Mr. Orwell, Mr. Schlesinger, and the Language

This originally appeared in an academic journal (College Composition and Communication, May 1977) read primarily by college English composition teachers. Re-reading it again in 2003, I find the critique of this essay by Orwell is still valid. But, I don't want to give the impression that I don't recognize or respect Orwell's enormous contributions. Having recently re-read 1984 again, I was impressed with its lasting value, that so much of it has remained continually applicable in every generation. If you haven't read it recently, do so. - Hugh Rank
In 1946, George Orwell published "Politics and the English Language," an essay reprinted so often in school texts that it's usually introduced as the Classic-Statement-About-the-Abuse-of-Language-by-Politicians. Orwell has been canonized as a certified Good Guy, Freedom Fighter, Lover of the People, popular instructor of the masses (via Animal Farm and 1984) about the evils of totalitarian socialism and communism. In brief: Saint George.

In 1974, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. published (in The American Scholar, Autumn, 1974, pp. 553-562), an essay, "Politics and the American Language," which began with this sentence: "It takes a certain fortitude to pretend to amend Orwell on this subject."

Schlesinger, too, is a good guy (solid credentials: satteth at the right hand of JFK, etc.) and a good writer (urbane, informed, insightful, scholarly, prolific) who does say some interesting things in his essay about the language in the Vietnam and Watergate era. But, because he's offering an amendment to update Orwell, perhaps he has missed some of the implications in the premises and assumptions of the original essay.

It probably wouldn't bother the world too much, except that I do have the feeling that the Orwell and Schlesinger essays are going to be reprinted in future text books as a matched set to be read by thousands of future students of language. If so, before we start the official coronation ceremonies, let me point out a few of the shortcomings of the emperors' new clothes.

Not only because Orwell's essay is often assigned reading in classrooms and held up as some kind of model but also because Orwell himself is raging against bad writing, lack of verbal precision, vagueness, and incompetence, it should be noted early that Orwell's essay suffers from serious stylistic flaws. Orwell opens by begging the question, by assuming to be true that which needs to be proven: "Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way." A few lines later: "Now, it is clear that the decline of language must ultimately have political and economic causes." (Beware of writers who seek assent to their ideas by casually, perhaps unconsciously, using phrasing that begs the question: obviously, certainly, clearly, it's obvious, it's apparent, it's clear, and so on.)

Orwell's openers are followed by a paragraph of weak analogies, massive overgeneralizations, a pleading for our sympathetic understanding ("I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer"), and an awkward paste-and-scissors listing of examples of bad writing ("Meanwhile, here are five specimens . . .")

Orwell's essay does have some good sentences in it, which are often quoted or used as epigrams. The most famous line is probably this one: "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible." This is immediately followed by good examples, written in 1946 about the Soviets, which sound now as if they were taken from Pentagon communiqués during the Vietnam war. Elsewhere, Orwell creates some powerful sentences, which (if you can tolerate the paranoia or misanthropy) can be admired for their syntactical construction: "All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia." Even when Orwell's tight writing fails, a good editor can use ellipsis to squeeze out a good quote from Orwell's conclusion: "Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable. . . ." Thus, at times within the essay, Orwell does write well; and in general, he is a well-intentioned critic of those who would exploit or oppress.

In addition to those parts of Orwell's essay that can be criticized for incompetent writing, readers who rigorously analyze the prose here will find some interesting patterns of thought surfacing obliquely through Orwell's dominant metaphors of disease and war. The imagery of battle permeates the essay, as does the metaphorical stress on sickness -- with the implications also of "curing" and "healing." Near the end of the essay, Doctor Orwell is ready to give us his prescription: "One needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails."

RX: Orwell's list of six rules. Take as often as needed, I presume. Three of his rules are strict "Nevers." Two are hedgy "Never ... ifs." And the final rule, at the bottom line of the prescription, hedges against all the rest: "Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous."

In one way, this list seems simply a rather somber and awkward echo of D. H. Lawrence's very funny list of "rules" in his essay on Ben Franklin, but such hedging in a very serious essay brings attention to another noticeable pattern of Orwell's thinking. If I didn't like Orwell, I could call him mealy-mouthed, wishy-washy. More politely, I'm apt to say that he frequently hedges his bets, plays both sides, qualifies so much ("probably," "unless," "if," "seems") that it's almost doubletalk: "Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modem English. I do not want to exaggerate. This kind of writing is not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur here and there in the worst-written page. Still if . . ." [Italics mine].

