Newspeak

Newspeak

Newspeak is the fictional language of Oceania, a totalitarian superstate that is the setting of dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell. In the novel, the Party created Newspeak: 309  to meet the ideological requirements of English Socialism in Oceania. Newspeak is a controlled language of simplified grammar and restricted vocabulary designed to limit the individual's ability to think and articulate "subversive" concepts such as personal identity, self-expression and free will. Such concepts are criminalized as thoughtcrime since they contradict the prevailing Ingsoc orthodoxy.In "The Principles of Newspeak", the appendix to the novel, Orwell explains that Newspeak follows most of the rules of English grammar, yet is a language characterised by a continually diminishing vocabulary; complete thoughts are reduced to simple terms of simplistic meaning. The political contractions of Newspeak—Ingsoc (English Socialism), Minitrue (Ministry of Truth), Miniplenty (Ministry of Plenty)—are described by Orwell as similar to real examples of German and Russian contractions in the 20th century. Like Nazi (Nationalsozialist), Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei), politburo (Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), Comintern (Communist International), kolkhoz (collective farm), and Komsomol (Young Communists' League), the contractions in Newspeak, often syllabic abbreviations, are supposed to have a political function already in virtue of their abbreviated structure itself: nice sounding and easily pronounceable, their purpose is to mask all ideological content from the speaker.: 310–8 The word "Newspeak" is sometimes used in contemporary political debate as an allegation that one tries to introduce new meanings of words to suit one's agenda.

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