Politics and the English Language
On Thursday last week, I had a very rare and blissful weekday away from my desk. In the sun, I read and re-read George Orwell’s essay, Politics and the English Language.
(You can find it easily online, but I’m not going to link to it. I say you should go and buy it in a collection of Orwell’s essays – everybody should have at least some Orwell on the book shelf. If you do decide to get the essay online, don’t read at your desk – print it off and go and read it in the garden with a cold beer like I did.)
After finishing it, and after suppressing a panicky and almost irresistible urge to bury Chicken Yoghurt under the patio and retire to a life of online trappism, I was pleased to find I’ve reached some of the same conclusions as Orwell did on the subject of the use of English and political writing, just by my own route.
For those who haven’t read it, Orwell sets out how poor, lazy writing, particularly in politics – the use of tired metaphors, the garnishing of verbs with operators (make contact with, be subjected to etc.), pretentious diction and meaningless words – leads to poor, lazy thinking. In turn, poor, lazy thinking leads to poor lazy writing etc. etc. until the end of time. Modern writing, he says…
…consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.
Which is the new Chicken Yoghurt strapline right there. Orwell shows withering contempt for phrases like ride roughshod over, toe the line, give rise to, with respect to, phrases that this site is riddled with. My cheeks are hot with shame. It was a relief though, to read that good writing…
…has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one’s meaning clear, or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a “good prose style.”
Hope for me yet.
Orwell’s scorn for “pretentious diction” – not a sin I think I’m guilty of – is something that really gets me kicking the cat, particularly when it comes from the oh-so-superior and better-paid caste of newspaper columnists. Take Polly Toynbee and her fondness for the phrase bien pensant for instance (there are other examples). Revealing myself (yet again) as an ill-educated clot, I’ll admit I have no idea what it means. And frankly, I respect neither Toynbee nor her writing enough to go and find out in order to understand the points she’s making. I have enough French however to know that the first syllable of pensant is pronounced ponce.
Why use such phrases if not to boast of a superior education and flatter the egos of those readers fortunate enough to have had the same? Toynbee’s columns become upper-middle class closed shops and hers are not the only ones. This isn’t inverted snobbery on my part – if these writers would only resist the temptation to parade their vast intellects they’d then reach a wider audience and I (and others like me, I hope) would reach the end of the column, possibly with my views changed or at least my train of thought diverted, instead of turning the page in disgust.
But it’s the awful, lip-licking euphemisms and the insulting low standards of writing and speech from politicians that I like to whine on about endlessly and it was very nice to have my prejudices confirmed by someone as eminent as Orwell. I, of course, didn’t arrive at my conclusions via a perceptive analysis of the use of English but via the less worthy road of my obsession with the corrupt, febrile and rancid personalities of most politicians (don’t blame me – they started it). Take one of my favourites, Peter Hain, and what he calls his “political journey” over the course of his life. What he really means by the term is that he now votes for and defends policies – like house arrest without trial, cluster-bombing civilians and the ban on peaceful protest – that 30 years ago would have driven him to blood-spitting fury.
“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible,” says Orwell. “Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.”
See also collateral damage – that’s dead civilians to me and you – and the favourite of low-wage conservatives like Blair, Gordon Brown and Conferation of British Industry director general, Digby Jones – flexible labour markets. Which means employers should be able to sack workers more easily, pay them lower wages, make them work longer hours and not worry so much about providing a safe working environment.
Orwell’s example is the use of the word democracy:
In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.
This is demonstrated when you hear Tony Blair and George Bush talk about democracy in Iraq. The flavour of democracy on sale in Iraq right now is very different from the flavour we have here in the West. Blair and Bush can point to the brave souls in downtown Baghdad risking their lives to put a piece of paper in a box but they then ignore the fact that fatwas issued by clerics, vote rigging and intimidation affected the results. Hence the south of the country is now fast becoming like Taliban-era Afghanistan, but hey! the Iraqis got democracy.
The recent Iranian election result wasn’t to the liking of Jack Straw and Donald Rumsfeld and so they expressed doubts of the legitimacy of the poll. Fair enough, I happen to agree with them. But I notice they didn’t dwell on the reports of voting irregularities that were circulating at the time of the election in Iraq, including stories of our allies the Kurds preventing ChaldoAssyrian Christiansfrom exercising their democratic rights.