What are Orwell's chief complaints about people abusing the language? What is his "catalogue of swindles and perversions versions," as he calls it? His examples, he states, have two common qualities that he dislikes: "staleness of imagery" and "lack of perception." Concerning staleness of imagery: Orwell hates dying metaphors (clichés) and mixed metaphors. He likes the "newly invented" metaphor which evokes fresh images, and he tolerates and accepts the kind of metaphor that he calls "technically dead" -- one that "has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can be generally used without loss of vividness." But Orwell rages against the "in between" metaphors those clichés"merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves." Orwell, however, doesn't set the limits, the boundaries, between the acceptable "dead" and the odious "dying"; nor does he tell us who is the Official Coroner or the Inquest jury that certifies a phrase as "technically dead."

Orwell's second major complaint about modern writers is their "lack of precision." Orwell ticks off a number of specifies that he objects to as contributing to "vagueness and sheer incompetence": mixed metaphors, padding, the passive voice, -ize and de- formations, not . . . un- formations, polysyllabic words, intensified adjectives, foreign words and phrases, and high-level abstractions. He lumps these techniques as errors and doesn't allow for their deliberate use, by competent writers, as a tactic to achieve an end.

My objections to the attitudes of Orwell and Schlesinger fall into two general categories: the first grouping, misdemeanors of lesser importance because they are problems internal to these particular essays (The Good Old Days; Fast-Shuffling of a Stacked Deck); the second category, felonies, because they involve some important general attitudes about the use of language, about the analysis of language and politics (Virtue Triumphs! ; Hand-Wringing and Shoulder-Shrugging).

The Good Old Days

"Modern English, especially written English is full of bad habits," Orwell begins, frequently stressing the evils of the present: "This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of Modern English prose.... The whole tendency of modem prose is away from concreteness." Schlesinger agrees that our modern language is corrupt and argues that it is becoming even more corrupt since the publication of Orwell's essay. Both men claim that the situation is growing worse in the present generation, a complaint (especially by elders) not new in human history. Things-Are-Going-To-Hell-Fast propositions are usually paired (as here) with the corollary of a Golden Age in the past, a Camelot, the Good Old Days when things were better.

Fast Shuffling
of a Stacked Deck

Orwell says, without any supporting data or examples, that there's an "increase in slovenliness and vagueness" in modern prose; in brief, he states or implies that the language is declining or decadent and needs to be defended. Schlesinger follows suit, but at least he devotes two sentences to shuffle quickly from the 1850s to the 1970s, attributing the increase in "linguistic pollution" to "the rise of mass communications, the growth of large organizations and novel technologies, the invention of advertising and public relations, the professionalization of education."

Offhand, I can't produce statistics, word-counts, facts and figures, and computer printouts of a quantitative analysis of language manipulation in previous eras. But memory, at least, reminds me, that I've read a lot of windy, verbose, bombastic rhetoric from ages past. I know that such padding didn't start in our century. My recollections of Victorian prose (circa 1850) conjure up sentences dragging on forever, long-winded, inflated, and pompous. I also recall Shakespeare (circa 1600) playing around in Hamlet, satirizing the verbal maneuvers and the courtly cant of Polonius, Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Chaucer's Pardoner (circa 1400), 1 recall, knew a thing or two about word play, manipulating his sermons so as to free his audiences from their material goods to benefit their spiritual enrichment. I've read enough scholastic philosophy to know that the medievals were not above hair-splitting, nit-picking, padding, and circumlocution. Contemplating the Roman orators and rhetoricians, then going back even further, to the rhetors and sophists of the Greeks, I don't believe I can recall any era in which there wasn't a whole lot of hanky-panky going on with words.

The notion that people (and their languages) are getting worse is a myth and an illusion. I think I could accurately predict that there is going:to be more "misuse" of language in America twenty five years hence, simply because there will be another 100 million more talking heads here by then. My prediction may be accurate, but it's not very profound. I remain unimpressed by Orwell's and Schlesinger's vague carping about how things are getting worse.

Orwell stacks the deck (humorously) by pitting the simple, beautiful style of Ecclesiastes against a modernized version in pretentious sociological jargon. Good clean fun, but still deck-stacking. I'll grant that Ecclesiastes is well written, and Saint Paul too; but I could select some of the "begat" passages from the Good Book which aren't very inspired writing.

Schlesinger is more sober and serious In his deck-stacking. For example, he uses the Federalist Papers as an example of how intelligent writers -- and readers -- were in the good old days of the Founding Fathers: "One can only marvel at the sophistication of an audience that consumed and relished pieces so closely reasoned, so thoughtful and analytical." Indeed, the Federalist Papers were well written, but they were not typical, not representative of the literally thousands of political tracts in that decade. Junk political pamphlets and junk sermons were as common in that era as junk mail is in ours. Nor can the collective minds of their audience be read from an analysis of the Federalist Papers; it was almost the same audience, after all, which a decade earlier had made Thomas Paine's emotional diatribe Common Sense the bestselling, most influential political work in the era.

Virtue Triumphs!

