Language as the “Ultimate Weapon” in Nineteen Eighty-Four

In the article called "Language as the ’Ultimate Weapon’ in Nineteen Eighty-Four" written by Jem Berkes, the author tells us how the Newspeak vocabulary is a powerful weapon in George Orwell's novel. The reason why Newspeak is considered a weapon is because it was made with the purpose of decrease the limits of the thought and the Party makes necessary its use. Therefore, Newspeak is perfect for a totalitarian government that wants to control its population for a long time.

 To describe the above, it's possible to use the following cite "To expand language is to expand the ability to think," (Berkes, 2000) which means that a huge vocabulary results in a greater ability to think. Therefore, what the Party decided to do with the newspeak is to limit it every year, reducing the ability to think as well.

 Another thing that Berkes mentions in the article is that in the novel torture is not used as part of control for the Party regime, rather the tactics of psychological control are those that dominate in the novel. In addition to the Newspeak, the media is also used as a tool for manipulating society. What the media basically does is distort reality through the language used. Then they used words and concepts created by themselves that represent the opposite of their meaning in the English language. On the other hand, the Party also controls the past, that is, all the evidence and information that exists from the past is modified in its favor, documents, newspapers, magazines, everything; in such a way that people cannot know what is real, then what they take as true is what the Party presents as reality.

 As far as I know, I think the ideas of Berkes and Orwell are quite accurate, the language has a lot of power, knowing more words means that you can generate more ideas and therefore, also knowledge. And the above is highly used today by marketing, using language to convince us of ideas that could be totally contrary to what a service or a product offers (as in the case of Coca-Cola, in which it’s not necessary to say they sell happiness; instead of its real product) and I think that we should be aware of this type of things.
Referencias:
Orwell, G. (2016). Nineteen Eighty-four. March 17, 2018, from The University of Adelaide. Web-site: https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79n/index.html

 Berkes, J. (2000). Language as the “Ultimate Weapon” in Nineteen Eighty-Four. March 17, 2018, from berkes. Web-site: http://www.berkes.ca/archive/berkes_1984_language.html


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