I’d like to think that, were he alive, Orwell would have a reserved special place in his heart for Tony Blair, him being guilty of what Orwell called “a lifeless, imitative style.” You only have to look at the speech Blair made to the European Parliament last week:
It is time to give ourselves a reality check. To receive the wake-up call. The people are blowing the trumpets round the city walls. Are we listening? Have we the political will to go out and meet them so that they regard our leadership as part of the solution not the problem?
Reality check, wake-up call, part of the solution not the problem. And that was just in one paragraph. Is there an upper limit for the number of cliches you can use in one paragraph? Blair is fast approaching the Parody Barrier and once he breaks it will reach escape velocity and be beyond satire.
“Of course we need a social Europe. But it must be a social Europe that works,” he said. Fine, but what is a social Europe? Were there any people in the pubs across Europe that night slapping their foreheads and shouting “My God! He’s right. Of course we need a social Europe!”?
(This “The people are blowing the trumpets round the city walls. Are we listening?” shtick from Blair also shows his increasing separation from reality, not being one to listen to many trumpets himself. Whether it be a million people marching against war or 78% or the electorate either voting against him or abstaining at the general election)
But then, most people with even half an ear on what comes out of Tony Blair’s mouth and the mouths of any New Labour hack will know what Orwell is talking about. In his essay he mentions not once but twice, a dying metaphor that Blair is particularly fond of: “stand shoulder to shoulder with“. How many times have you heard Blair say that since September 11 2001? Politics and the English Language was written in April 1946. Considering how accurately it critiques Blair-speak, it could have been written at any point since Blair’s ascendancy to the Labour leadership in 1994.
Another recent example is Gordon Brown’s speech that he made at the Mansion House last Wednesday. It was widely trailed (itself another euphemism: it means “the media were told what he was going to say before he said it”) and shown live on the 24-hour TV news channels. I came across it by accident and, after getting past the realisation that Gordon Brown always looks like he’s just got out of bed and his hair looks as if it’s got an accumulation of a week’s worth of Brylcreem in it, I came to the conclusion that although he was talking, he wasn’t actually saying anything. “Global Britain, Global Europe”? What does that mean? And how about this:
And in a global economy that requires not just entrepreneurial traders but all round flexibility, the Britain that will succeed will be the Britain that nurtures the spirit of enterprise from our classrooms to our boardrooms, and makes the long term decisions so that as a nation we will move up the value added chain and invest in science, skills and transport and infrastructure, not least by speeding up an all to inflexible planning system to speed up investment in housing and commerce – making Britain the premier location for R and D and the world leader in skills and the creative industries.
“all round flexibility”, “spirit of enterprise”, “the value added chain”? I’ve clearly missed the bus to the future where instead of nadsat we’re supposed to speak in impressive-sounding snatches that can mean almost anything. But Orwell also says:
A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity.
Brown’s speech was the oratorical equivalent of a Pot Noodle. I decided some other poor sod could try and digest it and headed for tastier dishes. The next day’s Independent was able to sum up the Chancellor’s interminable, nutrition-free message to Europe in just three words: “reform or stagnate.”
And so I find, that when people talk about a phrase being “Orwellian”, it is not the Newspeak and Doublethink of 1984 that they are referring to but this essay where Orwell tries to save a drowning language. Nothing much much changed since he wrote it almost 60 years ago but I find there’s a personal satisfaction in listening to Orwell and trying to rescue the language oneself in some small way. There’s certainly a smug thrill to be had in creating new metaphors.
If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase – some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse – into the dustbin, where it belongs.
Orwell has his detractors on both the Left and the Right. Being a latecomer to him and his writing, I’m not yet sure why this is so but I’m hoping the biography I’ve just bought will tell me. I’d argue however that what he says to writers in Politics and the English Language is nigh on irrefutable.
Most of us can’t afford sub-editors or proof-readers to polish our prose and buff up our banter. But imagine having George Orwell looking over your shoulder, constantly encouraging you to come up with something new and find fresh ways of expression. Wouldn’t that be something?
The challenge now, for me, is to put Orwell’s words where my mouth is.