Schlesinger quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson as an authority to make the point that good people say good things, corrupt people use corrupt language: "The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language." Emerson, too, is a nice guy, lofty and inspiring at times, but pretty flaky as a philosopher, misty and muddy at times, and his simplistic equation need not be accepted as gospel truth. In fact, it's this Virtue Triumphs attitude -- that Good People say Good Things, that Corrupt People use Corrupt Language, that there are Bad Guys Out There -- it's this attitude that is so dangerous.

This polarized view of human nature, that there are Good People (Our Side!) and Bad People (Out There), often leads to catastrophe. Persecutions, crusades, and wars have been carried out in the past as "Good" people, with the best of intentions, sought to punish or to eradicate the "Bad."

A more realistic attitude toward human nature is that every individual has the potential and capacity for good and evil and that all people are complicated mixtures of these qualities. Virtue doesn't always triumph (at least in this world); some of the most corrupt people can use the language most effectively, and some of the nicest people can be the most awkward, unskilled users of the language. Aristotelians, Thomists, and other realistic philosophers have always insisted on these points, which stress the complexity of the human situation.

It's probable that neither Orwell nor Schlesinger would consciously endorse a polarized Good Guys/Bad Guys dichotomy; both men were sufficiently exposed to the ubiquity of human error and evil. But it appears that both men have made certain unconscious assumptions about human-communication behavior, about "language manipulation" -- a key term used here in a special way.

Hand-Wringing

Emerson's buddy, Henry David Thoreau, once observed, "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is hacking at the root." In my judgment, the root cause of much of our confusion about language today is the implicit assumption, seldom recognized or articulated, that language manipulation is intrinsically bad, that only "Bad Guys" manipulate language.

People who unconsciously accept this premise are condemned to hand-wringing, to feelings of guilt, frustration (due to their call for impossible conditions), and possibly even misanthropy, because it can be observed that all people, in all eras, in all lands, have done-and continue to do -- this "bad" thing of language manipulation.

Many people today intuitively sense their own language manipulation. Because they do not want to be hypocrltes, any sense of moral outrage they may have against the language of the political or commercial propagandists, whether the Kremlin or the Pentagon or Madison Avenue, is countered from within, from their own sense of personal guilt that they, too, manipulate language. So the call for reform is usually very personal: "Let's reform ourselves first, then, once pure, we can go after others."

Indeed, most of the reformers and the critics of political language and commercial advertising, the texts and the teachers, I've encountered have assumed this premise that language manipulation is bad. (See my essay, "The Teacher-Heal-Thyself Myth," in Language and Public Policy in which this is more fully developed.)

In contrast, let me state the premise that language manipulation is a neutral, natural human activity and that any "goodness" or "badness" depends on the context of the whole situation: who is saying what to whom, under what conditions and circumstances, with what intent, and with what results. Because such judgments are demanding, complex, and often tentative, they are much less emotionally satisfying than the "certitude" afforded by relying upon an a priori judgment that language manipulation is bad in and of itself.

Such hand-wringing and personal guilt feelings can be recognized in Orwell's essay. After inveighing against language "abuses," he feels guilty: "Look back through this essay and for certain you will find that I've again and again committed the faults I am protesting against." You're right, George. You do "commit faults." For example, even in your closing paragraph (after you've already repented), your writing is pretty trite, using dead metaphors ("One need not swallow such absurdities . . .") and padding ("one ought to recognize . . . that the present political chaos ... one can probably bring about some improvements by starting at the verbal end").

Schlesinger, too, gets into the hand-wringing business. He begins his essay by linking it to the Orwell essay: "ln 1946 we comfortably supposed that Orwell was talking about other people -- Nazis and Stalinists, bureaucrats and sociologists.... Now recent history has obliged us to extend his dispirited analysis to ourselves."

Much of Schlesinger's essay makes favorable comments about the great political writings of our Founding Fathers; but, after praising the noble rationality and lucidity of their writings, Schlesinger admits, "It must not be posed, however, that even this great generation was immune to temptation." To win votes, "they changed their tone and relaxed their standards." Schlesinger quotes some of Jefferson's overblown flattery of farmers and calls it a "lapse" from realism: "For, as society grew more diversified, new interests claimed their place in the sun; and each in time had to be courted and flattered as the Jeffersonians had courted and flattered the- agriculturists. The desire for success at the polls thus sentimentalized and cheapened the language of politics."

Flattery is not new, was not born in this country nor with the advent of democracy. Flattery, often in terms of inflated language, has always been a human way of courting power. Power, however, in past eras, existed in the Court or the Crown -- Kings and Queens, Czars and Emperors -- and ample "literature" exists, written by earlier poets and playwrights praising the virtues of their royal patrons. Democracy shifted power away from the monarch, giving some power to the people and to the many diverse groups which now became the new target audiences for flattery. "Success at the polls" simply replaced "success at the courts." To suggest that democracy is a cause that "cheapened the language " ignores the courtly cant of the literary lackies of previous eras.

