interested I recommend the read. It’s pretty fascinating.