UPDATE: Yahoo News: An ice pack by any other name…
Tessa Jowell, Britain’s secretary of state for culture, offered these examples of bureaucratic gobbledygook: “sustainable eating in schools” (more fruits and vegetables) and “regional cultural data feedback rollout” (getting new information from different regions).
Posted on June 27th, 2005 at 12:08pm under Culture, media and sport, UK politics
| Related posts... • Orwell for all (again) • links for 2008-05-08 • Iain Dale and the Orwell Prize for Blogging: not like a windowpane |
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• 20 Comments |
You’ve reminded me of my next book-hunt project. Ta. It’s about time I picked up more Orwell – even if he is often lauded a tad more than may rightfully be his due… But then again, I’m probably just jealous as it means I’ll never be the most famous writer from the village where I grew up – he lived just down the road when he was a kid. The bastard.
Which biography though? I gather DJ Taylor’s is the best of the recent batch.
You’ll be all right as long as you do what he said, not what he did. In practice Orwell’s “plain style” was a tremendous con: setting himself up as the free-thinking, plain-spoken Englishman, unencumbered by dogma or affectation, enabled him to present his opinions as simple common sense and tear into anyone who was foolish or malicious enough to disagree with him. Watch out for the sleeve-tugging “surely we can all agree” phrases which he uses to preface his more sweeping statements, and the careful qualifications which he follows them with – qualifications which don’t actually change his argument but do make it impossible to challenge (he didn’t say all Communists are soulless power-worshippers, just most of them…) It’s particularly apparent when you see how his opinions changed over time: in some cases he advances diametrically opposed opinions, each time with the same emotive introductions (“No reasonable person can doubt”, “We all know in our heart of hearts”) and the same rebuttal-dodging qualifications.
I used to like Orwell a lot; I still think his essays are worth reading, and Homage to Catalonia is a great book. But his political evolution was really pretty awful, and his style is of a piece with it.
I’m kinda surprised you hadn’t read it already, what with the quirky metaphors and the like
Orwell’s essay is probably his most acclaimed piece of work (in that no one has ever said it was anything other than exemplary, and not EVERYONE likes 1984, Animal Farm or Catalonia).
It is splendid of course, as are most of his essays (even if the politics in some of them are questionable) which is why I’ve had an amazon link to the essays book on me blog for a while now.
I think I’ve read everything he’s written bar Wigan Pier, and have to say his ideas always outshine his prose. Take Down and Out as the prime example. Save one or two choice phrases, any dogsbody newshound could probably have written it, but most certainly couldn’t have conceived it in the first place.
Anyways, I could sit and chat about Orwell all day, so he must be doing something right. I tend to forgive him his politics, because he was writing during/between the wars, which made even the paragon of sense, Bertie Russell come up with crazy whack-job ideas.
The one slight I would take with Orwell’s 6 rules is the long words jibe – similar to how you pick up on Toynbee. Pointless French is pretty crappy, like pointless Latin, but the more words you know, the more poetic you can make your prose.
A lot of the stuff I’ve written over the last few months, I couldn’t have written as well two years ago, even if it would’ve been better understood then.
The English language is so beautiful, and one of the best ways to preserve it is for those that are widely read (so we’re talking columnists and authors here) to dip into their voluminous vocabulary and hopefully encourage their readers to look things up that they don’t understand, thus educating themselves.
That and I love Will Self’s stuff.
It’s fair of St George to say that it would be silly to oppose all Americanisms, but “Reality check, wake-up call, part of the solution not the problem” should surely be stifled: ugly, silly, thought-avoiding, boring Americanisms. The only new expression that I’ve heard lately that I keenly admire is “the autistic spectrum”. That does seem to encompass neatly a useful idea.
You should also read the interview with David Miliband in the Independent today:
“Over the past 20 years, a strong economic contract has been developed which is clear about the respective roles of government, private sector and individual citizens. We have a challenge to build as strong and durable a social contract and a political contract to match that economic contract. We have got to build a social contract that is clear about how you build respect. We have to develop respect on the basis of extended opportunities and a sense of ownership rather than a reliance on deference which would have been the way the social contract was built 50 years ago.”
It almost makes sense when you really think hard about it.
And then you have American politicians using Americanisms and talking out of their asses.