Several paragraphs later, Schlesinger modifies or changes his position. After discussing the language manipulation and vulgarity of Nixon as revealed in the White House tapes, Schlesinger wonders about Tocqueville's idea that "such deterioration is inherent in democracy." Now, Schlesinger, speaking of what he calls "linguistic decay," points out its widespread existence today: "But a moment's reflection suggests that the process is by no means confined to the United States nor to democracies. Language degenerates a good deal more rapidly and thoroughly in communist and fascist states.... Nowhere is meaning more ruthlessly manipulated, nowhere is language more stereotyped, mechanical, implacably banal and systematically false. Nowhere is it more purged of personal nuance and human inflection than in Russia and China. In democracies the assault on language is piecemeal, sporadic and unorganized."

Here Schlesinger surveys the contemporary world and finds (correctly) that " everyone does it." In his next paragraph, he looks back in American history and notes how "the Constitution is in many respects a document of calculated omission and masterful ambiguity." Earlier, Schlesinger had praised the "quest for precision" by the Founding Fathers, and now he's praising their deliberate ambiguity. Underneath this confusion is a shifting major premise; but predominantly the assumption is that language manipulation is bad, per se.

Shoulder-Shrugging

The major weakness of both Orwell's and Schlesinger's essays (as well as of a score of others by lesser-known writers responding to the language of the Vietnam war, the Pentagon, and the Watergate affair) is that these scolding essays end with a vague, shoulder-shrugging attitude. Such essays are sincere but ineffectual. They may accurately describe the language manipulation or itemize the jargon, but they offer a weak diagnosis of cause and a weaker prognosis of "cure."

Orwell and Schlesinger recite a litany of horrors about how language is being used by politicians and the powerful in such a way that there are terrible human consequences: war and violence, pain and suffering. But at the end of Orwell's essay, at the end of the listing of horrors, Orwell feels guilty about his own "sins," mildly shrugs his shoulders and urges us as individuals to reform and to disapprove (to mock? to purse our lips? to arch our eyebrows? to smirk?) of others who abuse language.

Classical rhetoricians recommended that in the closing passages of such a speech or essay, basically designed to persuade an audience, the writer should call for specific action. Not a shoulder-shrugging, nor a vague, wishy-washy, hand-wringing "let's do something" ending. After showing the horrible examples and moving the audience, the writer should climax the discourse with specific things to do or at least clarify for the audience that there are specific things which can be done. I'm not suggesting that the writer oversimplify or promise a panacea.

Nor am I faulting Orwell or Schlesinger for not "solving" the problem of political language-manipulation; but I am criticizing those who would so revere Orwell's essay as to consider it the "classic" statement and who would recommend it to others as being a "brilliant example" of what we ought to do. What? What should we do? Orwell doesn't say, except for the vaguest generalities about reforming oneself. Would you accept this from a writer or speaker who had just shown you example after example of horrible auto accidents? Would you be content with mild admonition to "drive carefully"? A pleasant truism, but hardly a significant statement

If Orwell and Schlesinger had started with the premise that language manipulation is a natural and normal human activity, then they could have concentrated their attention on the context (Who Is saying what to whom, with what intent and what result); on the growing inequality between the professional persuaders and the average persuadee; on making value judgments about the relative degrees of significance, merit, importance, of various persuaders and subject matters; and on establishing priorities for our attention.

If Orwell and Schlesinger had assumed that all people will always try to persuade others, that money and power tend to concentrate, that there will always be an inequality in persuasion situations (on one side the powerful persuader, whether King or Church, government or corporation; on the other side, the individual), then this cluster of assumptions could have been a reasonable starting point to suggest how people could move toward a greater degree of equality. In a democratic society, for example, such movement toward equality for the individual might be accomplished through both legislation and education.

Thus far, no one has written the Classic-Essay-About-What-To-Do-About-Language-Manipulation-By-Advertisers-And-Politicians. Nor is it likely that any one person, one essay, or one book will come up with a "solution." No one has fully itemized or specified those needed kinds of legislation (such as disclosure laws, open-meeting laws, "shield" laws covering journalists, standardized systems, Truth-in-Lending, Truth-in-Advertising, Freedom of Information laws, and so on) that will help balance the situation between organized persuaders and individual citizens. Nor has anyone organized coherently a comprehensive educational program (beginning with preschoolers' TV) that will train masses of people in a sophisticated literacy enabling them to recognize the persuasion patterns in the many forms of human languages and to understand the techniques' of the various media.

It's this very absence of any satisfactory plan that ought to be stressed to students. Probably both Orwell and Schlesinger would agree that their essays were meant to provoke, not to solve; to awaken, not to lull; to begin and not to end a quest for a better understanding of language and politics. Orwell's essay is not the "last word" on the subject. Let us hope it's one of the first.

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