The thing about language and culture is that they adapt. This essay of of Orwell has been pretty popular for a while and people know what language to avoid when employing Orwellian tactics.<p>A modern example of Orwellian language can be found in the advertiser based businesses helmed by many of the biggest tech companies. If you are using straightforward language, the products built by these extremely profitable companies have one singular purpose - to collect as much data as possible from the user, while keeping the user in the dark about it, and then use the data to manipulate user behavior so that they buy the stuff advertisers sell them.<p>But with the way these companies talk about their products, you'd be hard pressed to figure out how the products make money. They'd make grandiose claims about how they are changing the world for the better, how they are connecting people, how they are producing value and so on... all the while deceiving the users.
Orwell was a far better essayist than a novelist, so it's a shame they don't get read as much. I highly recommend the one where he analyses some children's stories: <a href="https://orwell.ru/library/essays/boys/english/e_boys" rel="nofollow">https://orwell.ru/library/essays/boys/english/e_boys</a>.<p>The political implications he teased out are very interesting.
I think of this more as Hemingway-esque rather than Orwell-esque, but whenever I look at anything I wrote, I almost always take words out.<p>> Bad writers, and especially scientific, political, and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous, and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon numbers(<p>Exactly. MBA-speak 101 == "Use the longer words. It sounds more management-y. We don't 'use' -- we 'utilize.' "
These techniques are still used today by propaganda outlets.
It is sad that Orwell reads not as fiction, but as reality.<p>And the best one i read a couple of days ago: CIA sponsored the movie 1984. The same CIA which employs methods like the ones in the book and in the film.
From the link:
PRETENTIOUS DICTION. Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate, are used to dress up a simple statement and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgements<p>Reminds me of 'safe and effective', lol
If you’re afraid of opening links from .ru, perhaps you’ll be happier with .us ;-)<p><a href="https://deathray.us/ebooks/orwell_politics.html" rel="nofollow">https://deathray.us/ebooks/orwell_politics.html</a>
I have so little respect for journalists. Even the highbrow news sources people love to share links to here are incredibly weasely. They all sound like Orwell's strawmen.<p>If you ever want to verify this for yourself, watch a video capture of a big news story. I did it few times and I was shocked at the tenuous grip on reality the corresponding articles had.<p>PS: where can us non-journalist peasants get access to data free from the priestly interpretations of jouranlists? EG the recent epstein list, or the leaked no fly list from a few years back. Searching this is always just pages of pages of journospam.
At first it seems slightly dissonant that this is on a .ru domain, given what Orwell had to say about Russia, the Russian revolution and Communism. But, on reflection, maybe that is all the more reason why a .ru domain is appropriate.<p>I love the clarity of Orwell's writing. To me, Orwell and Kafka (I've only read English translations) are paragons of clear and beautiful prose.