One neat little NuLabour phrase to watch for is ‘I don’t recognise…’ as in ‘I don’t recognise the elephant in the drawing room’. Lacks the clarity of ‘I disagree’ (as well as the need to explain how and why) or the finality of ‘you’re wrong’.
PS: Labour doesn’t do nadsat, droogie, it does duckspeak.
I’d second Phil on Orwell. Old Mr Decency Pants is a right devious bugger when you get down to it. Have you ever had a crack at Mencken? he’s incredibly fluent, and since he was a right wing libertarian who you’re probably not going to agree with anyway he can’t use a basic similarity of outlook as a basis for ethical blackmail.
Oh, and:
“Of course we need a social Europe. But it must be a social Europe that works,”
This is where I disagree with Blair. I think we need a social Europe that doesn’t work. What an arse.
Brilliant post. (And I mean that in the American usage, not the British over-usage.) Especially this: “I have enough French however to know that the first syllable of pensant is pronounced ponce.”
You’re right, that clichés should be driven from our language with a sharp stick; however, I cannot endorse this cavalier dismissal of grammar. Your wrong about it’s importance. (See? That hurts, doesn’t it?)
That said, and having worked in politics (American) I can see how this nonsense-speech develops. God forbid you offend anyone with “plain” language, or the American media will let you have it with the aforementioned sharp stick–see Howard Dean for an example. The British media seems just as bad, n’est pas? (Pardon my pretentious Frenchism.)
One politician who did a bang up job was Barack Obama at the Dem. convention. His language really sparkled, not a tired phrase to be found. Try to find his speech online if you can.
Of course, it may have too many Americanisms for your taste–what exactly is an Americanism anyway? And are British-isms a-okay then? Or only when they don’t come from the arse?
Barak Obama’s speech here.
I disagree that it is empty of cliche, but the cliches he invokes are signs of larger concepts, visionary symbols shimmering in the minds of Americans. Constitution. Belief. Self-betterment. Freedom. Hope. Opportunity. Etc.
British politics is often full of empty corporate speak (I am vehemently against the word ‘leverage’) because, well, there’s no higher, vision thing that everyone agrees on about Britain. For such a wee country, it is astonishingly less able to agree on what the country is all about than the sprawling messy mass that is America.
Yes, whatever you think of Orwell, this is one of those essays that makes you look up and swear to be a better person isn’t it?
But I think he undervalues overusage. The Greeks (sorry sorry…I know, pretentious education) used set words and phrases in their dramas and epics (trope, figure, epithet) to remind spectators of larger myths, older stories, the shared socio-cultural heritage of the audience. Like Barak Obama actually… The vision thing again. Although, I make the caveat that ‘constitution’ means something entirely different in Texas to in Vermont.
As for Americanisms and pointless use of French, I certainly find myself using Americanisms more when I want to make a more forceful, unsubtle point, and living in France means that sometimes it’s really hard to think of an English word that does the job as well as a French one. And vice versa. Not sure that’s what Polly’s doing though.
Anyway, Justin, I love this post. I dithered about putting anything about Orwell into the sharpener piece, and in the end didn’t, and I’m glad, because you did a much better job saying something new about something classic.
Nosemonkey: I’ve actually picked up three Orwell biographies which is overkill I know but they were going cheap second hand. I got “George Orwell, A Life” by Bernard Crick, “Orwell: The Authorised Biography” by Michael Sheldon and “George Orwell” by Raymond Williams. Can’t vouch for the quality of any of them yet.
Phil and Jamie: I’m only vaguely aware of the criticisms against Orwell and I’m actually looking forward to getting to the bottom of them. I know he’s accused of shopping some communist mates to MI5 or whoever but apart from that I know very little.
Kathy and Katie: Well, I read the speech (another political speech after Blair’s and Brown’s was a big ask) and I have to admit it was a good one. Even allowing for the lack of context and his delivery it’s as good an evocation of the American Dream as you’re likely to hear without the common descent into the unthinking saccharine (see W’s folksy downhome routine) that us cynical Brits detest.
Paul: I know what you mean about using a wider vocabulary but I also remember what a teacher told when I was a kid: just because he was more educated than we were didn’t make him more intelligent. The idea of getting (semi-)complex ideas across in a simpler way to people who can understand and consider them but don’t necessarily have the educational background or possess a wider vocabulary is a seductive one for me. Not least because you’re able to share ideas with a wider audience.
