“One ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.” George Orwell, Politics & the English Language
Ralph Nader gave the keynote address on Monday at Americans Who Tell the Truth: Ethics, Integrity and the Law. Nader’s theme, more or less, was that the ruling elite creates a lot of myths to establish and maintain control over the masses; most Americans live within a “zone” of these myths where they avoid reality and tough moral choices. They give up their independent minds to “get along by going along” with the status quo and its system of rewarding belief in the myths. However, there is also a “zone of reality.” According to Nader, only by living in this zone can people confront our political system for what it is—an unjust regime of corporate control and lies—and hope to transform it into something better.
The Advocacy Center for Equality and Democracy agrees. We believe that positive social changes are only likely to result from effective citizen action. But unless people understand their roles in the political process, decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong rather than let their political party tell them, acknowledge the inequities and injustices that have resulted directly from America’s political choices, and recognize that it is up to them to change our society for the better, though, nothing will happen. In other words, people have to stop believing the myths and start living in reality.
Unfortunately, much of our political language works to keep people in the zone of myths. Nader spoke about this. One example he gave was the use of “detainee,” which has displaced “prisoner” in certain contexts. Of course, George Orwell wrote about this, too, all the way back in 1946 in Politics and the English Language.
Orwell argued in his essay that there are political consequences to the imprecise and sloppy language that characterized the prose of his day – particularly in political discourse. The “decay of language” produces decay of thought, for the stale “ready-made phrases” and “meaningless words” of politics allow people to be mentally lazy. People do not have to think for themselves to talk about politics because the discourse itself had become characterized by vagueness. If a political issue comes up for discussion, you can avoid having to think about it
“by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you—even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent—and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.” (emphasis added).
One should take George Orwell’s essay as a warning, though it is not one our society has heeded. One could easily find numerous examples each day of political writing showing how easily pundits can get away with writing fiction for fact. It sounds a rather dastardly thing to do, but, in fact, it is hard to avoid doing entirely. Orwell, himself, acknowledged that he was guilty of the very faults he decried. ACED, too, uses language irresponsibly, lazily, thoughtlessly (although we do try to avoid doing so). But the reader should know that about ACED and about all writers to guard against it. This is crucial. As Orwell put it, “[i]f one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary step toward political regeneration.”
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