I’m eternally grateful to Orwell for blowing my mind utterly with Homage to Catalonia, which told me that it’s possible to criticise Communism from the left. Obviously this isn’t quite so relevant now as it was in the thirties (or the seventies), but it’s still quite a valuable lesson in not believing the hype. Subsequently I got the Penguin Collected Journalism out of the school library and worked my way through it – all four volumes in succession – and drove my parents mad by quoting his words of wisdom at them (“George Orwell says…” – the last straw for my mother was being told how George Orwell said you should make a cup of tea).
Then I went to college and discovered Raymond Williams. (His book on Orwell is excellent, incidentally, but I’d recommend you get properly immersed in Orwell before you read it.) Both Orwell and Williams put their trust in the workers, but Williams was thinking of the people he had grown up with. Orwell put his trust in the workers precisely because he didn’t know them – and he felt that everyone he did know had let him down.
Fair point Justin and agree muchly. Whenever I write something properly (so, not on the blog then) I try and keep the balance between forcing people to learn the odd new word or two and staying generally engaging.
Both things are fun, and thus both have a place, unless I’m feeling exceptionally pretentious, or wanting to annoy Americans…
and my stolen contribution to the American/English political nonsense debate…
“Political gibberish is not a purely American art form, like jazz and safety blitz. But in only 200 years we have raised it to a new level of eloquence beyond anything since the time of the Caesars or even Genghis Khan” – Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine
p.s. Mencken is an absolute chap. His chrestomathy is alongside Orwell on the left of my blog page…
I wanted to put up a post the other day of his best political quotes, but thought it might not go down too well with the boss…
I’ll probably just hide it in the archives and add a subtle link somewhere…
“My cheeks are hot with shame.”
Thank you, thank you, all this time I thought it was just me!
Great work, Justin. You really do deserve a wider audience.
You mentioned ‘democracy’ in your post, and it reminded me of a passage in Brian Keenan’s An Evil Cradling, about his experiences as a hostage in Beirut:
“Some terrorists wear pin-stripe suits … they hide their terrorism behind institutions of law or social regulation that have more to do with control than liberation. This terror maintains the status quo and power brokerage in the hands of a select few. Democracy has become a myth-word. It has a magical quality. One has only to speak it and people bow down to it and worship it without knowing their own surrender.”
That was written in 1992, for God’s sake.
In practice Orwell’s “plain style” was a tremendous con: setting himself up as the free-thinking, plain-spoken Englishman, unencumbered by dogma or affectation, enabled him to present his opinions as simple common sense and tear into anyone who was foolish or malicious enough to disagree with him.
Or to put that another way, he was an excellent political writer. A short definition of good rhetoric is making your case seem obvious, indeed inescapable, to others.
On the “Orwell was a traitor” meme, I think it’s a beatup. The body he gave the celebrated list to was the Information Research Department, an agency of the Foreign Office that commissioned anti-communist propaganda. The worst that happened to anybody on the list was therefore that they didn’t receive commissions they would have refused anyway. And I’d say there was a damn good case against communism in 1948. 1948! When Stalin had just got around to reinvigorating the terror after its wartime relaxation! The year of the coup in Czechoslovakia!
More broadly, I’m currently rereading the Essays and it horrifies me that John Major got away with buggering “The Lion and the Unicorn” as far out of context as he did. And “Politics and the English Language” is a masterpiece.
Collected Essays is one of my favourite books, and one of the most important of the 20th century in my view. Although 1984 alone would be enough to guarantee Orwell a place among The Greats, it’s his essays that in many ways are the most significant part of his legacy. For a man of such keen intellect and clear vision to tackle so many different important subjects is a huge service to those of us who follow.
He’s like Einstein in that respect.
This is the version I have which I found one of those ace second-hand book shops on Charing Cross Road. For Politics and the English Language alone, it was one of the best £4.50s I ever spent.
Anybody with a few quid to spare should bid for it if they haven’t got it. (It’s not me selling, I should add.)
[...] I have an enduring fascination for political speeches, their construction and the language used, their underlying meanings. [...]